Murder in Canton

XIII

Chiao Tai had arrived at the palace two hours earlier, shortly after Judge Dee had left for the visit to Liang Foo. The majordomo ushered him into the hall of Judge Dee's wing.

Since that solemn palace employee had told Chiao Tai the judge was not expected back till noon, he went to the sandalwood couch, stepped out of his boots and threw himself down on the soft pillows. He intended to take a good nap.

But tired as he was, he could not get to sleep. He tossed about for a while, his spirits sinking lower and lower. Don't you get sentimental, at your age, you blasted fool! he told himself angrily. Didn't even pinch the behinds of those twin-hussies at Nee's, and they were practically asking for it! And what the hell is wrong with my left ear? He stuck his little finger into it and turned it round vigorously, but a ringing noise persisted. Then he located the sound. It came from his left sleeve.

He groped inside and brought out a small package about an inch square, wrapped up neatly in red paper. On it was written in a thin, spidery hand: To Mr Tao. Personal.

'So it's from her! ' he muttered. 'Must have got a girl friend, the wench that bumped into me in front of the captain's house. The quick-fingered hussy slipped this into my sleeve. How did she know I would be visiting Nee, though?'

He got up and went to the entrance of the hall. He put the package on the side table there, as far as possible from Judge Dee's desk. Then he returned to the sandalwood couch and laid himself down again. This time he slept at once.

He woke up only towards noon. He had just stepped into his boots and was stretching his stiff limbs luxuriously when the door opened and the majordomo showed Judge Dee and Tao Gan inside.

Judge Dee walked straight to his desk in the rear of the hall. While Chiao Tai and Tao Gan sat down in their accustomed seats, the judge took a large city map from a drawer and spread it out in front of him. Then he said to Chiao Tai:

'We had a long talk with Liang Foo. Our first assumption seems to have been right, after all. The Censor must have come back to Canton because he had discovered that the Arabs here are plan­ning to make trouble.'

Chiao Tai listened intently while Judge Dee gave him a sum­mary of the conversation. The judge concluded:

'Liang confirmed what the prostitute in the temple told me, namely, that the Arabs frequent the Tanka brothels. So there is plenty of opportunity for those two groups to get together. That explains why the Censor was murdered with a poison peculiar to those sinister waterfolk. And the dwarf whom you two saw in the wine-house on the quay, together with the Arab assassin, was evidently a Tanka. Now the unknown person who strangled that assassin in the passage used the silk scarf of a Tanka murderer. So it would seem that the group opposing the Arab trouble-makers is employing Tanka also. It's all very puzzling. Anyway, I am not going to risk those Arabs starting anything here. I told the Governor to convene a meeting in the council hall at two o'clock to discuss precautionary measures. How did it fare with you, Chiao Tai?'

'I found the dancer, sir. And she has indeed Tanka blood, from her mother. Unfortunately her patron is a jealous fellow, so she didn't dare to have a longer talk with me on the boat where he has established her. She said, however, that sometimes he also meets her in a small house of his south of the Kwang-siao Temple, and she'll let me know when I can have a second meeting with her there. She only visits it occasionally, for being a pariah, she's not allowed to dwell ashore.'

'I know,' Judge Dee said peevishly. 'The pariah class must be abolished, it's a disgrace to a great nation like ours. It's our duty to educate those backward unfortunates, then grant them full citizenship. Did you also visit Captain Nee?'

'I did, sir. Found him a pleasant, well-informed fellow. He had quite a bit to say about Mansur — as I had expected.'

After he had been told the captain's story, Judge Dee re­marked:

'You'd better be careful with that captain, Chiao Tai. I can't believe that tale. It doesn't tally with what I heard from Liang Foo. Mansur is a wealthy princeling; why should he stoop to blackmail? And where did Nee get that story, anyway? Let me see, he told you that he had decided to stay on shore for a few years, because he likes a quiet life, and wants to devote himself to the study of mysticism. That doesn't ring true at all! He is a sailor, and a sailor needs stronger reasons than that to keep away from the sea! I think Nee himself was in love with that woman, and her family married her off during one of his voyages. Nee is stay­ing on here, hoping that sooner or later her elderly husband will die, thus enabling him to marry his old love. Of course Nee hates Mansur because of the Arab's affair with his lady-love, and there­fore he concocted that blackmail story. How does that strike you?'

'Yes,' Chiao Tai said slowly, 'that could be quite true. It would fit nicely with what his two slave-girls told me, namely that the captain is deeply devoted to some woman.'

'Two slave-girls?' the judge asked. 'So that is why the Prefect said yesterday that Nee is leading a dissolute life.'

