The Chinese Maze Murders (3 page)

The next day I made exhaustive enquiries among my friends but no one had ever heard about a retired prefect by the name of Dee living in our town; neither did subsequent investigations as to his whereabouts bring to light more information. Still this fact did not dissolve my doubts. The old gentleman might well have been only passing through, or he might be living somewhere in the countryside.

Thus I now make bold to offer this story as it is, leaving it to the better judgement of the discerning reader to decide whether my encounter on the lotus lake was dream or reality. If this tale of three mysterious crimes should distract the reader for a few moments from the cares and anxieties of daily life, I shall not grudge the coppers extorted from me. For no matter what actually happened, that waiter evidently was a mean rascal; it is quite inconceivable
that one, or even two gentlemen of refined taste ever should consume eight pots of wine at one single sitting.

Four horse carts were slowly wending their way through the mountains east of the city of Lan-fang.

In the first cart Judge Dee, the new magistrate of Lan-fang, had made himself as comfortable as was possible on such an arduous journey. He was sitting on a bed roll, and leaned his back against a large package with books. His faithful assistant, the old Sergeant Hoong, was sitting opposite him on a bale of cloth. The road was rough and these precautions provided scant protection from the continual bumps.

The judge and the sergeant both felt tired, for they had been on the road for several days on end.

After them followed a large tilt cart with silk curtains. Here Judge Dee’s three wives, his children and the maids were trying to snatch some sleep, curled up among pillows and padded quilts.

The two other carts were loaded with luggage. Some of the servants were sitting precariously perched on top of the bales and boxes, others preferred to walk by the side of the horses which were covered with sweat.

Before dawn they had left the last village. Thereafter the road had led through a desolate mountain region. The only people they had met were a few wood gatherers. In the afternoon their progress had been retarded for two hours by a broken wheel and now dusk was falling, making the mountains seem even more forbidding.

Two tall fellows rode at the head of the procession. Broad swords hung down their backs, each had a bow fastened to the pommel of his saddle, and arrows rattled in their quivers. These two were Ma Joong and Chiao Tai,
two of Judge Dee’s loyal lieutenants. They acted as the armed escort of the group. Another of Judge Dee’s lieutenants, a lean man with a slight stoop, called Tao Gan, brought up the rear together with the old house steward.

Arrived on top of the mountain ridge Ma Joong reined in his horse. The road ahead descended into a wooded valley. Another steep mountain rose up on the opposite side.

Ma Joong turned round in his saddle, and called out to the coachman:

“An hour ago you said that we were approaching Lan-fang, you dogshead! And here is another mountain to cross!”

The coachman grumbled something about fellows from the city always being in a hurry, then said sullenly:

“Don’t worry, from the next ridge you will see Lan-fang lying at the foot of the slope.”

“I have heard that bastard speak about a ‘next ridge’ before,” Ma Joong observed to Chiao Tai. “How awkward that we arrive in Lan-fang at so late an hour! The departing magistrate must have been waiting for us since noon. And what about the other dignitaries of the district administration and their welcome banquet? By now their bellies must be as empty as mine!”

“Not to speak of a dry throat!” Chiao Tai added. He turned round his horse and rode up to the judge’s cart.

“There still is one valley to be crossed, Your Honour,” he reported, “but then we shall at last reach Lan-fang.”

Sergeant Hoong suppressed a sigh.

“It is a great pity,” he remarked, “that Your Honour was ordered to leave Poo-yang so soon. Although two major criminal cases came up directly after our arrival there, all in all it was a pleasant district.”

Judge Dee smiled wryly and tried to settle his back more comfortably against the book package.

“It would seem,” he said, “that in the capital the remnants of the Buddhist clique joined forces with friends of the Cantonese merchants, and effected my transfer long before my term of office in Poo-yang had expired. Yet it will be most instructive to serve as magistrate in such an outlying district as Lan-fang. Doubtless we shall find there interesting special problems that one will never meet with in the larger cities of the interior.”

The sergeant agreed that that was so, but he remained gloomy. He was over sixty years old, and the discomforts of the long journey had worn him out. Since his early childhood he had been a retainer of Judge Dee’s family. When Judge Dee had entered official life, he had made him his confidential adviser, and at every post where the judge had served he had appointed him sergeant over the constables of the tribunal.

