The Phantom of the Temple

XIV

Ma Joong changed into the same old jacket and trousers he had worn when visiting Tulbee and Tala the day be­fore. He went to the market and sat down at the long table of a cheap open-air eating-house, frequented by porters and chair coolies. He had a large bowl of spiced noodles, and then a second one, for they tasted very good. He belched contentedly, reached for a toothpick and said to the coolie who was gobbling his noodles beside him, 'That snake on your arm looks good. My wench told me I ought to have one tattooed on my breast, one that moves when I breathe. That'd tickle her no end, she says.'

The other surveyed Ma Joong's wide chest with an appraising eye.

That'll cost you a lot of money! But you don't have to go far to spend it. The best man has a stall in the next passage.'

Ma Joong found the expert busily sorting out his bam­boo needles. He watched him for a while, then told him in a surly voice, 'The tiger mask you put on the back of my friend Seng-san was no damn good! He was killed!'

'His own fault, brother! I told him that a tiger mask can't protect you properly if you don't have its red whiskers added. That would've been ten coppers extra, because good red dye comes expensive, you see. Your friend refused. And see what happened to him!’

'He told me he didn't need any whiskers to his tiger mask, because the holy picture of the temple you tattooed across his hips was a powerful charm. Why spend ten good coppers for nothing?'

'So, it was a temple, was it? Seng-san said it was just a house, begging to be burglared! Much gold and much happiness, he told me to put underneath. Got neither, the poor bastard! What about you, mister? Want to see my book of samples?'

'Not me! I am a coward about pain! So long.'

He strolled on, pensively chewing on his toothpick. Seng-san had been close-lipped about the gold all right. When he arrived in front of the Temple of the War God, he went up the broad marble steps and bought two cop­pers' worth of incense sticks from the priest who sat dozing in his small office. Ma Joong lit the incense sticks and stuck them in the bronze burner on the altar. Above it rose the huge gilt statue of the deity, a fierce bearded warrior who brandished a sword ten feet long.

'Grant me a bit of luck today, will you, Excellency?' he muttered. 'And throw in a pretty little wench, if pos­sible. There's an acute shortage of them in the cases I am now dealing with!’

In the street below a one-legged beggar stuck out his hand. Ma Joong put a copper in the dirty palm, and asked for the cellar of the King. The man gave him one look from his shifty eyes, sunk deep in the loose flesh of his face. Then he hobbled away on his crutches as fast as he could. Ma Joong cursed. He approached two loafers, but they only gave him a blank stare.

He walked aimlessly through the smelly alleys and noisy back streets, trying to find a good place to ask about the elusive King's whereabouts. He knew that the poor are jealous of their secrets and, out of sheer necessity, always stick to one another. Tired and thirsty, he entered a small tavern. Sitting down at the greasy counter, he reflected that he would have to establish an identity. He was certain that nobody would doubt he was a vagrant ruffian; but they didn't know him, and that made all the difference. The half-dozen coolies at the counter eyed him suspiciously. Moodily staring at the liquor in the earthen­ware bowl before him, he again regretted that his col­league and blood-brother Chiao Tai wasn't with him. One carefully staged scene between the two of them would at once clear the hostile atmosphere.

When he had emptied his third bowl, the door-curtain was pulled aside and a slatternly woman entered. The coolies knew her; they greeted her with a few coarse jokes. One grabbed the sleeve of her faded gown. She pushed him away with an obscene curse.

'Hands off! I work only at night, the day is for sleep­ing. Had to see my old mother, she's spitting blood again, and no one to look after her. Give me a drink, I'll even pay cash!’

'Have it on me,' Ma Joong said gruffly.

'Why? Who are you?'

'From Tong-kang. A cousin of Seng-san.'

The coolies gave him an appraising look.

'Come to rake in his inheritance?' one asked with a sneer.

The others guffawed.

'I have come to settle the bill,' Ma Joong said softly. And when they suddenly fell silent, he added: 'Anyone want to help?'

'That bill is far too big for us, stranger,' an old coolie said slowly. 'The thief-catchers got Ah-liu, and they'll chop his head off, naturally. But Ah-liu didn't do it. No one from among us. A damned outsider.'

'I don't care who it is, as long as I get my hands on him. What about the King?'

'The King is bad luck,' the prostitute muttered. 'Ask the girls who live there! Ten coppers a turn, sight unseen!’ She gulped down her drink. 'Ask him, anyway. I seem to remember I once saw Seng-san about there.'

