Noble House

by James Clavell

  The next call he was asked to make was long distance to the manager of the Bank of Switzerland and Zurich that, discreetly, he listened to. “… I’m expecting a large draft of U.S. dollars this morning, before eleven. Phone me the instant, the very instant it’s in my account…”

  So, bemused, he had put the various pieces of the equation together and come up with a theory: If Bartlett has arranged a sudden secret partnership with Gornt, Struan’s known enemy, to launch one of his raids, if Bartlett also takes part of the risk, or most of it—by secretly putting large sums in one of Gornt’s numbered Swiss accounts to cover any sell-short losses—and lastly, if he’s talked Gornt into being the front guy while he sits on the fence, the stuff is going to hit the fan in the exchange and Struan’s stock has got to go down.

  This precipitated an immediate business decision: Jump in quickly and sell Struan’s short before the big guys and we’ll make a bundle.

  He remembered how he had almost groaned aloud because he had no money, no credit, no shares and no means to borrow any. Then he recalled what one of his instructors at Harvard Business School had kept drumming into them: A faint heart never laid a lovely lady. So he’d gone into a private office and phoned his newfound friend, Ishwar Soorjani, the money lender and dealer in foreign exchange whom he had met through the old Eurasian at the library. “Say, Ishwar, your brother’s head of Soorjani Stockbrokers, isn’t he?”

  “No, Young Master. Arjan is my very first cousin. Why?”

  “If I wanted to sell a stock short would you back me?”

  “Certainly, as I told you before, buying or selling I support you to the holster, if you have reasonable cash to cover any losses … or the equivalent. No cash or equivalent so sorry.”

  “Say I had some red-hot information?”

  “The road to hell and debtor’s prison is flooded to drowning with red-hot information, Young Master. I advise against red-hot informations.”

  “Boy,” Paul Choy said unhappily, “I could make us a few 100,000 before three.”

  “Oh? Would you care to whisper the illustrious name of the stock?”

  “Would you back me for … for 20,000 U.S.?”

  “Ah, so sorry, Young Master, I’m a moneylender not a money giver. My ancestors forbid it!”

  “20,000 HK?”

  “Not even 10 dollars in your Rebel Dixie redbacks.”

  “Gee, Ishwar, you’re not much help.”

  “Why not ask your illustrious uncle? His chop … and I would instantly go to half a million. HK.”

  Paul Choy knew that among his father’s cash and assets transferred from the Ho-Pak to the Victoria had been many stock certificates and a list of securities held by various stockbrokers. One was for 150,000 Struan shares. Jesus, he thought, if I’m right the old man might get dumped. If Gornt presses the raid the old man could get caught.

  “Good idea, Ishwar. I’ll call you back!” At once he had phoned his father but he could not reach him. He left messages wherever he could and began to wait. His anxiety grew. Just before ten he heard Gornt’s secretary answer the phone. “Yes? … Oh, one moment please.… Mr. Gornt? A person-to-person call from Zurich.… You’re through.”

  Once more he had tried to reach his father, wanting to give him the urgent news. Then Gornt had sent for him. “Mr. Choy, would you please run this over to my solicitor at once.” He handed over a sealed envelope. “Give it to him personally.”

  “Yes sir.”

  So he had left the office. At every phone he had stopped and tried to reach his father. Then he had delivered the note, personally, watching the solicitor’s face carefully. He saw glee. “Is there a reply, sir?” he asked politely.

  “Just say everything will be done as ordered.” It was a few minutes past ten.

  Outside the office door and going down in the elevator Paul Choy had weighed the pluses and the minuses. His stomach twisting uneasily, he stopped at the nearest phone. “Ishwar? Say, I’ve an urgent order from my uncle. He wants to sell his Struan stock. 150,000 shares.”

  “Ah, wise wise, there are terrible rumors speeding around.”

