The Island Where Time Stands Still (55 page)

‘The next entry reads: “I settled on the girl this morning. I greatly regret having to sacrifice Shih-niang, but she is the only one in my seraglio at all suitable. She is, perhaps, a little old for the part, but she speaks French fluently and can write it fairly well; and that was the language used by Madame Août. I spent most of the day bargaining with her
and, when she at last agreed to do as I wished, coaching her in the role she is to play. This evening I took them to see her, and she passed her first test to the satisfaction of both Kâo and myself. The lady A-lu-te was completely taken in, also the Englishman; and for this part of Kâo's plan to succeed that is all that matters. I have quite good hopes now that within the stipulated time I shall receive my million dollars. But whether I do or not, I still have no intention of ordering the little Princess to be killed. If Tû-lai continues to be fool enough to refuse her I shall marry her to one of my other sons.”'

Again Gregory closed the diary, then he said, ‘It remains only for me to give your Excellencies an outline of events after we left the House of Lin. Their main features are: First, our discovery that at no point had Communist agents been concerned in these happenings. That being so, we have no alternative but to assume that it was Kâo Hsüan himself who threw the knife over my shoulder at Shih-niang, on discovering that she had given her secret away to me. Secondly, that Kâo Hsüan, having learnt that Lin Wân contemplated double-crossing him by marrying the Princess to Tû-lai, left P'ei behind with orders to kill her. And thirdly, that P'ei, fearing that Kâo Hsüan would kill him to ensure his silence, decided to double-cross his master; with the fortunate result that after he had abducted the Princess, Foo was able to rescue her from him.'

For a further ten minutes, Gregory gave details of these last moves that had preceded the departure of himself and his friends from China, then he said:

‘I will conclude by calling your Excellencies' attention to the state in which we found things on our arrival here. We are told that a week ago Kâo Hsüan gave a banquet for sixty guests, and that nine of them afterwards died from food poisoning. Those who died were some of the most prominent men who might have been expected to stand between him and his ambitions. When you see him here today having so nearly achieved the status of a Dictator, can you believe that it was food poisoning?

‘There rests the case of Her Imperial Highness the Princess Josephine, of myself and of my two friends. Kâo Hsüan has already surrendered his right to act as one of our judges, I accuse him of murder on a scale equalled only by the Borgias, and I leave your Excellencies to judge between us.'

For some time past a dull murmur from the crowd outside had penetrated to the Chamber. As Gregory ceased speaking, in the silence that followed it became much clearer. A police officer slipped in through a side door, closed it quickly behind him, looked anxiously at Kâo and said:

‘It is the people, Excellency. They are becoming unruly. They are demanding that the Princess should be presented to them.'

Ah-moi answered for Kâo, ‘Tell them to have patience. An announcement will be made to them shortly, when we have concluded our deliberations.' Then he signed to the servants to bring forward the opium pipes.

On first entering the Chamber, Gregory had seen that A-lu-te had succeeded in taking the place of one of the seven young women whose duty it was to keep the pipes instantly ready for smoking. She now advanced with the others and, bowing low before her uncle, offered him the beautiful jade pipe which he had left in Lin Wân's room.

For the past half-hour Kâo had been sitting hunched upon his stool, with all the life gone out of his usually cheerful face. Now, taking the pipe from his cushion, he gave her a sardonic smile and murmured:

‘So you, too, are among my enemies?'

But he made no move to smoke the pipe. Instead, laying it aside, he stood up and said in a loud voice, ‘As I am not sitting in judgment on this case, it would be wrong for me to join my colleagues in smoking a pipe of deliberation.'

The old scar above Gregory's left eyebrow showed white in a sudden frown. For a moment it seemed that by getting Kâo to forgo any part in judging the case he had sabotaged his own carefully laid plan.

But Kâo bowed to him and went on in a quieter tone,
‘Nevertheless, Mr. Sallust, I congratulate you on your victory. A good General knows when he is defeated.'

