Noble House

by James Clavell

  Be honest, you bleed for sons and daughters but you can’t have them, at least Mary can’t, so the doctors say—so you can’t.

  With an effort Armstrong buried that everlasting curse again and re-locked the cabinet and walked out, closing the doors after him.

  In the outer office Virginia Tong was polishing her nails, clearly furious.

  “Can you get Mr. Ng on the phone, please?”

  “No, not until four,” she said sullenly without looking at him.

  “Then please call Mr. Tsu-yan instead,” Armstrong told her, stabbing in the dark.

  Without looking up the number, she dialed, waited impatiently, chatted gutturally for a moment in Cantonese and slammed the phone down. “He’s away. He’s out of town and his office doesn’t know where he is.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Three or four days ago.” Irritably she opened her appointments calendar and checked it. “It was Friday.”

  “Can I look at that please?”

  She hesitated, shrugged and passed it over, then went back to polishing her nails.

  Quickly he scanned the weeks and the months. Lots of names he knew: Richard Kwang, Jason Plumm, Dunross—Dunross several times—Thomas K. K. Lim—the mysterious American Chinese from next door—Johnjohn from the Victoria Bank, Donald McBride, Mata several times. Now who’s Mata? he asked himself, never having heard the name before. He was about to give the calendar back to her then he flipped forward. “Saturday 10:00 A.M.—V. Banastasio.” His heart twisted. This coming Saturday.

  He said nothing, just put the appointment calendar back on her desk, and leaned back against one of the files, lost in thought. She paid no attention to him. The door opened.

  “Excuse me, sir, phone for you!” Sergeant Yat said. He was looking much happier so Armstrong knew the negotiation must have been fruitful. He would have liked to know how much, exactly, but then, face would be involved and he would have to take action, one way or another.

  “All right, Sergeant, stay here till I get back,” he said, wanting to make sure no secret phone calls were made. Virginia Tong did not look up as he left.

  In the other office Bucktooth Lo was still moaning, nursing his hand, and the other man, Big Hands Tak, was pretending to be nonchalant, going through some papers, loudly berating his secretary for her inefficiency. As he came in both men started loudly protesting their continued innocence and Lo groaned with increasing vigor.

  “Quiet! Why did you jam your fingers in the drawer?” Armstrong asked and added without waiting for a reply, “People who try to bribe honest policemen deserve to be deported at once.” In the aghast silence he picked up the phone. “Armstrong.”

  “Hello, Robert, this is Don, Don Smyth at East Aberdeen …”

  “Oh, hello!” Armstrong was startled, not expecting to hear from the Snake, but he kept his voice polite though he loathed him and loathed what he was suspected of doing within his jurisdiction. It was one thing for constables and the lower ranks of Chinese police to supplement their income from illicit gambling. It was another for a British officer to sell influence, and to squeeze like an old-fashioned Mandarin. But though almost everyone believed Smyth was on the make, there was no proof, he had never been caught, and had never been investigated. Rumor had it that he was protected by certain VIP individuals who were deeply involved with him as well as in their own graft. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Had a bit of luck. I think. You’re heading up the John Chen kidnapping, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right.” Armstrong’s interest soared. Smyth’s graft had nothing to do with the quality of his police work—East Aberdeen had the lowest crime rate in the Colony. “Yes. What’ve you got?”

  Smyth told him about the old amah and what had happened with Sergeant Mok and Spectacles Wu, then added, “He’s a bright young chap, that, Robert. I’d recommend him for SI if you want to pass it on. Wu followed the old bird back to her fairly filthy lair, then called us. He obeys orders too, which is rare these days. On a hunch I told him to wait around and if she came out, to follow her. What do you think?”

  “A twenty-four-carat lead!”

  “What’s your pleasure? Wait, or pull her in for real questioning?”

  “Wait. I’ll bet the Werewolf never comes back but it’s worth waiting until tomorrow. Keep the place under surveillance and keep me posted.”

  “Good. Oh very good!”

  Armstrong heard Smyth chortle down the phone and he could not think why he was so happy. Then he remembered the huge reward that the High Dragons had offered. “How’s your arm?”

