Noble House

by James Clavell

  Dunross walked along the wharf toward one of the sea steps. There were clusters of sampans nearby, big and small. Most of these were for hire, each small craft with one sculler, a man, woman or child of any age, each craft with a hooped canvas covering that sheltered half of the boat from sun or rain or prying eyes. Some of the sampans were more elaborate. Those were the nighttime Pleasure Boats. Inside were reclining pillows and low tables, the better craft luxurious with plenty of room for two to eat and drink and then to pillow, the single oarsman discreetly not part of the cabin. You could hire one for an hour or a night and the boat would lazily float the byways. Other sampans would come with all manner of drinks and foods, fresh foods served piping hot, served delicately, and you and your lady could dream the night away in perfect privacy.

  You could go alone if you wished. Then, out near one of the vast islands of boats, your sampans would rendezvous with Ladies of the Night and you could choose and barter and then drift. In the harbor you could satisfy any wish, any thirst, any desire—at little cost, the price fair whoever you were—if you could pay and were a man. Opium, cocaine, heroin, whatever you wanted.

  Sometimes the food was bad or the singsong girl bad, but this was just joss, a regretted mistake and not deliberate. Sometimes you could lose your wallet but then only a simpleton would come among such prideful poverty to flaunt his wealth.

  Dunross smiled, seeing a heavyset tourist nervously ease himself into one of the craft, helped by a chong-samed girl. You’re in good hands, he thought, very glad with the hustle and bustle of business all around him, buying, selling, bartering. Yes, he told himself, Chinese are the real capitalists of the world.

  What about Tiptop and Johnjohn’s request? What about Lando Mata and Tightfist and Par-Con? And Gornt? And AMG and Riko Anjin and Sinders and …

  Don’t think about them now. Get your wits about you! Four Finger Wu hasn’t summoned you to discuss the weather.

  He passed the first sea steps and headed along the wharf to the main ones, the light from the streetlamps casting strong shadows. At once all the sampans there began to jostle for position, their owners calling out, beckoning. When he got to the top of the steps the commotion stopped.

  “Tai-pan!”

  A well-set Pleasure Boat with a Silver Lotus flag aft eased directly through them. The boatman was short, squat with many gold teeth. He wore torn khaki pants and a sweatshirt.

  Dunross whistled to himself, recognizing Four Finger Wu’s eldest son, the loh-pan, the head of Wu’s fleet of Pleasure Boats. No wonder the other boats gave him leeway, he thought, impressed that Goldtooth Wu met him personally. Nimbly he went aboard, greeting him. Goldtooth sculled swiftly away.

  “Make yourself at home, tai-pan,” Goldtooth said easily in perfect English-accented English. He had a B.Sc. from London University and had wanted to remain in England. But Four Fingers had ordered him home. He was a gentle, quiet, kind man whom Dunross liked.

  “Thank you.”

  On the lacquered table was fresh tea and whiskey and glasses, brandy and bottled water. Dunross looked around carefully. The cabin was neat and lit with little lights, clean, soft and expensive. A small radio played good music. This must be Goldtooth’s flagship, he thought, amused and very much on guard.

  There was no need to ask where Goldtooth was taking him. He poured himself a little brandy, adding soda water. There was no ice. In Asia he never used ice.

  “Christ,” he muttered suddenly, remembering what Peter Marlowe had said about the possibility of infectious hepatitis. Fifty or sixty people have that hanging over their heads now, if they know it or not. Gornt’s one of them too. Yes, but that sod’s got the constitution of a meat ax. The bugger hasn’t even had a touch of the runs. What to do about him? What’s his permanent solution?

  It was cool and pleasant in the cabin, half open to the breeze, the sky dark. A huge junk moved past, chugging throatily, and he lay back enjoying the tensions he felt, the anticipation. His heart was steady. He sipped the brandy, drifting, being patient.

  The side of the sampan scraped another. His ears focused. Bare feet padded aboard. Two sets of feet, one nimble the other not. “Halloa, taipan!” Four Fingers said, grinning toothlessly. He ducked under the canopy and sat down. “How you okay?” he said in dreadful English.

  “Fine and you?” Dunross stared at him, trying to hide his astonishment. Four Finger Wu was dressed in a good suit with a clean white shirt and gaudy tie and carried shoes and socks. The last time Dunross had seen him like this was the night of the fire and before that, the only other time years ago, at Shitee T’Chung’s immense wedding.