  “I suggested you and Soorjani’s should do it for him. 150,000 shares. He asks can you do it instantly? Can you do that?”

  “Like a bird on the wing. For the Esteemed Four Fingers we will go forth like Rothschilds! Where are the shares?”

  “In the vault.”

  “I will need his chop at once.”

  “I’m going to get it now but he said to sell at once. He said to sell in small blocks so as not to shock the market. He wants the very best price. You’ll sell at once?”

  “Yes, never fear, at once. And we will get the best price!”

  “Good. And most important, he said to keep this secret.”

  “Verily, Young Master, you may trust us implicitly. And the stock that you yourself wished to sell short?”

  “Oh that … well that’ll have to wait … until I’ve credit heya?”

  “Wise very wise.”

  Paul Choy shivered. His heart was pounding now in the silence and he watched his father’s cigarette, not the angry face, knowing those cold black eyes were boring into him, deciding his fate. He remembered how he had almost shouted with excitement when the stock had begun to fall almost immediately, monitoring it moment by moment, then ordering Soorjani to buy back in just before close and feeling light-headed and in euphoria. At once he had phoned his girl, spending nearly 30 of his valuable U.S. dollars telling her how fantastic his day had been and how much he missed her. She said how much she missed him too and when was he coming back to Honolulu? Her name was Mika Kasunari and she was san-sei, third-generation American of Japanese descent. Her parents hated him because he was Chinese, as he knew his father would hate her because she was Japanese except they were both American, both of them, and they had met and fallen in love at school.

  “Very soon, honey,” he had promised her ecstatically, “guaranteed by Christmas! After today my uncle’ll surely give me a bonus.…”

  The work that Gornt gave him for the rest of the day he breezed through. Late in the afternoon Goodweather Poon had phoned to say his father would see him in Aberdeen at 7:30 P.M. Before he went there he had collected Soorjani’s check made out to his father. 615,000 HK less brokerage.

  Elated, he had come to Aberdeen and given him the check, and when he told him what he had done he was aghast at the extent of his father’s rage. The tirade had been interrupted by Phillip Chen’s phone call.

  “I’m deeply sorry I’ve offended you, Hon—”

  “So my chop is yours, my wealth is yours heya?” Four Finger Wu shouted suddenly.

  “No, Honored Father,” he gasped, “but the information was so good and I wanted to protect your stock as well as make money for you.”

  “But not for you heya?”

  “No, Honored Father. It was for you. To make you money, and help repay all the money you invested in me … they were your shares and it’s your money. I tried to ca—”

  “That’s no fornicating excuse! You come with me!”

  Shakily Paul Choy got up and followed the old man onto the deck. Four Finger Wu cursed his bodyguard away and pointed a stubby finger at the befouled muddy waters in the harbor. “If you weren’t my son,” he hissed, “if you weren’t my son you’d be feeding the fish there, your feet in a chain, this very moment.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “If you ever again use my name, my chop, my anything without my approval you’re a dead man.”

  “Yes, Father,” Paul Choy muttered, petrified, realizing that his father had the means, the will and the authority to put that threat into effect without fear of retaliation. “Sorry, Father. I swear I’ll never do that again.”

  “Good. If you’d lost one bronze cash you’d be there now. It’s only because you fornicating won that you’re alive now.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Four Finger Wu glared at his son and continued to hide his delight at the huge
windfall. 615,000 HK less a few dollars. Unbelievable! All with a few phone calls and inside knowledge, he was thinking. That’s as miraculous as having ten tons of opium leap ashore over the heads of the Customs boat! The boy’s paid for his education twenty times over and he’s here hardly three weeks. How clever … but also how dangerous!

  He shivered at the thought of other minions making decisions themselves. Dew neh loh moh then I would be in their power and surely in jail for their mistakes and not my own. And yet, he told himself helplessly, this is the way barbarians act in business. Number Seven Son is trained as a barbarian. All gods bear witness, I did not wish to create a viper!