Ma Joong got up and paid their bill.

'Take me there,' he told the woman. 'There's ten coppers in it for you.'

'I'll show you the place gratis, for nothing. Seng-san was mean, but he was done in by a blooming outsider, and we can't take that.'

The coolies grunted their approval.

The woman took Ma Joong a few streets down. She halted on the corner of a crooked alley.

'At the other end is an old army barrack. The soldiers left; the wenches stayed. With their brats. The King lives in the cellar underneath. Good luck!’

The alley was paved with irregular cobblestones and lined by old houses built from large blocks of grey stone. Formerly well-to-do people lived there, but now every house was apparently inhabited by a dozen or more poor families. Every few steps Ma Joong had to duck to avoid walking into the pieces of wet laundry hanging on bamboos sticking out of the second-floor windows. Sitting on benches out in the street, the inhabitants were drink­ing tea and noisily discussing their affairs. Their wives hung out of the upper windows, listening and shouting down their advice. Farther along it grew more quiet. At the corner where the barrack stood there were but few passers-by. The wooden gate of the dilapidated building was closed, and no sound came from behind the shuttered windows. The women there were sleeping off the night before.

Beside the gate Ma Joong noticed a low, dark door opening. He stooped and looked inside. A steep flight of roughly-hewn stone steps went down into a cellar.

A dank smell of refuse greeted him when he slowly descended. The dark cellar was only about ten feet broad, but it seemed more than forty feet long, stretching out the whole length of the barrack's faзade. The little light there was came from an arched window high up under the raftered ceiling, its base level with the street. And far back in the rear a spluttering candle stood on a low table made of logs. Except for a bamboo stool in front of the table, there wasn't a stick of furniture, and there seemed to be no one about. When Ma Joong walked on towards the candle he noticed that here and there water came trickling down from the stone wall, green with mould.

'Stay where you are, you!’ a thin, reedy voice sounded above Ma Joong's head. He jumped aside and looked up. Against the iron bars of the window he vaguely saw a black bundle. Stepping up close, he saw that it was a small, incredibly old man who was sitting cross-legged in the corner of the arch. The completely bald, shining head, the long pointed nose and the scraggy neck coming out of the black rags made him closely resemble a vulture poised for swooping down on its prey. In his hands he held a long stick, ending in a wicked-looking iron hook. A pair of small, beady eyes squinted horribly at Ma Joong.

'Hold it!’ he called out. 'I want to see the King. For a bit of business advice.'

'Let him pass, Cross-eye!' It was a deep, rumbling voice from the rear of the cellar. 'Some people even pay for advice!'

The bird-like man in the window gestured with his stick that Ma Joong could go on. Footsteps sounded in the street outside. The small man peered through the bars with cocked head. Suddenly, with an incredibly swift movement, he brought the stick round, and stuck it out­side through the iron bars. He hauled it back, plucked a mud-soiled piece of oil-cake from the hook and began to munch it contentedly. Ma Joong walked on to the table, thinking himself lucky not to have got the hook in his neck.

He strained his eyes but beyond the table he could discern only a pitch-dark vault, flanked by two heavy stone pillars. The one on the right seemed on the point of crumbling down, its outline showed large, uneven gaps covered with clusters of cobwebs.

'Sit down!’ the deep voice spoke.

As Ma Joong took the bamboo stool, a huge, hairy hand appeared out of the dark and trimmed the candle with a thick thumb and forefinger. Now that the flame was burning high, Ma Joong found that what he had taken for a heap of crumbling masonry was in fact the formless shape of a bearded giant. He was sitting behind the table, hunched up on the raised base of the pillar. His broad, bent back fitted exactly into the cavity formed by the missing bricks. His tousled grey head was bare; long untidy locks hung down over his high, deeply grooved forehead. From under ragged eyebrows large slate-coloured eyes fixed Ma Joong with an unwavering stare. He wore a patched jacket that had faded to the indeter­minate grey colour of dust.

'I am Shao-pa,' Ma Joong told him gruffly. 'From Tong-kang. A cousin of Seng-san.'

'He lies, Monk!' the old man in the window screeched. 'Seng-san never said nothing about a cousin!'

'Lao-woo is doing time,' Ma Joong went on quickly. 'It's my duty to get the bastard who got Seng-san.'

'Why come to me, Shao-pa?'