  “It’s my shoulder. Bloody thing’s dislocated and I lost my favorite sodding hat. Apart from that everything’s fine. Sergeant Mok’s going through all our mug shots now and I’ve got one of my lads doing an Identi-Kit on him—I think I even saw the sod myself. His face is quite pockmarked. If we’ve got him on file we’ll have him nailed by sundown.”

  “Excellent. How’s it going down there?”

  “Everything under control but it’s bad. The Ho-Pak’s still paying out but too slowly—everyone knows they’re stalling. I hear it’s the same all over the Colony. They’re finished, Robert. The queue’ll go on till every last cent’s out. There’s another run on the Vic here and no letup in the crowds….”

  Armstrong gasped. “The Vic?”

  “Yes, they’re handing out cash by the bagful and taking nothing in. Triads are swarming … the pickings must be huge. We arrested eight pickpockets and busted up twenty-odd fights. I’d say it’s very bad.”

  “Surely the Vic’s okay?”

  “Not in Aberdeen it isn’t, old lad. Me, I’m liquid. I’ve closed all my accounts. I took every cent out. I’m all right. If I were you I’d do the same.”

  Armstrong felt queasy. His life’s savings were in the Victoria. “The Vic’s got to be all right. All the government funds’re in it.”

  “Right you are. But nothing in their constitution says your money’s protected too. Well, I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “Yes. Thanks for the info. Sorry about your shoulder.”

  “I thought I was going to have my bloody head bashed in. The sods’d just started the old ‘kill the quai loh’ bit. I thought I was a goner.”

  Armstrong shivered in spite of himself. Ever since the ’56 riots it was a recurring nightmare of his that he was back in that insane, screaming mob again. It was in Kowloon. The mob had just overturned the car with the Swiss consul and his wife in it and set it afire. He and other policemen had charged through the mob to rescue them. When they got to the car the man was already dead and the young wife afire. By the time they’d dragged her out, all her clothes had burned off her and her skin came away like a pelt. And all around, men, women and young people were raving, “Kill the quai loh …”

  He shivered again, his nostrils still smelling burned flesh. “Christ, what a bastard!”

  “Yes, but all in the day’s work. I’ll keep you posted. If that bloody Werewolf comes back to Aberdeen he’ll be in a net tighter than a gnat’s arsehole.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  2:20 P.M.:

  Phillip Chen stopped flipping through his mail, his face suddenly ashen. The envelope was marked, “Mr. Phillip Chen to open personally.”

  “What is it?” his wife asked.

  “It’s from them.” Shakily he showed it to her. “The Werewolves.”

  “Oh!” They were at their lunch table that was set haphazardly in a corner of the living room of the house far up on the crest of Struan’s Lookout. Nervously she put down her coffee cup. “Open it, Phillip. But, but better use your handkerchief in … in case of fingerprints,” she added uneasily.

  “Yes, yes of course, Dianne, how stupid of me!” Phillip Chen was looking very old. His coat was over his chair and his shirt damp. There was a slight breeze from the open window behind him but it was hot and humid and a brooding afternoon haze had settled over the Island. Carefully he used an ivory pape
r knife and unfolded the paper. “Yes, it’s … it’s from the Werewolves. It’s … it’s about the ransom.”

  “Read it out.”

  “All right: ‘To Phillip Chen, compradore of the Noble House, greetings. I beg to inform you now how the ransom money is to be paid. 500,000 to you is as meaningless as a pig’s scream in a slaughterhouse but to us poor farmers would be a heritage for our star—’”

  “Liars!” Dianne hissed, her lovely gold and jade necklace glittering in a shaft of muted sunlight. “As if farmers would kidnap John or mutilate him like that. Dirty stinky foreign triads! Go on, Phillip.”

  “‘… would be a heritage for our starving grandchildren. That you have already consulted the police is to us like pissing in the ocean. But now you will not consult. No. Now you will keep secret or the safety of your son will be endangered and he will not return and everything bad will be your own fault. Beware, our eyes are everywhere. If you try to betray us, the worst will happen and everything will be your own fault. Tonight at six o’clock I will phone you. Tell no one, not even your wife. Meanw—’”

  “Dirty triads! Dirty whores’ sons to try to spread trouble between husband and wife,” Dianne said angrily.