  He looked at his son, not understanding him, hating his direct way of speaking, the barbarian way and not in innuendo and obliquely like a civilized person.

  And yet … and yet better than 600,000 HK in one day. If I had talked to him beforehand I would never have agreed and I would have lost all that profit! Ayeeyah! Yes, my stock would be down all that fortune in one day … oh oh oh!

  He groped for a box and sat down, his heart thumping at that awful thought.

  His eyes were watching his son. What to do about him? he asked himself. He could feel the weight of the check in his pocket. It seemed unbelievable that his son could make that amount of money for him in a few hours, without moving the stock from its hiding place.

  “Explain to me why that black-faced foreign devil with the foul name owes me so much money!”

  Paul Choy explained the mechanics patiently, desperate to please.

  The old man thought about that. “Then tomorrow I should do the same and make the same?”

  “No, Honored Father. You take your gains and keep them. Today was almost a certainty. It was a sudden attack, a raid. We do not know how the Noble House will react tomorrow, or if Gornt really intends to continue the raid. He can buy back in and be way ahead too. It would be dangerous to follow Gornt tomorrow, very dangerous.”

  Four Finger Wu threw his cigarette away. “Then what should I do tomorrow?”

  “Wait. The foreign devil market’s nervous and in the hands of foreign devils. I counsel you to wait and see what happens with the Ho-Pak and the Victoria. May I use your name to ask the foreign devil Gornt about the Ho-Pak?”

  “What?”

  Patiently Paul Choy refreshed his father’s memory about the bank run and possible stock manipulation.

  “Ah, yes, I understand,” the old man said loftily. Paul Choy said nothing, knowing he did not. “Then we … then I just wait?”

  “Yes, Honored Father.”

  Four Fingers pulled out the check distastefully. “And this fornicating piece of paper? What about this?”

  “Convert it into gold, Honored Father. The price hardly varies at all. I could talk to Ishwar Soorjani, if you wish. He deals in foreign exchange.”

  “And where would I keep the gold?” It was one thing to smuggle other people’s gold but quite another to have to worry about your own.

  Paul Choy explained that physical possession of the gold was not necessary to own it.

  “But I don’t trust banks,” the old man said angrily. “If it’s my gold it’s my gold and not a bank’s!”

  “Yes, Father. But this would be a Swiss bank, not in Hong Kong, and completely safe.”

  “You guarantee it with your life?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Good.” The old man took out a pen and signed his name on the back with instructions to Soorjani to convert it at once into gold. He gave it to his son. “On your head, my son. And we wait tomorrow? We don’t make money tomorrow?”

  “There might be an opportunity for further profit but I could not guarantee it. I might know around noon.”

  “Call me here at noon.”

  “Yes, Father. Of course if we had our own exchange we could manipulate a hundred stocks …” Paul Choy let the idea hang in the air.

  “What?”

  Carefully the young man began to explain how easy it would be for them to form their own exchange, a Chinese-dominated exchange, and the limitless opportunities for profit their own exchange would give. He talked for an hour, gaining confidence with the minutes, explaining as simply as he could.

  “If it’s so easy, my son, why hasn’t Tightfist Tung done it—or Big Noise Sung—or Moneybags Ng—or that half-barbarian gold-smuggler from Macao—or Banker Kwang or dozens of others, heya?”

  “Perhaps they’ve never had the idea, or courage. Perhaps they want to work within the foreign devil system—the Turf Club, Cricket Club, knighthoods, and all that English foolishness. Perhaps they are afraid to go against the tide or they haven’t got the knowledge. We have the knowledge and expertise. Yes. And I’ve a friend in the Golden Mountain, a good friend, who was at school with me who co—”

  “What friend?”

  “He’s Shanghainese and a dragon in stocks, a broker in New York now. Together, with the cash support, we could do it. I know we could.”

