The Language of Bees (43 page)

Holmes shot him a glance, having no doubt been on the edge of demanding the bare facts as Lofte dug them out, and leaving the synthesis to his audience. But Mycroft knew his man, and the Swiss mind was more comfortable with an ordered sequence of events. Lofte picked up another sandwich, downed another swallow of wine, and began.

“Very well. My sources were the Embassy, several police departments, and the Adlers’ circle of friends and business acquaintances. I wanted to speak with Mrs Adler’s family, but their home was a day’s travel away, and I judged that time was of greater import than complete thoroughness.

“The earliest sign of Damian Adler in Shanghai was June 1920. One man I spoke with thought Adler had been there for several weeks before that, but June was the time he took up rooms in a bro—er,” he said, shooting me a glance, “in a pleasure house. The owner of the house had got in the habit of having one or two large and relatively sober young men living on the premises, at a low rent, to help keep the guests in line. I asked him if this wasn’t like putting a fat boy in charge of a chocolate shop, and he told me that yes, there was a certain tendency to, er, indulge in the goods at first, but he had found that having one or two dependable neighbours gave the girls a sense of family, and someone to go to if a client became rowdy.”

I did not look at Holmes to see how this version of Damian’s tale was hitting him, but I had felt him wince at the phrase, “indulge in the goods.” His only overt reaction was to take a rather deeper swallow from his glass.

“Yolanda Chin—the future Mrs Adler—was not a resident of the house at the time Mr Adler moved in, although it would appear that she had been some years before. According to the madam, the girl came in 1905 or 1906, when she was thirteen or fourteen years of age.
As, I fear, a prostitute,” he told us, just to be clear. He glanced at our stony faces, and took a prim sip of wine as he arranged his thoughts.

“When she married in late 1912—”

“What?”
Holmes exclaimed, an instant before Mycroft or I could.

Lofte looked at him in surprise. “But yes.”

“You are certain?”

In answer, he reached down for a valise I had not noticed and withdrew a manila envelope. Unlooping its tie, he thumbed inside until he came up with the paper he sought. “This gives her age as sixteen, although her birth registration makes her three years older.” He slid the page down the table to Holmes; I looked past Holmes’ shoulder.

A marriage certificate, dated 21 November 1912, between Yolanda Chin, sixteen, and Reverend James Harmony Hayden, age thirty, a British subject.

This time, the exclamation was mine.

“Born in 1882—do you know what Hayden looks like?”

Lofte went back to his envelope and took out a square of newsprint, commemorating some kind of donation or prize-giving: The quality was as poor as might be expected, but it showed two men shaking hands and facing the camera, the man on the left clothed in formal black and silk hat, the grinning man on the right in light suit, soft hat, and clerical collar.

“The one on the right is Reverend Hayden. The occasion is the opening of a school for poor children for which his church helped raise funds.”

Apart from the grinning teeth, all one could tell about James Hayden was that he was Caucasian, and that his eyes were dark. A shadow next to the left eye might have been wear in the page or a flaw in the printing, but I was pretty sure it was not.

“He has a scar next to his eye,” I said.

“That’s what it says in his description,” Lofte agreed. “I haven’t seen him, but I understand that he was in an accident in late 1905, a building collapse with live electrical wires. He was badly hurt. It was the following year that he set up shop as a reverend.”

“He’s not ordained?” Holmes asked.

“He may be. There are many religions in Shanghai.”

“It’s him,” I said ungrammatically, my eyes fixed on the clipping. I had not seen his face, could not testify to the colour of his eyes or the shape of his hair-line, but I had no doubt.

“I agree,” said Holmes.

Lofte waited for us to explain, and when we did not, he went on.

“He hired a small space on the fringes of the city’s International Settlement, and began to hold services, a mixture of the familiar and the exotic, from Jesus as guru to the health benefits of Yoga. Mind-reading, I understand, was a regular feature. He claimed to have received personal messages from the shade of Madame Blavatsky, the Theosophist. Before long, he bought the building outright, thanks to the bored and wealthy wives and daughters of the English-speaking community, who just lapped him up.”

“Mixing Hinduism, Yoga, mysticism, that sort of thing?”

“And Tantra,” he added, then quickly moved on before I could ask for details—but I had no need to ask. Tantra employed sexuality as a means to mystic union: a true discipline in its original home, a means of exploitation by unscrupulous charlatans in the West. I should not be surprised to find among its devotees a man who would marry a child he thought to be sixteen.

Lofte dipped back into the envelope for another sheet. He handed it to Mycroft, who read it then laid it atop the first. “They were divorced in 1920. She cited abandonment for her and their child.”

Holmes cleared his throat. “Child?”

“Yes. According to a woman who had remained friends with Yolanda after she left the—the pleasure house, she had a child in 1913.” He went back to his envelope, this time for a telegraph flimsy. “I had to leave a number of elements in this investigation to others, you understand, since time was a priority. This was waiting for me in Cairo.”

YOLANDA CHIN BORN 1893 FUNG SHIAN DISTRICT STOP CHILD DOROTHY HAYDEN BORN 1913 LUAN DISTRICT LIVING WITH GRANDPARENTS FUNG SHIAN STOP

Holmes, reading this, made a tiny noise that might have been a sigh, or a whimper.

Lofte continued. “It would appear that she and Hayden did not live together, as he had a house in the International Settlement, where Chinese were not made welcome. Certainly they were separated by March 1917, when she began work as a barmaid two streets down from the … house where she had lived. There is, I will mention, no evidence of a child during this time. Giving a child over to one’s grandparents to be raised is a common practise for… among girls who live in the city.

