The Eleventh Tiger (17 page)

Ian borrowed a hat to shade his eyes and partly cover his face, so that no-one would recognise him as they passed through Canton.

Barbara had been half-afraid - more than half, if truth be told - that the house would be gone. After all, none of them had noticed it on their original journey into Canton the previous morning, and she had an unreasoning suspicion that it had appeared just for last night’s performance.

Her fears were unfounded. The house was still there, its colours muted and dusty, all the paintwork it had ever had faded by long years under the sun.

Ian had been half-expecting something Charles Addams might have drawn, then, remembering where he was, had amended his mental image to a sprawling pagoda with lots of dark windows and bats in the rafters.

What Barbara led him to was just a little bungalow, built in a typical Chinese plaster-and-tile fashion. In the daylight the house was rather grimy and run-down, but it didn’t look at all threatening or spooky to him.

‘Are you sure this is the place?’ he asked.

Barbara nodded. ‘It looked quite different last night.’

‘It must have done, from what you and Vicki told us.’

There were roses growing around an old bench and table outside. The door was still solid, but it was ajar and Ian pushed experimentally against it. It was stiff, but opened under relatively little pressure and he went into the house.

Although it had rained overnight, the interior didn’t smell damp. Rather, it smelt of warm clay, with the scent of flowers keeping it fresh. It made the air a little thicker than Ian would have liked, but certainly not unpleasant.

The large room was dark even in the morning sunshine.

Moss had taken hold in the walls and there was no sign of furniture. The only footprints in the dust on the bare floorboards were his own. A couple of other smaller rooms were separated from the big one by wooden partitions. Ian went through to the one on the left and found a large, wooden table and empty shelves. It was clearly a kitchen. The other room was as empty as the first, but Ian was fairly sure it must have been a bedroom.

‘It doesn’t look like anybody’s lived here for years,’ Barbara said.

She was standing in the larger, main room, looking around.

Perhaps it was Ian’s imagination, but it seemed unusually quiet in the house. It wasn’t just that the walls blocked the sounds outside, of birds and rustling leaves, but their voices seemed muted in some way.

‘No.’ Ian looked around. It was a nice enough house, but seemed forgotten in its corner of the roadside. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but shivered nonetheless. ‘Still, it’s a handy place to shelter from some rain.’

‘And not leave any footprints?’

Ian could only shrug. ‘You came in last night, didn’t you?

Yet you didn’t leave any footprints either and we both know you’re not a ghost. This must be a different house. The one you sheltered in must be somewhere else along the road.

Either we’ve missed it already or we haven’t reached it yet.’

‘And this one?’

‘This one would be easy to miss in the dark.’

‘Ian, it is this house. I recognise it. That little table outside, the rose bush, the well.’

‘It’s probably the typical layout for a house in this time and place. And even if it was this house, I can guarantee you there’s a more rational explanation than ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night.’

‘Such as?’

Ian hesitated, trying to think of a single rational explanation. ‘I dunno... Perhaps some more dust shook loose from the ceiling after you left and covered up the prints.’

‘That’s even more far-fetched and you know it, Ian! For one thing it would need the dust to be lying on the ceiling while Vicki and Fei-Hung and I were here. You might be the scientist, Ian, but I think that if anyone had repealed the law of gravity it would have been mentioned in a lot of very important history books.’

‘I suppose you’re right. Actually, I’m beginning to wonder a little more about this “stone tape” theory of the Doctor’s.’

Barbara laughed. ‘That was rather outlandish, wasn’t it? It was all Greek to me. I don’t suppose you have a better idea of how believable it is?’

Ian had been thinking about it. Earlier he would have said the theory was pure science fiction, but now he wasn’t so sure. He knelt beside a wall and used a penknife to scrape some plaster away from the bricks.

‘The Doctor could have a point. Tapes do record and read signals by magnetically affecting particles of iron oxide and the like.’ He tapped the wall. ‘And there are iron oxides in bricks like these...’ He stood up. ‘I think I’d like to keep an open mind about it, at least.’