'Because they say in Tong-kang that you are the boss here.'

'Was the boss!' Cross-eye shouted. He burst out in cackling laughter. The other reached down, took a broken brick from under the table and threw it at the old man. His laughter ended abruptly in a scream of pain. He began to hop up and down in the window like a frightened bird in its cage. The man whom he addressed as the Monk looked Ma Joong up and down.

'You have Seng-san's build,' he remarked. 'I don't know who killed Seng-san, but I do know what Seng-san was after.'

'A fat lot of use!' Ma Joong scoffed. 'The gold in the temple, of course. The blasted murderer'll tell me where he hid it all right. After I have got him!'

The other said nothing. He slowly rubbed the table top with his big hand. Geometrical figures had been cut into the wood, here and there marked with strange, com­plicated signs. Holding the candle up, the Monk peered at the maze of lines, his large head with the wild mass of grey hair bent. Then he looked up.

'No, I have drawn too many diagrams here; the pattern has become confused.' It struck Ma Joong that, although the man's voice was coarse, he used the language of an educated person. 'I can't tell you much, Shao-pa. Not much. But I can give you one piece of sound advice. Get the gold, and forget about the murderer.'

'I won't forget, but there's no harm in getting the gold first. How much do you want?'

'Two thirds, Shao-pa.'

'Are you crazy? Half. I have to split with Lao-woo, mind you!’

'Like you split with me, Monk!’ the man in the win­dow called out.

'Done.' The Monk groped in his tattered sleeve and put a small square of wood on the table; it was inscribed with letters of some foreign script. 'Go tonight to the Hermi­tage, Shao-pa. That's a small temple, near the big red one, on the hill outside the east gate. Anybody can tell you. Climb over the wall and knock four times on the door of the servant's quarters, a small brick building to the left of the gate. Show this marker to the maid. Spring Cloud, her name is.'

'Spring in her pants!' Cross-eye jeered. The Monk threw a stone at him but missed. As it clattered to the floor, the old man burst out again in his cackling laughter.

'The eyes are going bad on you too, Monk!' he shouted.

'Has she got the gold?' Ma Joong asked.

'Not yet, Shao-pa. But she's mighty near to finding it. Together you'll get it.'

'That being so, why don't you go yourself?'

' 'Cause he can't walk!’ Cross-eye jeered. 'If I didn't get him his grub, he'd croak like a mangy dog! And they still call him the King!’

'I am a bit feeble on my legs,' the Monk grumbled. 'Rheumatism, you know, deep in my marrow. Back and legs grew crooked. But I can still ride a horse, and my head is all right. Make no mistake about that, Shao-pa!’

'What about Yang? Doesn't he get a share too?'

The other scratched in his long, straggling beard, all the time fixing Ma Joong with his strange, still eyes.

'So you know about Yang too, eh? Yang has disap­peared. Better look sharp, Shao-pa! You might disappear too. I don't know who did your cousin in, but he knows his job. Go to the Hermitage tonight.'

'Stay with the wench up there!' Cross-eye shouted. 'Dirt cheap!’

The Monk half-rose, pushing himself up on his mast­like, muscular arms. Ma Joong saw that the hulking shape would top him by at least two inches. But the giant's back was bent and his immense shoulders were sagging at an unnatural angle.

The small man began to hop to and fro in the window, the black rags flapping about like wings.

'Sorry Monk! Sorry boss!’ he bleated.

'Shut up, Cross-eye. And stay shut up,' the Monk growled as he let himself down again. And, to Ma Joong: 'Goodbye, Shao-pa.'

He leaned back against the pillar. His head sunk on his breast.

Ma Joong got up, waved a hand at the old man in the window, and went to the stairs.

He strolled back to the tribunal, whistling a cheerful tune. His expedition had taken the whole of the after­noon, now dusk was falling. But the time had been well spent! The Abbess had warned Judge Dee already that her maid associated with vagabonds, and now he had learned that the wench had been planted there as an agent of the King of the Beggars! He might have an interesting evening — in more than one respect!

When the two enormous lampions of red oil-paper that lit the gate of the Temple of the War God came in sight, he again went up the broad stairs and burned incense. Evidently the deity was well disposed towards him!

At the tribunal the headman informed him that the judge and Sergeant Hoong were in Judge Dee's library, talking to the painter Lee Ko. Ma Joong went quickly to his own quarters, washed and put on clean clothes.