“Then in 1920, Damian Adler arrived in Shanghai. As I said, he found rooms in—I shouldn’t perhaps call it a house, it is a compound of many dwellings, an arrangement that fosters close, almost familial ties—the girls who were there at the time remember Mr Adler with respect and affection. He went through periods of heavy drinking, and was arrested twice in the waning months of 1920.”

By now, Holmes did not even blink.

“The first arrest was for being so drunk the wagon that picked him up thought he was dead.”

“Well,” I murmured, “he only claimed that he was free from drugs use.”

Holmes paid my comment no mind. “And the second?”

“Ah, well, that was a month later, and more serious. Mr Adler was in a brawl in November 1920, and beat a man up. He was arrested, but when the man came out of hospital three days later, he refused to press charges. Adler was let go with a warning.”

Lofte was watching Holmes in a manner that suggested anticipation. Holmes studied him, then obediently asked, “Do we know who the victim was?”

A tiny smile flickered over the Swiss man’s mouth, and he went back to his envelope. This time the document was two pieces of paper
pinned together in the corner; it took Mycroft a full minute to read and pass on this one, a police report recording the injuries of one John Haycock: Concussion, broken collar bone, cracked humerus, contusions, broken tooth—fairly standard stuff for a bar brawl. Holmes flipped over to the second page, and there was a photograph of our human punching bag, his features so swollen and bruised, his mother would not have known him.

“John Haycock, eh?” Holmes mused.

“The address he gave the hospital was false,” Lofte said.

The man’s hair was dark, but there was no telling if he had a scar beside his eye.

Holmes was studying the photograph, then shook his head. “It’s a pity—”

He stopped, his eyes darting to Lofte’s fingers on the near-flat envelope. “You don’t?”

In answer, the man in the worn suit drew out a glossy photograph and half-stood to lay it with great deliberation on the table before Holmes. He sat back, on his face a look of tired contentment. “This was put into my hands by a reporter of one of the Shanghai dailies, ninety-five minutes before—” He shot a glance at Mycroft. “Shall we say, I happened to know that a military ’plane was about to leave, and I thought that might be my best chance to get this photograph to London.”

“What day was this?” I asked. Mycroft had wired his request for information ten days earlier; Lofte must have assembled all this information in a matter of hours.

“Sunday.”

Two of us frankly stared at him; Mycroft studied his glass, but one side of his mouth had a small curl of satisfaction.

“Six days to cross two entire continents?” I marvelled. “Impossible!”

“Not if one is given
carte blanche
with requisitioning aeroplanes and rescheduling trains. I employed nine aeroplanes, three trains, eighteen motor-cars, two motor-cycles, one bicycle, and a rickshaw.”

Mycroft spoke up. “My department has an ongoing interest in
what one might call practical experiments in rapid travel. Mr Lofte now holds the record.”

“Won a tenner, too,” our Twentieth-Century Mercury murmured. “Harrison bet me I couldn’t do it in under eight days. My partner in Shanghai,” he explained.

Holmes resumed the photograph, tilting it for me when I looked over his arm.

“My reporter friend became interested in Hayden a year ago when he heard a rumour that the good Reverend was quietly selling up church holdings—several buildings, in good parts of town, a lot of stocks and valuables that members had donated for charitable works which somehow didn’t come to fruition. There were also rumours of darker doings, several deaths among his congregation. The photo was taken the tenth of September last year; the next day, the Reverend was on a boat for England. The reporter reckons various officials were paid off, not to notice. Hayden won’t be prosecuted, but on the other hand, he won’t be welcomed back.”

Hayden’s image was quite clear, despite having been taken across a busy street. The man, strong in body and haughty in manner, was dressed in a beautifully cut summer-weight suit and a shirt with an ordinary soft collar and neck-tie. He had his straw hat in his hand as he prepared to climb into a car waiting at the kerb. Something must have caught his attention, because he was turned slightly, face-on to the camera. He looked vaguely familiar, although I had only seen the back of his head, so far as I knew. His eyes were dark and compelling, his mouth full, his hair sleek and black. And his left eye was elongated by a stripe of darker skin, a scar like the tail of a comet. Like the reappearing shape of the Children of Lights.

Holmes passed it over to Mycroft. “We need copies.”

“Certainly. Lofte, did you have anything else for us?”

“A few clippings about the church, but that’s it.”

I shifted, and three pairs of eyes turned to me. Not that I wished to be greedy, however: “The Adlers have a child. Estelle. Did you come upon any birth record for her?”

Lofte’s tired face sagged with remorse. “I was told to investigate the
background of Damian Adler’s wife, Yolanda, at all haste. I interpreted that to mean her background before their marriage. I did not pursue copies of their marriage certificate, or their current bank accounts, or the child’s papers. I can get that information in a day, if you need it.”

“The only urgent piece of information we need is, did she have another child, after Dorothy Hayden in 1913 but before she married Damian?”

“I was working at speed and may have missed some details. To be honest, I don’t know if I would have caught sight of another child, had there been one.”

“That’s all right. Thank you.”

Mycroft rose. “We shall turn you free to sleep the sleep of the righteous. You have a room?”

“The Travellers’ will have one.” He stood, a trifle stiffly, and shook hands all around. Mycroft led him to the door, but Holmes interrupted.

“Lofte?” The man turned to look back. “Altogether, a most impressive feat.”

The younger man’s face was transformed by a sudden grin. “It was, wasn’t it?” he said, and left.

When Mycroft came back, he was not carrying the photograph.

Third Birth:
A man born once lives unaware of good and
evil. A man born twice sees good and evil, within and
without. Very few achieve a third birth: birth into divinity
,
knowing that good and evil are not opposing forces, but
intertwining gifts that together make the burning heart of
Power. A third-born man is little less than the angels. A
third-born man is the image of God
.
Testimony, III:8