The Phantom of the Temple

XV

The old housemaster was lighting the lanterns that stood in a row along the front of the marble terrace. Through the open doors of the library Ma Joong saw the judge standing at the large centre table of carved ebony, his hands behind his back. Sergeant Hoong was helping the painter to unwrap a few rolled-up scroll paintings.

When Judge Dee saw Ma Joong on the terrace, he said to Lee, 'I regret that you haven't managed to do that painting of the border scene for me yet, Mr Lee. But I know that superior paper is indeed hard to come by in this distant provincial town. And I fully understand that you don't want to paint a picture where the atmosphere is so important unless you feel in exactly the right mood. I would like very much to see the three landscapes you did last year. They could be hung somewhere on the wall here, I suppose. Tell the housemaster to get us more candles, Hoong. In the meantime I shall take a stroll in the garden with my lieutenant, to enjoy the evening cool.'

He took Ma Joong to a rustic stone bench under a high acacia tree below the far end of the terrace.

'The session dragged on till late in the afternoon,' he told his lieutenant. 'I had to adjourn it, for the other party had also found new data! I have seldom dealt with such a complicated inheritance squabble! Just after I had changed and taken a bath, Lee Ko came to see me. Presently we shall have a longer talk with him. What did you learn down town?'

Ma Joong reported the results of his afternoon excur­sion in detail. Judge Dee was deeply interested in his conversation with the King of the Beggars, nicknamed the Monk. He made Ma Joong repeat it verbatin.

'You did very well indeed, Ma Joong! Now at last we are seeing this case from the inside, as it were! The identity of the murderer remains shrouded in mystery, but we are getting nearer to the Treasurer's gold! Go tonight to look for it with that maidservant, that's much better than that we go there with a troop of constables! Try also to make her talk a bit on the Monk. He seems a most unusual person.'

The judge brushed a few blossoms from his lap and rose. They went back to the library.

The room was brilliantly lit by four tall candlesticks. Lee Ko and Sergeant Hoong were standing in front of three large painted scrolls hanging from the upper shelf of Judge Dee's bookcase, the wooden rollers at the bottom touching the floor. The judge turned his armchair round and sat down, facing the pictures. He silently studied them, caressing his sidewhiskers.

'Yes,' the judge said, 'that ink-landscape in the middle I like very much indeed. The two others are perhaps painted with a more delicate touch, but the brushwork of the middle one has the careless abandon of our ancient masters. There's a tremendous distance there. If you hadn't put in that small island on the horizon, one wouldn't know where the sea ends and the sky be­gins.'

'You have a deep understanding of painting, sir,' Lee said gratefully. 'I always aim at creating depth and dis­tance, but I seldom succeed.'

'If we ever succeeded in reaching the utmost of what we are longing for,' the judge said dryly, 'there would be a sense of surfeit. Sit down and have a cup of tea, Mr Lee.'

The old housemaster had come in with the large tea-tray. After they had tasted the tea, Judge Dee resumed: 'You are a great artist, Mr Lee. You ought to marry, so that you can pass on your art to your sons, in due time.'

Lee smiled faintly. 'Married life would engender the surfeit you just spoke of, sir. It robs love of romance, and then the creative spirit vanishes.'

The judge shook his head emphatically. 'Marriage is the basic institution of our sacred social order, Mr Lee. If you could live for ever inside four walls, then you could perhaps pursue love without its logical consequences. Since, however, you are compelled to go out into the world, you have to adapt yourself to human society. Otherwise the result is frustration. An ancient writer compared man with a member of a four-in-hand team. Within the team, each horse has a large measure of free­dom, going slower or faster, swerving to left or right, for the chariot will never leave the track. The horse that breaks loose from the team may enjoy its complete free­dom — for a certain time. But when it has become tired and lonely, and wants to rejoin the team, it finds the road gone and it can never catch up with the chariot again.'

The painter had grown pale. His hand trembled when he picked up his tea-cup. There was an awkward pause. Then Lee looked up and asked, 'By the way, sir, how is that murder case in the temple progressing? Have you obtained sufficient evidence to convict the vagabond?'

'We are making satisfactory progress,' Judge Dee replied vaguely. 'Slow but sure, you know.' He took a sip from his tea, to indicate that the time had come for his guest to take his leave.

Lee Ko was about to rise, when suddenly he clapped his hand to his forehead. 'How stupid of me! I had planned to tell you at once, sir, and it nearly slipped my mind! After you left yesterday, I remembered that I have indeed seen that small ebony box you showed me.'

'Well well,' Judge Dee said, 'that's interesting! When and where did you get it, Mr Lee?'