  More feet approached. Awkwardly Paul Choy sat down. “Evening, sir. I’m Paul Choy.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked, sensing great discomfort, and fear.

  “Sure, yes, thank you, sir.”

  Dunross frowned. “Well this’s a pleasure,” he said, letting it pass. “You’re working for your uncle now?” he asked, knowing all about Paul Choy, keeping up the pretense he and Four Fingers had agreed to, and very impressed with the young man. He had heard of his stock market coup through his old friend Soorjani.

  “No sir. I’m with Rothwell-Gornt’s. I just started a couple of days ago. I’m here to interpret … if you need me.” Paul Choy turned to his father and explained what had been said.

  Four Fingers nodded. “Blandeee?”

  “It’s fine, thank you.” Dunross raised his glass. “Good you see, heya,” he continued in English, waiting for the old man to begin in Haklo. It was a matter of face and, with the presence of Paul Choy, Dunross’s latent caution had increased a thousandfold.

  The old seaman chatted inconsequentially for a while, drinking whiskey. Paul Choy was not offered a drink, nor did he take one. He sat in the shadows, listening, frightened, not knowing what to expect. His father had sworn him to perpetual secrecy with hair-raising blood oaths.

  Finally Wu gave up waiting the tai-pan out and started in Haklo. “Our families have been Old Friends for many years,” he said, speaking slowly and carefully, aware that Dunross’s Haklo was not perfect. “Very many years.”

  “Yes. Seaborne Wu and Struan’s like brothers,” the tai-pan replied cautiously.

  Four Fingers grunted. “The present is like the past and the past the present. Heya?”

  “Old Blind Tung says past and present same. Heya?”

  “What does the name Wu Kwok mean to the tai-pan of the Noble House?”

  Dunross’s stomach twisted. “He your great-grandfather, heya? Your illustrious forebear. Son and chief admiral of even more illustrious sea warlord, Wu Fang Choi, whose flag, the Silver Lotus, flew all four seas.”

  “The very one!” Four Fingers leaned closer and Dunross’s caution doubled. “What was the connection between Green-Eyed Devil … between the first tai-pan of the Noble House and the illustrious Wu Kwok?”

  “They meet at sea. They meet in Pearl River Estuary off Wh—”

  “It was near here, off Pok Liu Chau, between Pok Liu Chau and Aplichau.” The old man’s eyes were slits in his face.

  “Then they meet off Hong Kong. The tai-pan went aboard Wu Kwok’s flagship. He went alone and …” Dunross searched for the word. “… and he negotiate a, a bargain with him.”

  “Was the bargain written onto paper and chopped?”

  “No.”

  “Was the bargain honored?”

  “It is fornicating ill-mannered to ask such question from Old Friend when Old Friend opposite knows answer!”

  Paul Choy jerked involuntarily at the sudden venom and slashing cut of the words. Neither man paid any attention to him.

  “True, true, tai-pan,” the old man said, as unafraid as Dunross. “Yes, the bargain was honored, though twisted, part was twisted. Do you know the bargain?”

  “No, not all,” Dunross said truthfully. “Why?”

  “The bargain was that on each of your twenty clippers we put one man to train as a captain—my grandfather was one o
f these. Next, Green-Eyed Devil agreed to take three of Wu Kwok’s boys and send them to his land to train them as foreign devils in the best schools, everything like his own sons would be trained. Next the tai—”

  Dunross’s eyes widened. “What? Who? Who are these boys? Who did they become?”

  Four Finger Wu just smiled crookedly. “Next, Green-Eyed Devil agreed to get for the illustrious Wu Fang Choi a foreign devil clipper ship, armed and rigged and beautiful. Wu Fang Choi paid for her but the tai-pan arranged for her and called her Lotus Cloud. But when Culum the Weak delivered her, almost two years later, your fornicating chief admiral, Stride Orlov, the Hunchback, came out of the east like an assassin in the night and murdered our ship and Wu Kwok with her.”

  Dunross sipped his brandy, waiting, outwardly at ease, inwardly his brain shocked. Who could those boys be? Was that truly part of the bargain? There’s nothing in Dirk’s diary or testament about Wu Kwok’s sons. Nothing. Who co—

  “Heya?”