  “‘… meanwhile prepare the ransom money in used 100-dollar notes….’” Irritably Phillip Chen glanced at his watch. “I don’t have much time to get to the bank. I’ll have—”

  “Finish the letter!”

  “All right, be patient, my dear,” he said placatingly, his overtaxed heart skipping a beat as he recognized the edge to her voice. “Where was I? Ah yes, ‘… notes. If you obey my instructions faithfully, you may have your son back tonight….’ Oh God I hope so,” he said, breaking off momentarily, then continued, “‘Do not consult the police or try to trap us. Our eyes are watching you even now. Written by the Werewolf.’” He took off his glasses. His eyes were red-rimmed and tired. Sweat was on his brow. “‘Watching you even now’? Could one of the servants … or the chauffeur be in their pay?”

  “No, no of course not. They’ve all been with us for years.”

  He wiped the sweat off, feeling dreadful, wanting John back, wanting him safe, wanting to strangle him. “That means nothing. I’d … I’d better call the police.”

  “Forget them! Forget them until we know what you have to do. Go to the bank. Get 200,000 only—you should be able to settle for that. If you get more you might be tempted to give it all to them if tonight … if they really mean what they say.”

  “Yes … very wise. If we could settle for that…” He hesitated. “What about the tai-pan? Do you think I should tell the tai-pan, Dianne? He, he might be able to help.”

  “Huh!” she said scornfully. “What help can he give us? We’re dealing with dog-bone triads not foreign devil crooks. If we need help we have to stay with our own.” Her eyes began boring into him. “And now you’d better tell me what’s really the matter, why you were so angry the night before last and why you’ve been like a spiteful cat with a thorn in its rump ever since and not attending to business!”

  “I’ve been attending to business,” he said defensively.

  “How many shares have you bought? Eh? Struan shares? Have you taken advantage of what the tai-pan told us about the coming boom? Do you remember what Old Blind Tung forecast?”

  “Of course, of course I remember!” he stuttered. “I’ve, I’ve secretly doubled our holdings and have equally secret orders out with various brokers for half as much again.”

  Dianne Chen’s abacus mind glowed at the thought of that vast profit, and all the private profit she would be making on all the shares she had bought on her own behalf, pledging her entire portfolio. But she kept her face cold and her voice icy. “And how much did you pay?”

  “They averaged out at 28.90.”

  “Huh! According to today’s paper Noble House opened at 28.80,” she said with a disapproving sniff, furious that he had paid five cents less a share than she had. “You should have been at the market this morning instead of moping around here, sleeping your life away.”

  “I wasn’t feeling very well, dear.”

  “It all goes back to the night before last. What sent you into that unbelievable rage? Heya?”

  “It was nothing.” He got up, hoping to flee. “Noth—”

  “Sit down! Nothing that you shouted at me, me your faithful wife in front of the servants? Nothing that I was ordered into my own dining room like a common whore? Heya?” Her voice began rising and she let herself go, knowing instinctively that this was the perfect time, now that they were alone in the house, knowing that he was defenseless and she could press her advantage. “You think it’s nothing that you abuse me, me who has given you the best years of her life, working and slaving and guarding you for twenty-three years? Me, Dianne Mai-wei T’Chung who has the blood of the great Dirk Struan in her veins, who came to you virgin, with property in Wanchai, North Point and even on Lan Tao, with stocks and shares and the best schooling in England? Me who never complains about your snoring and whoring or about the brat you sired out of that dance-hall girl you’ve sent to school in America!”

  “Eh?”

  “Oh I know all about you and her and all the others and all the other nasty things you do, and that you never loved me but just wanted my property and a perfect decoration to your drab life….”

  Phillip Chen was trying to close his ears but he could not. His heart was pounding. He hated rows and hated the shriek to her voice that, somehow, was perfectly tuned to set his teeth on edge, his brain oscillating and his bowels in turmoil. He tried to interrupt her but she overrode him, battering him, accusing him of all sorts of dalliances and mistakes and private matters that he was shocked she knew about.

  “… and what about your club?”

  “Eh, what club?”