Barbara stepped outside the house and went round the corner. Ian stayed where he was, looking for signs of hidden doors or some way out at the back. He didn’t find anything.

‘Ian!’ Barbara shouted suddenly, ‘Come quickly!’

Ian was moving at once, crashing through the overgrown garden to the back of the house. Barbara was keeling in a clearing, rubbing at a plank of wood that jutted up from a low rise. She wasn’t in any danger, so he slowed to a walk to cover the rest of the distance.

‘What is it?’

‘Ian, I think it’s a grave.’

Ian looked at the plank. It was carved with Chinese characters that he couldn’t read. ‘It looks like one, I agree. But what difference does that make?’

‘Perhaps it’s hers; the girl from last night, I mean.’

Ian suppressed a laugh. ‘Why should it be? This could be anybody’s grave - if it even is a grave.’ He pointed to the inscription. ‘Unless you’ve suddenly developed an ability to read that.’

‘No, I just have... I don’t know, a feeling.’

He was tempted to push the issue further but something about her tone stopped him. She was serious and, while she had no proof, neither did he. It was just a matter of her feeling against his, and he knew she wasn’t really any more superstitious or gullible than he was. Her earnestness also surprised him, and he liked it when this happened. They’d been travelling together in the Ship for two years now, and knew each other pretty well, but moments like this still kept her surprising and fresh.

He realised she was looking at him while he was standing there smiling, and cleared his throat.

‘You seem happy,’ she said.

‘I was just thinking about this place. This isn’t too bad an era, Barbara. The height of the British Empire, London the premier city of the world. Not a bad era to live in.’

‘I suppose not. But what would our children think?

Workhouses? The trenches? The Blitz?’

‘You’ve got a point there.’ He looked back at the house, then at Barbara. ‘“Our” children?’

The human race’s generally.’

‘Oh.’

Barbara looked at the house again, thoughtfully. ‘She said something, you know.’

‘Who? The girl last night?’

‘Yes. She said that her only regret was not seizing the day.

Apparently someone she loved said he’d go off to the army if she didn’t want him, and she didn’t talk him out of it. When he got killed she realised her mistake.’

Ian had heard this story before, several times. ‘It’s a tradi-tional ghost story plot, I’ll give you that.’ He squatted beside the grave, if a grave it was, and patted it. ‘Perhaps this is his, rather than hers. Maybe she comes up from the city now and again to tend it, and got caught in the rain.’

This, Ian felt, would satisfactorily explain Barbara’s encounter without recourse to the supernatural.

‘You’re probably right,’ she admitted. ‘It’s hard to tell the ages of Chinese girls. I suppose she could have been older than I thought.’

Something in her voice sounded different and alerted Ian.

He had the sudden uncomfortable feeling that they had been talking at cross-purposes, and that something was about to hit him out of the blue, but he couldn’t think what. All he knew was that his stomach was suddenly jittery about what it might be.

He realised what was going to happen, just a heartbeat before Barbara kissed him.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Seizing the day.’

‘I thought we’d seized this day before.’

Eighteen hundred years before, he added mentally.

‘But I didn’t say I love you. And I do.’ So saying, she kissed him again.

Major Chesterton dozed in his quarters, trying to seek respite in unconsciousness. Whichever way he lay seemed to make the ache in his skull feel worse, which was as frustrating as it was tiring.

Finally, he gave up and went to the officers’ mess for something to eat. On the way he met Anderson walking with an old man Chesterton had never seen before. The old boy had long, silver hair and was wearing a frock coat and checked trousers, with only a panama hat of sorts acknowledging the warmer environment.

‘Major Chesterton, I presume,’ he began before Anderson could introduce him. ‘I had rather been hoping to meet you.’

‘I like to think of myself as approachable, Mr... ?’

‘Oh, just Doctor will do.’