As he spoke the last words he swiftly slipped something that he had just taken from his pocket into his mouth. Next moment he was seized with violent convulsions, and his great body fell with a crash from the dais to lie sprawled at the feet of his fellow Mandarins.

On the following afternoon Gregory was walking with A-lu-te in her garden, and they were talking of the amazing scenes that had taken place the preceding day, after Kâo had committed suicide.

While the trial was going on, the crowd outside had swollen until it included nine-tenths of the population of the Island, and extended for nearly half-a-mile down the avenue of palms. The clamour of the people to see Josephine had grown so great that had they been refused rioting would have resulted; so the six remaining Mandarins led her out on to the first-floor balcony of the Palace, and, being by then convinced that she was the real Princess, they did so willingly. She received a tremendous ovation, and it was over an hour before the people would let her go in.

Afterwards the Council had held an Extraordinary Session. During it the argument had been put forward that perhaps, after all, it was a good thing that she was already married, as had she married into one of the Seven Families that family might have been unduly favoured with appointments and in time come to regard itself as superior to the others. It was also pointed out that although Foo was not of sufficient birth to be acceptable as Emperor, he had high-caste Manchu-warrior blood in his veins, so was not unfitted to assume the role of Consort. In consequence, it had been decided that Josephine should be made Empress, and that as Kâo had been the last male of the Hsüan line, Foo should be appointed to fill the vacant place as the Seventh Mandarin.

On the announcement of these decisions the population had gone wild with excitement. The whole Island had been given over to rejoicing, and the Mandarins had opened the reserve store-houses to the people so that there might be feasting in every home. Bonfires had been lit, thousands of fireworks let off and the joyous celebrations gone on till dawn.

After Gregory and A-lu-te had talked of this happy outcome for a while, they fell into an uneasy silence. At length she broke it by saying:

‘There is something I have to ask you, but I don't know how to put it.'

‘Oh fire away,' he answered lightly. ‘If we are to be married, surely there is nothing you need to be afraid to say to me.'

‘If …' she echoed. Then, after an awkward pause, she added, ‘That is just it. Do … do you really want to marry me very much?'

His face was serious, but he smiled down at her. ‘Before I answer that, since it was you who brought the question up it is only fair that you should tell me how you feel about it.'

Looking down at the ground, she murmured, ‘I plighted my troth to you, and I could not go back on that. So I am yours if you wish it.'

‘Of course I wish it—given certain circumstances,' he said slowly. ‘But it has always been accepted that the girl has the right to change her mind. During the two months we have been separated your feelings may have changed. If you no longer love me, I should not wish it.'

With her eyes still cast down she nodded. ‘It is that which I felt you should know. You have so many wonderful qualities that any woman would be proud to be your wife; and you are the most delightful companion that anyone could have. But I know now that the feeling I have for you is not really love.'

‘If that is so, you must love someone else.'

Again she nodded. ‘Tû-lai. He does not know of our secret
engagement, and last night he asked me to become his wife.''

‘And what did you reply?'

‘I said that I would give him his answer this evening.'

Gregory put his arm round her shoulders and gave her a little hug. ‘Then I willingly release you from your promise to me. I have always felt that I was too old for you. He is the right age and a splendid fellow. I'm certain that he'll make you happy in a way that I could never do.'

‘Oh thank you! Thank you!' she murmured, bursting into tears. ‘I feel simply terrible about this. But … but I've been in love with Tû-lai ever since I met him.'

‘There! There!' he comforted her. ‘Dry your eyes, my pretty, and just think of me from now on only as a good friend. I'll do the traditional thing and act as god-father to your first baby.'

In a remarkably short time she stopped crying, and a few minutes later she said. ‘One thing has been puzzling me a lot. Why did you make me go through that performance yesterday with Kâo's opium pipe?'

A slight frown appeared on his face; and instead of giving her an answer he asked, ‘What was considered to be the worst crime in old China?'

‘Patricide,' she replied without hesitation. ‘But, as ancestor worshippers, for a man to kill his father was almost unheard of.'

‘Was there not a crime still more heinous?'

After a moment's thought, she said, ‘As the Emperor was the Great Father, to kill him would, of course, be infinitely worse.'