  “I know about Lotus Cloud. Yes. And about men, captains. I think it was nineteen and not twenty clippers. But I know nothing about three boys. About Lotus Cloud, did my ancestor promise not to fight ship after he had give ship?”

  “No. Oh no, tai-pan, no he did not promise that. Green-Eyed Devil was clever, very clever. Wu Kwok’s death? Joss. We must all die. Joss. No, Green-Eyed Devil kept his bargain. Culum the Weak kept the bargain too. Will you keep his bargain?” Four Finger Wu opened his fist.

  In it was the half-coin.

  Dunross took it carefully, his heart grinding. They watched him like snakes, both of them, and he felt the strength of their eyes. His fingers shook imperceptibly. It was like the other half-coins that were still in Dirk’s Bible, in the safe in the Great House, two still left, two gone, already redeemed, Wu Kwok’s one of them. Fighting to control the trembling of his fingers, he handed the coin back. Wu took it, careless that his hand shook.

  “Perhaps real,” Dunross said, his voice sounding strange. “Must check. Where get it?”

  “It’s genuine, of course it’s fornicating genuine. You acknowledge it as genuine?”

  “No. Where get it?”

  Four Fingers lit a cigarette and coughed. He cleared his throat and spat. “How many coins were there at first? How many did the illustrious Mandarin Jin-qua give Green-Eyed Devil?”

  “I not sure.”

  “Four. There were four.”

  “Ah, one to your illustrious ancestor, Wu Kwok, paid and honored. Why would great Jin-qua give him two? Not possible—so this stolen. From whom?”

  The old man flushed and Dunross wondered if he had gone too far.

  “Stolen or not,” the old man spat, “you grant favor. Heya?” Dunross just stared at him. “Heya? Or is the face of Green-Eyed Devil no longer the face of the Noble House?”

  “Where get it?”

  Wu stared at him. He stubbed out the cigarette on the carpet. “Why should Green-Eyed Devil agree to four coins? Why? And why would he swear by his gods that he and all his heirs would honor his word, heya?”

  “For another favor.”

  “Ah, tai-pan, yes for a favor. Do you know what favor?”

  Dunross stared back at him. “Honorable Jin-qua loaned the tai-pan, my great-great-grandfather, forty lacs of silver.”

  “Forty lac—$4 million. One hundred twenty years ago.” The old man sighed. His eyes slitted even more. Paul Choy was breathless, motionless. “Was a paper asked for? A debt paper chopped by your illustrious forebear—on the chop of the Noble House?”

  “No.”

  “Forty lacs of silver. No paper no chop just trust! The bargain was just a bargain between Old Friends, no chop, just trust, heya?”

  “Yes.”

  The old man’s thumbless hand snaked out palm upward and held the half-coin under Dunross’s face. “One coin, grant favor. Whoever asks. I ask.”

  Dunross sighed. At length he broke the silence. “First I fit half to half. Next make sure metal here same metal there. Then you say favor.” He went to pick up the half-coin but the fist snapped closed and withdrew and Four Fingers jerked his good thumb at Paul Choy. “Explain,” he said.

  “Excuse me, tai-pan,” Paul Choy said in English, very uneasily, hating the closeness of the cabin and the devil-borne currents in the cabin, all because of a promise given twelve decades ago by one pirate to another, both murdering cutthroats if half the stories were true, he thought. “My uncle wants me to explain how he wants to do this.” He tried to keep his voice level. “Of course he understands you’ll have reservations and want to be a thousand percent sure. At the same time he doesn’t want to give up possession, just at this time. Until he’s sure, one way or the other, he’d pr—”

  “You’re saying he doesn’t trust me?”

  Paul Choy flinched at the viciousness of the words. “Oh no, sir,” he said quickly and translated what Dunross had said.

  “Of course I trust you,” Wu said. His smile was crooked. “But do you trust me?”

  “Oh yes, Old Friend. I trust very much. Give me coin. If real, I tai-pan of Noble House will grant your ask—if possible.”

  “Whatever ask, whatever, is granted!” the old man flared.

  “If possible. Yes. If real coin I grant favor, if not real, I give back the coin. Finish.”

  “Not finish.” Wu waved his hand at Paul Choy. “You finish, quickly!”