The coachmen cracked their whips. The cortège passed over the top of the ridge and descended into the valley along a narrow winding road.

Soon they found themselves down in the valley, where the road was darkened by high cedar trees that rose from the thick undergrowth on both sides.

Judge Dee was just thinking of ordering his servants to light the torches, when he heard confused shouting ahead and behind.

A number of men, their faces covered with scarves of black cloth, had suddenly emerged from the wood.

Two men took hold of Ma Joong’s right leg and dragged him from his horse before he had time to draw his sword. A third had jumped from behind on Chiao Tai’s horse, and had pulled him down to the ground by a strangle hold on his neck. At the end of the cortège two other robbers were attacking Tao Gan and the steward.

The coachmen jumped down and disappeared in the wood. Judge Dee’s servants ran away as fast as they could.

Two masked faces appeared before the window of Judge Dee’s cart. Sergeant Hoong was knocked unconscious with a blow on his head. The judge could just dodge a spear that was thrust inside. He quickly gripped the shaft with both hands. The other pulled from outside to wrench it loose. The judge first held on tight, then suddenly pushed it in the direction of the pulling man. His assailant tumbled backwards. Judge Dee pulled the spear from his hands and jumped out of the window. He kept his two attackers at a distance by whirling the spear round and round. The robber who had hit Sergeant Hoong was armed with a club, the man with the spear had now drawn a long sword. Both attacked the judge fiercely, and he reflected that he would not be able to hold out long against these two determined opponents.

The two ruffians who had dragged Ma Joong from his horse were ready to cut him down with their swords while he was scrambling up. Unfortunately for them, however, they were up against a formidable fighter, who only a few years back had himself been a famous highwayman. Until judge Dee had caused their reform, both Ma Joong and Chiao Tai had been ‘brothers of the green woods’. Thus there were very few things about roadside fighting that Ma Joong did not know. Instead of trying to get up he twisted his body round, gripped the ankle of one attacker and jerked him off his balance. At the same time Ma Joong placed a vicious kick on the other man’s knee. This double move gave him time to jump up. He felled the stumbling man with a terrible fist blow on his head. Turning round like lightning he gave the man who was clasping his crushed knee a kick in the face that made his head snap back and nearly broke his neck.

Drawing his sword Ma Joong rushed over to Chiao Tai
who lay on the ground wrestling desperately with a man clinging to his back. Two others stood ready with long knives to stab Chiao Tai as soon as they got the chance. Ma Joong ran his sword right through the chest of one robber. Without taking the time to withdraw his sword he went on to the second and gave him a kick in his groin that doubled him up on the ground. Picking up the robber’s long knive Ma Joong thrust it under the left shoulder of the man fighting with Chiao Tai.

Just when he was helping Chiao Tai up, Ma Joong heard Judge Dee call out: “Look out!”

Ma Joong swiftly turned round, and thus the club of Judge Dee’s assailant who had ran up to help his comrades, missed Ma Joong’s head. It landed with a thud on his left shoulder. He sank down with a curse. The robber lifted his club to brain Chiao Tai. The latter had drawn his knife, he dived under the robber’s raised arm and plunged his knife to the hilt in the other’s heart.

Judge Dee, now only faced with the swordsman, made quick work of him. He made a feint with his spear at his attacker who raised his sword to parry the blow. Then Judge Dee suddenly practised the fencer’s trick known as ‘the tumbling flag pole’; he turned the spear round in the air and brained his opponent with a blow of the shaft.

Leaving it to Chiao Tai to truss up the robbers, Judge Dee ran on to the luggage carts. One robber was sprawling on the ground, clutching frantically at his neck. The other, with a knobstick in his hand, was looking under the cart. The judge laid him out by hitting him over the head with the flat of his spear point.

Tao Gan came crawling out from under the cart, with a thin rope in his hand.

“What is happening here?” the judge inquired.