Gregory nodded. ‘And am I not right in thinking that such a crime would have brought life-long, indelible disgrace on every member of a regicide's family?'

‘Yes. Their shame would be so great that they would never be able to hold up their heads again.'

‘I thought so. That is why I refrained from disclosing three of Kâo's most terrible crimes. To take the last one first; there was one entry in Lin Wân's diary that I did not read out. He wrote it only an hour or so before he died. It
was to the effect that, on leaving, Kâo had made him a present of a most beautiful opium pipe, and that he meant to smoke it that night.'

Gregory paused for a moment, then went on: ‘Now we'll go back to the very beginning of Kâo's ruthless steps to remove everyone who stood between himself and Dictatorship. You will remember that towards the end of March both the Emperor's little sons were drowned. It was said that by some oversight the Imperial boatmen were not warned for duty that afternoon; so rather than disappoint the children the Harbour-Master had them taken out by two of his men. From the terrace of the cage I saw them go to their deaths. Their nurse was kidnapped, although I did not realise it at the time. We were told afterwards that she had taken her own life from remorse at having neglected her charges. Perhaps she did, but it is more probable that she was murdered. The little Princes were taken outside the reef contrary to orders, and I feel sure that the boat was overturned deliberately as the culmination of a clever plot stage-managed by the Harbour-Master on Kâo's instructions; then when the men who did the deed swam ashore they were promptly executed so that they could not talk. To close that episode for good, a week ago Kâo invited the Harbour-Master to his banquet, and had him poisoned, so that he could never talk either.'

Covering her eyes with her hand, A-lu-te murmured, ‘Those poor little boys! How terrible! There seems to have been no end to Kâo's crimes.'

‘I have yet to tell you of his most infamous coup,' Gregory said quietly. ‘On the night of the Emperor's death Kâo was on duty as his gentleman-in-waiting. Kâo was the last person to see him alive, and the first person to enter his room, when the valet reported that he could get no reply to his knock, in the morning. The Emperor was thought to have died from a wasp sting on the tongue; but it was known to be his habit to smoke several pipes of opium before he went to sleep, and I'd bet my bottom dollar that the last pipe he smoked was Kâo's. Perhaps Kâo had just
made him a present of it, or it may be that he was already too fuddled with the fumes of the drug to notice that it was not his own when Kâo handed it to him. And, of course, the following morning Kâo was able to retrieve it before anyone saw the pipe and recognised it as his.'

A-lu-te looked slightly puzzled and asked, ‘Do you mean that Kâo put poison in the opium?'

‘No. It was the pipe that did the killing. Lin Wân was a much older man than the Emperor so he died much more quickly; but, both of them died as the result of a type of seizure, and the symptoms being much the same struck me as curious. After P'ei's confessions we knew Kâo to be a murderer; so on our return to the House of Lin, having found Kâo's beautiful pipe on Lin Wân's desk led me to examine it carefully. I found that concealed in the mouthpiece it had a strong steel pin, which could be set by a hidden spring to fly out and pierce the tongue or lips of anyone who smoked it. In each case before setting, of course, the pin was smeared with cyanide, or some other very rapid poison. Kâo knew that Lin Wân meant to double-cross him by marrying off Josephine to Tû-lai or one of his other sons. That he killed Lin Wân that way there can be no doubt at all; so I think we can be pretty certain that he used the same method to murder the Emperor.'

After a moment A-lu-te looked up with fresh tears in her eyes and said. ‘Then I have cause to be even more grateful to you than I knew. Had it become publicly known that I was the niece of a regicide, I would never have lived down such a disgrace.'

Gregory smiled at her. ‘You must not thank me, but the gods who decided Kâo to take poison when he did, instead of fighting the case out to a finish. Had it not ended as it did, I might have been forced to disclose these other crimes in a final bid to save our lives. I was hoping that as he had left the pipe with Lin Wân, the sight of it would make him realise that I still had one last card up my sleeve. To my enormous relief, it did the trick; and he threw his hand in.'