  “Ayeeyah! With a northern barbarian?” Four Finger Wu scoffed. “How could you trust him?”

  “I think you could trust him, Honored Father—of course you’d set boundaries against weeds like a good market gardener does.”

  “But all business power in Hong Kong is in the hands of foreign devils. Civilized persons couldn’t support an opposition exchange.”

  “You may be right, Honored Father,” Paul Choy agreed cautiously, keeping his excitement off his face and out of his voice. “But all Chinese love to gamble. Yet at the moment there’s not one civilized person stockbroker! Why do foreign devils keep us out? Because we’d outplay them. For us the stock market’s the greatest profession in the world. Once our people in Hong Kong see our market is wide open to civilized persons and their companies, they’ll flock to us. Foreign devils will be forced to open up their own exchange to us as well. We’re better gamblers than they are. After all, Honorable Father”—he waved his hand at the shore, at the tall high-rises and the boats and junks and floating restaurants—“this could be all yours! It’s in stocks and shares and the stock market that the modern man owns the might of his world.”

  Four Fingers smoked leisurely. “How much would your stock market cost, Number Seven Son?”

  “A year of time. An initial investment of … I don’t know exactly.” The young man’s heart was grinding. He could sense his father’s avarice. The implications of forming a Chinese stock exchange in this unregulated capitalistic society were so far-reaching to him that he felt faint. It would be so easy given time and … and how much? “I could give you an estimate within a week.”

  Four Fingers turned his shrewd old eyes on his son and he could read his son’s excitement, and his greed. Is it for money, or for power? he asked himself.

  It’s for both, he decided. The young fool doesn’t know that they’re both the same. He thought about Phillip Chen’s power and the power of the Noble House and the power of the half-coin that John Chen had stolen. Phillip Chen and his wife are fools too, he told himself. They should remember that there are always ears on the other side of walls and once a jealous mother knows a secret it is a secret no longer. Nor can secrets be kept in hotels, among foreign devils, who always presume servants cannot speak the barbarian tongue, nor have long ears and sharp eyes.

  Ah sons, he mused. Sons are certainly the wealth of a father—but sometimes also cause the death of the father.

  A man’s a fool to trust a son. Completely. Heya?

  “Very well, my son,” he said easily. “Give me your plan, written down, and the amount. And I will decide.”

  Phillip Chen got out of the taxi at the grass triangle in Kowloon Tong, the attaché case clutched to his chest. The driver turned the meter off and looked at him. The meter read 17.80 HK. If it had been left up to Phillip he would not have taken the same taxi all the way from Struan’s Lookout, which meant using the taxi ferry, the meter running all the time. No. He would have crossed the harbor by the Golden Ferry for 15 cents, and got anothe
r taxi in Kowloon and saved at least 8 dollars. Terrible waste of money, he thought.

  Carefully he counted out 18 dollars. As an afterthought he added a thirty-cent tip, feeling generous. The man drove off and left him standing near the grassy triangle.

  Kowloon Tong was just another suburb of Kowloon, a multitudinous nest of buildings, slums, alleys, people and traffic. He found Essex Road, that skirted the garden, and walked around the road. The attaché case seemed to be getting heavier and he felt sure everyone knew it contained 200,000 HK. His nervousness increased. In an area like this you could buy the death of a man for a few hundred if you knew whom to ask—and for this amount, you could hire an army. His eyes were on the broken pavement. When he had gone almost all the way around the triangle he saw the arrow on the pavement pointing at the wall. His heart was weighty in his chest, hurting him. It was quite dark here, with few streetlights. The hole was formed by some bricks that had fallen away. He could see what looked like a crumpled-up newspaper within the hole. He hastily took it out, made sure there was nothing else left, then went over to a seat under a lamp and sat down. When his heart had slowed and his breathing become more calm he opened the newspaper. In it was an envelope. The envelope was flat and some of his anxiety left him. He had been petrified that he was going to get the other ear.