Tao Gan answered with a grin:

“One of these yokels knocked down the steward, the other hit a glancing blow on my head. I let myself fall down with a horrible gasp, and did not move. They thought that I was laid out and started to tear down the luggage. I rose and from behind slipped my thin noose over the head of the nearest ruffian. Then I dived under the cart, pulling the cord as tight as I could. The other robber could not follow me there without exposing himself, and his club was of no use. He was just debating with himself what to do, when Your Honour solved his dilemma for him.”

Judge Dee smiled, then hurried back to where he heard Ma Joong cursing roundly. Tao Gan took a length of catgut from his sleeve and securely bound the hands and feet of the two robbers. Then he loosened the noose round the neck of the man who by now was nearly suffocating.

These two robbers had been deceived by Tao Gan’s inoffensive appearance. Tao Gan was of middle age, not much of a fighter, but an extremely wily person, who for many years had earned his living as a professional swindler. Once, Judge Dee had extricated him from an ugly situation, and made him one of his lieutenants. Owing to his intimate knowledge of the ways and by-ways of the underworld he had proved very useful for tracking down criminals and collecting evidence. And, as the robber with the blue face had good reason to know, Tao Gan was full of unexpected tricks.

When he came to the head of the cortège, Judge Dee found Chiao Tai in a hand-to-hand fight with one of Ma Joong’s first attackers who had recovered from the blow on his head. Ma Joong himself was crouching on the ground, his left arm lamed by the blow on his shoulder. With his right he tried to fight off the attacks of a little robber, who danced round him with amazing agility, brandishing a short dagger.

The judge raised his spear. Just then Ma Joong succeeded in catching his opponent’s wrist. He twisted his arm in an iron grip till the robber let the dagger drop. Then Ma Joong forced him down and put his knee on his stomach.

The robber let out a pitiful cry.

Ma Joong rose to his feet with difficulty, while his captive hammered his head and shoulders with fistblows from his free hand. These, however, did not seem to bother Ma Joong. He said panting to the judge:

“Would you remove the mask, Your Honour?”

Judge Dee pulled down the scarf. Ma Joong exclaimed:

“May Heaven preserve us! It’s a wench!”

They looked into the blazing eyes of a young girl. Ma Joong let go her arm in sheer astonishment.

Judge Dee hastily pinned her arms behind her back and said sourly:

“Well, on occasion one will find an abandoned woman among these robber bands. Tie her up as the others!”

Ma Joong called out to Chiao Tai who by now had subdued and trussed up his opponent. Ma Joong remained standing there scratching his head in perplexity while Chiao Tai bound the girl’s hands behind her back. She did not say a word.

Judge Dee went to the tilt cart with the women. His First Lady was crouching in the window with a dagger in her hand. The others were cowering under the quilts in a dead fright.

The judge told them that the fight was over.

Judge Dee’s servants and the coachmen had emerged from their hiding places. They hastily set to work to light torches.

In the flickering light Judge Dee surveyed the results of the battle.

On their own side there was little damage. Sergeant Hoong had regained consciousness, and had his head bandaged
by Tao Gan. The old steward had suffered more from fright than from the robber’s blow. Ma Joong was sitting on a tree trunk stripped to the waist. His left shoulder was purple and swollen, and Chiao Tai was massaging it with medicinal oil.

Ma Joong had killed two robbers, Chiao Tai one. The six others were all more or less the worse for wear, only the girl was entirely unhurt.

The judge ordered his servants to tie the robbers on top of one luggage cart, and the dead bodies on the other. The girl would have to walk.

Tao Gan produced a padded basket, and the judge and his lieutenants drunk a cup of hot tea.

Ma Joong rinsed his mouth, spat contemptuously and said to Chiao Tai:

“All in all, it was an amateurish attack. I don’t think that these fellows are professional highwaymen.”

“Yes,” Chiao Tai agreed, “with ten men they could have done a better job.”

“They did well enough for my taste,” Judge Dee remarked dryly.

They silently drank another cup of tea. All were exhausted and no one felt inclined to say much. One only heard the whispering voices of the servants, and the groans of the wounded robbers.

After a brief rest the cortège set into motion again. Two servants with lighted torches led the way.

It took them well over an hour to cross the last mountain ridge. Then the road came out on a broad highway, and soon they saw the battlements of the northern city gate of Lan-fang silhouetted against the evening sky.