'About half a year ago, sir, from an old beggar. He came to the house, and implored me to give him a few coppers for it. It was all covered with mud, so I didn't see the jade disc on the cover. He said he had picked it up on the wooded slope behind the deserted temple, near a rabbit hole. I was busy and my first reaction was to send him away. But he looked so wretched that I took the box and gave him five coppers. I threw it into a basket with other knick-knacks. Later, when the old curio-dealer from behind the Temple of Confucius came to buy an antique painting from me, I threw in the basket to get from him the round sum I demanded.'

'Thank you, Mr Lee. I am glad that now I know where my box came from. Many thanks for showing me your work. I shall keep those landscape scrolls for a few days, and let you know when I have made my choice. By the way, has your assistant Yang turned up?'

'No, sir, but he'll be back soon! I made inquiries down town and learned he is on a spree with two boon com­panions. And that costs money!'

'I see. I happened to meet his former employer, the retired prefect Woo. He said he had dismissed Yang because he was a dissolute youngster.'

The painter angrily tossed his head.

'Woo is an old stick, sir! Exactly like my brother. They haven't the slightest sympathy for men who don't con­form in every detail to their vulgar, dry-as-dust view of life!'

'Well, it takes all kinds of people to make a world. The sergeant will see you to the gate, Mr Lee.'

'So that box was found near the deserted temple, sir!’ Ma Joong exclaimed.

'Yes,' Judge Dee said slowly. 'Very curious. If Lee is speaking the truth, it would seem that Miss Jade's dis­appearance is also connected with the deserted temple. And if it was his intention to tell me a fancy tale, then why did he choose this particular one?' He slowly stroked his beard for a while. 'And who would have given him the false information that Yang is on a spree with two friends? Yang is dead!’

Ma Joong shrugged his broad shoulders. 'That's easily explained, sir. As I told you, I met Lee yesterday when he was checking the taverns. And you know what those innkeepers are: they always try to put off a man who inquires after another with a few general statements. They don't like to get mixed up in other people's troubles. They have enough of their own!’

'I shall think all this over, Ma Joong. You had better go to the Hermitage after nine tonight. By then the Abbess will have said her vespers and be asleep.'

The judge walked along the open corridor that led round the inner garden to the apartments of his First Lady. Through the open window came the sound of a two-stringed violin, punctuated by the sharp clicks of a wooden clapper.

Entering the dark sitting-room, he saw that a number of people were gathered there. They were all turned towards the improvised stage in the rear: a booth about seven feet high, draped with gorgeous red brocade, with along the top a screen of thin white cloth, lit by the oil-lamp hanging behind it. Small, brightly-coloured figures were flitting across it. From the booth came the sing-song voice of a story-teller, accompanied by the animated music of the violin. Judge Dee tiptoed to a corner, behind the audience. This was the shadow-play show his First Lady had promised the children, in connection with her birthday feast the day before.

His three wives were sitting on a long bench directly in front of the stage, together with the children and their nurse. Behind them stood the servants. Even the scullery maids had been allowed inside the house on this special occasion. All were following the play with rapt atten­tion.

Folding his arms, the judge watched the colourful dis­play. The graceful puppets, cut from thin parchment and painted with transparent colours, were manipulated behind the screen by iron wires. Now the performer pressed them close to the screen so that one saw, hair-sharp, their expressive profiles, then he let them flutter away from the screen, creating the illusion that they dis­solved into the distance.

As was customary on such occasions, the play was a medley of auspicious legends, where the Queen of the Western Paradise predominated. Now she was haranguing her fairy court, standing under the Paradise Tree on which grew the peaches of immortality, painted a brilliant red. Gesticulating with her long-sleeved arms, the Queen resembled a large, gaudy butterfly. Then the white monkey who wanted to steal the peaches made his appearance. The children clapped their hands and shouted their delighted approval when the monkey started upon his weird pranks.

Real life, the judge thought, was indeed even more of a medley than this shadow-play. Events unexpectedly over­lap; motives get blurred by unforseen developments; the most carefully built-up schemes miscarry through a prank of fate; clever schemes get entangled in the infinite multi­plicity of human behaviour. Therefore it was a mistake to seek to interpret the facts on the basis of a supposed pre­conceived clear-cut plan drawn up by the murderer of the deserted temple. He had to reckon with a very broad margin of error, and of haphazard coincidence.

He nodded slowly. Viewed in this light, he thought he could make a guess at the reason why the ebony box had been found in the vicinity of the deserted temple. And then the points that had struck him as incongruous in Miss Jade's message would find a logical explanation too. By Heaven, if his guess was correct, then Lee Ko's telling him how he got the box would be the strangest freak of fate he had ever encountered!

A loud rattling of the wooden clapper announced the end of the first act. The judge quickly slipped outside.