'No, sir. Those two girls — they are twins, by the way — said definitely that the captain never as much as makes a pass at them.'

'What is he keeping them for, then? As interior decoration?' Tao Gan asked.

'Out of piety to their mother, who was a distant relative of his. Rather a pathetic story.' He related in detail what Captain Nee had said, and added, 'The Chinese scoundrel who seduced that young lady must have been a mean bastard. I hate those fellows who think they can do what they like with a foreign girl, just because she isn't Chinese.'

The judge gave him a keen look. He remained silent for a long while, pensively playing with his sidewhiskers. At last he spoke:

'Well, we have more important things to worry about than a sea captain's private life. You two may go now and have your noon rice. But be back here before two o'clock, for the confer­ence.'

When the two friends had greeted the judge and were about to leave the hall, Chiao Tai picked up the small package from the table. Handing it to Tao Gan, he said in an undertone:

'This was slipped into my sleeve by a girl in the street. She bumped into me expressly, when I was leaving Nee's house. Since it's marked personal, I didn't like to show it to our judge before you'd seen it.'

Tao Gan quickly opened it. Inside was an egg-shaped object, wrapped up in what seemed like an old blank envelope. It was a cricket-cage of beautiful carved ivory.

Tao Gan put it to his ear and listened a moment to the soft chirruping. 'It's from her all right,' he muttered. Then he sud­denly exclaimed, 'Look here! What does this mean?'

He pointed at the square seal on the flap of the envelope. It read: 'Private seal of Lew, Imperial Censor.'

'We must show this to the judge at once!’ he said excitedly.

They went back to the rear of the hall. When Judge Dee looked up astonished from the map he was studying, Tao Gan silently handed him the cage and the envelope. Chiao Tai told him quickly how he had got it. The judge put the cage aside, examined the seal, then slit the envelope open and took out a single sheet of thin notepaper. It was covered with small cursive writing. Smoothing the paper out on his desk, he scrutinized it carefully. At last he looked up and said gravely:

'These are a few notes the Censor jotted down for his own use. Concerning three Arabs who paid him sums of money, for goods received. He doesn't say clearly what goods. Besides Mansur, he mentions the names of two others, transcribed as Ah-me-te and Ah-si-se.'

'Holy heaven!' Chiao Tai exclaimed. 'Then the Censor was a traitor! Or is it a fake, perhaps?'

'It is perfectly genuine,' the judge said slowly. 'The seal is ah right; I have seen it hundreds of times in the Chancery. As to the writing, I am familiar with the Censor's regular hand from the confidential reports to the Council he wrote out himself, but not with the shorthand that is used for such notes. But this memo is written in the highly cursive style that only great scholars achieve.'

He leaned back in his chair, and remained deep in thought for a considerable time. His two lieutenants watched him anxiously. Suddenly he looked up.

'I'll tell you what this means!' he said briskly. 'Someone is perfectly aware of our real purpose in visiting Canton! And since that is a closely guarded secret of state, the unknown person must be a ranking official in the capital who is in on all the secret deliberations of the Grand Council. He must belong to a political faction opposing the Censor. He and his accomplices lured the Censor to Canton, in order to involve him in Mansur's plot, accuse him of high treason and thus have him removed from the political scene. But the Censor saw through the clumsy scheme, of course. He feigned to be willing to collaborate with the Arabs, as proved by this note. He did that only in order to find out who exactly was behind the plot. However, the other party obviously dis­covered that the Censor had seen through the scheme. And had him poisoned.' Looking levelly at Tao Gan, he went on, 'The fact that the blind girl sent you the envelope proves that she means well, but at the same time that she was present when the Censor died. For blind persons can't pick up letters lying about on a table or in the street. She must have found it when she went through the dead man's sleeves with her sensitive fingers, and abstracted the envelope without the murderer noticing it. She took the Golden Bell also from the Censor's dead body. The story she told you about how she heard the cricket's sound while passing by the temple was so much eyewash.'

'Later she must have asked someone she trusted to have a look at the envelope,' Tao Gan remarked. 'When she was told that it bore the Censor's seal, she kept it. Then when she heard from the person or persons who visited her after I had left her room that I was investigating the Censor's disappearance, she sent the en­velope to me — adding the cricket, to indicate that it came from her.'

The judge had hardly listened. He burst out angrily: 'Our opponents know exactly every move we make! It is an impossible situation! And that sea captain must be hand in glove with them, Chiao Tai! It can't be just a coincidence that the unknown girl put the package in your sleeve in front of his house. Go back to Captain Nee at once, and question him closely! Begin discreetly, but if he denies knowing the blind girl, you collar him and bring him here! You'll find me in my private dining-room.'