  “The private Chinese lunch club with forty-three members called the 74 in a block off Pedder Street that contains a gourmet chef from Shanghai, teen-age hostesses and bedrooms and saunas and devices that dirty old men need to raise their Steamless Stalks? Eh?”

  “It’s nothing like that at all,” Phillip Chen spluttered, aghast that she knew. “It’s a pl—”

  “Don’t lie to me! You put up 87,000 good U.S. greenbacks as the down payment with Shitee T’Chung and those two mealy-mouthed friends of yours and even now pay 4,000 HK-a-month fees. Fees for what? You’d better … Where do you think you’re going?”

  Meekly he sat down again. “I—I was—I want to go to the bathroom.”

  “Huh! Whenever we have a discussion you want the bathroom! You’re just ashamed of the way you treat me and guilty….” Then, seeing him about to explode back at her, she switched abruptly, her voice crooningly gentle. “Poor Phillip! Poor boy! Why were you so angry? Who’s hurt you?”

  So he told her, and once he began the telling he felt better and his anguish and fear and fury started to melt away. Women are clever and cunning in these things, he told himself confidently, rushing on. He told her about opening John’s safety deposit in the bank, about the letters to Linc Bartlett and about finding a duplicate key to his own safe in their bedroom. “I brought all the letters back,” he said, almost in tears, “they’re upstairs, you can read them for yourself. My own son! He’s betrayed us!”

  “My God, Phillip,” she gasped, “if the tai-pan found out you and Father Chen-chen were keeping … if he knew he’d ruin us!”

  “Yes, yes I know! That’s why I’ve been so upset! By the rules of Dirk’s legacy he has the right and the means. We’d be ruined. But, but that’s not all. John knew where our secret safe was in the garden an—”

  “Wat?”

  “Yes, and he dug it up.” He told her about the coin.

  “Ayeeyah!” She stared at him in absolute shock, half her mind filled with terror, the other half with ecstasy, for now, whether John came back or not, he had destroyed himself. John would never inherit now! My Kevin’s Number One Son now and future compradore to the Noble House! Then her fears drown
ed her excitement and she muttered, aghast, “If there’s still a House of Chen.”

  “What? What did you say?”

  “Nothing, never mind. Wait a moment, Phillip, let me think. Oh the rotten boy! How could John do this to us, we who have cherished him all his life! You … you’d better go to the bank. Get 300,000 out—in case you need to barter more. We must get John back at all costs. Would he keep the coin with him, on him, or would it be in his other safety deposit box?”

  “It’d be in the box—or hidden at his flat in Sinclair Towers.”

  Her face closed. “How can we search that place with her in residence? That wife of his? That strumpet Barbara! If she suspects we’re after something …” Her mind caught a vagrant thread. “Phillip, does it mean, whoever presents the coin gets whatever they want?”

  “Yes.”

  “Eeeeee! What power!”

  “Yes.”

  Now her mind was working cleanly. “Phillip,” she said, in control again, everything else forgotten, “we need all the help we can get. Phone your cousin Four Fingers …” He looked at her, startled, then began to smile. “… arrange with him to have some of his street fighters follow you secretly to protect you when you pay over the ransom, then to follow the Werewolf to his lair and to rescue John whatever the cost. Whatever you do don’t tell him about the coin—just that you want help to rescue poor John. That’s it. We must get poor John back at all costs.”

  “Yes,” he replied, much happier now. “Four Fingers is the perfect choice. He owes us a favor or two. I know where I can reach him this afternoon.”

  “Good. Off you go to the bank, but give me the key to the safe. I’ll cancel my hairdressing appointment and I’ll read John’s papers at once.”

  “Very good.” He got up immediately. “The key’s upstairs,” he said, lying, and hurried out, not wanting her prying into the safe. There were a number of things there he did not want her to know about. I’d better hide them somewhere else, he thought uneasily, just in case. His euphoria evaporated and his overwhelming anxiety returned. Oh my poor son, he told himself near tears. Whatever possessed you? I was a good father to you and you’ll always be my heir and I’ve loved you like I loved your mother. Poor Jennifer, poor little thing, dying birthing my firstborn son. O all gods: let me get my poor son back again, safe again, whatever he’s done, let us extract ourselves from all this madness, and I’ll endow a new temple for all of you equally!