  “My … my uncle suggests the following compromise. You take this.” The young man brought out a flat piece of beeswax. Three separate imprints of the half-coin had been pressed into it. “You’ll be able to fit the other half to these, sir. The edges’re sharp enough for you to be sure, almost sure. This’s step one. If you’re reasonably satisfied, step two’s we go together to a government assayer or the curator of a museum and get him to test both coins in front of us. Then we’ll both know at the same time.” Paul Choy was dripping with sweat. “That’s what my uncle says.”

  “One side could easily bribe the assayist.”

  “Sure. But before we see him we mix up the two halves. We’d know ours, you’d know yours—but he wouldn’t, huh?”

  “He could be got at.”

  “Sure. But if we … if we do this tomorrow and if Wu Sang gives you his word and you give him your word not to try a setup, it’d work.” The young man wiped the sweat off his face. “Jesus, it’s close in here!”

  Dunross thought a moment. Then he turned his cold eyes on Four Fingers. “Yesterday I ask favor, you said no.”

  “That favor was different, tai-pan,” the old man replied at once, his tongue darting like a snake’s. “That was not the same as an ancient promise collecting an ancient debt.”

  “You ask your friends concerning my ask, heya?”

  Wu lit another cigarette. His voice sharpened. “Yes. My friends are worried about the Noble House.”

  “If no Noble House, no noble favor, heya?”

  The silence thickened. Dunross saw the cunning old eyes dart at Paul Choy and then back to him again. He knew he was entrapped by the coin. He would have to pay. If it was genuine he would have to pay, whether stolen or not. Stolen from whom, his mind was shouting. Who here would have had one? Dirk Struan never knew who the others had been given to. In his testament he had written that he suspected one went to his mistress May-may but there was no reason for such a gift by Jin-qua. If to May-may, Dunross reasoned, then it would have passed down to Shitee T’Chung, who was presently the head of the T’Chung line, May-may’s line. Maybe it was stolen from him.

  Who else in Hong Kong?

  If the tai-pan or the Hag couldn’t answer that one, I can’t. There’s no family connection back to Jin-qua!

  In the heavy silence Dunross watched and waited. Another bead of sweat dropped off Paul Choy’s chin as he looked at his father, then back at the table again. Dunross sensed the hate and that interested him. Then he saw Wu sizing up Paul Choy strangely. Instantly his mind leaped forward. “I’m the arbiter of Hong Kong,” he s
aid in English. “Support me and within a week huge profits can be made.”

  “Heya?”

  Dunross had been watching Paul Choy. He had seen him look up, startled. “Please translate, Mr. Choy,” he said.

  Paul Choy obeyed. Dunross sighed, satisfied. Paul Choy had not translated “I’m the arbiter of Hong Kong.” Again a silence. He relaxed, more at ease now, sensing both men had taken the bait.

  “Tai-pan, my suggestion, about the coin, you agree?” the old man said.

  “About my ask, my ask for money support, you agree?”

  Wu said angrily, “The two are not interwoven like rain in a fornicating storm. Yes or no on the coin?”

  “I agree on the coin. But not tomorrow. Next week. Fifth day.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Paul Choy carefully interjected, “Honored Uncle, perhaps you could ask your friends again tomorrow. Tomorrow morning. Perhaps they could help the tai-pan.” His shrewd eyes turned to Dunross. “Tomorrow’s Friday,” he said in English, “how about Monday at … at 4:00 P.M. for the coin?” He repeated it in Haklo.

  “Why that time?” Wu asked irritably.

  “The foreign devil money market closes at the third hour of the afternoon, Honored Uncle. By that time the Noble House will be noble or not.”

  “We will always be the Noble House, Mr. Choy,” Dunross said politely in English, impressed with the man’s skill—and shrewdness to take an oblique hint. “I agree.”

  “Heya?”

  When Paul Choy had finished the old man grunted. “First I will check the Heaven-Earth currents to see if that is an auspicious day. If it is, then I agree.” He jerked his thumb at Paul Choy. “Go aboard the other boat.”

  Paul Choy got up. “Thank you, tai-pan. Good night.”

  “See you soon, Mr. Choy,” Dunross replied, expecting him the next day.

  When they were quite alone, the old man said softly, “Thank you, Old Friend. Soon we’ll do much closer business.”

  “Remember, Old Friend, what my forebears say,” Dunross said ominously. “Both Green-Eyed Devil and her of Evil Eye and Dragon’s Teeth—how they put a great curse and Evil Eye on White Powders and those who profit from White Powders.”