‘Doctor?’ Had Logan sent for this man? The captain had been expressing a lot of concern about Chesterton’s head injury lately. Had he become suspicious enough of its effects to bring in a medical man against his wishes? The man was vaguely familiar, but Chesterton couldn’t place him.

‘That’s right.’ The Doctor leant slightly on his cane and shook his head sadly. Chesterton could see lost hope in his stance, and disappointment too.

‘I was rather hoping that I could pick your brains on a matter,’ the Doctor said, ‘but I don’t think now that I’ll be able to.’

‘I don’t see why not.’ Chesterton chewed his lower lip for a moment, deliberating, then said, ‘Let’s go to my office. We can talk there.’ He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk, especially to a doctor, but maybe some good would come of it.

The Doctor followed him back to his office and stood for a moment, looking around at the collection of souvenirs.

‘You’re still a traveller, I see.’

‘Yes,’ Chesterton replied happily. ‘The army keeps me moving around. Sometimes we have to teach someone a lesson, but other than that I enjoy it.’

‘Other than that?’

‘I don’t much like hurting people. At least, I don’t think I do.’

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘How very unusual. A man who doesn’t know whether he likes violence.’

‘Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.’

‘A very healthy attitude. Yes, very healthy. Though I think perhaps violence is more the first refuge of the incompetent.’

Chesterton laughed. ‘You might be right there.’

He went to a small drinks cabinet and lifted out a bottle of brandy. ‘Care for a snifter? For purely medicinal purposes, of course.’

‘That’s very generous of you, sir. Yes, thank you.’

‘I keep some around to chase away the aches and pains.

Age doesn’t come by itself.’

‘Indeed not,’ the Doctor agreed as Chesterton poured. ‘And what aches and pains are those? Perhaps I might be able to help?’

Chesterton froze, his suspicion that Logan had sent the Doctor resurfacing. He handed his visitor a glass of brandy and decided that if the game was up, it was up. ‘I took a fall from my horse while chasing some bandits out of Qiang-Ling, and landed on my head. Since then, most things prior to that have been a blank.’

He sat back and gazed at the group photograph of himself with his staff at Jaipur. ‘This post, these men and the souvenirs in here are all I have, and all I know. I don’t remember how long I’ve been here or what my family did before I joined the army... If anyone found out that I was hiding this damnable...,’ he tapped his skull, ‘...void, it would be straight back to England.’

The Doctor nodded to himself, as if he were measuring this information against something else he knew.

‘I see. A side effect of a concussion, I wonder?’

Chesterton winced as even the word sent another bolt of pain through his head. ‘Oh, I have a concussion all right. The granddaddy of them all.’

The Doctor seemed to reach a decision. ‘Your secret is safe with me, Major. And, as it happens, I think I can arrange some painkillers for you. A herbal remedy. You may or may not know that I’m looking after Po Chi Lam surgery for the moment?’

‘I heard someone was looking after it.’

‘I shall have some analgesics sent up. But I should like to ask for something in return. I would like to speak to Kei-Ying.’

Chesterton wasn’t sure about letting this stranger see the prisoner, but then he also wasn’t sure the prisoner was guilty of anything. And the man wasn’t a Chinee, so he was hardly likely to try to break Kei-Ying out of jail. And, for some reason he couldn’t fathom at all, Chesterton found that he trusted the Doctor.

Wong Kei-Ying rested on the floor of his cell, even though there was a cot. The cell in the Xamian Island prison was small, but at least he had it to himself - if he didn’t count the rat in the corner. It smelt of the grime and mould that had taken hold in the small channels between the bricks, but it was still cleaner than he could have expected if he had been sent to a Guangzhou prison. Here he wasn’t sharing his captivity with a couple of dozen others, some of whom would be dead under the straw.

In the distance he could hear the garrison at work: shouts, clanging, murmured conversations. The scent of the foul form of tea the white man liked, laced with sugar, paid him a fleeting visit, but didn’t come all the way in to his cell.