by John Creasey
“Oliver!” cried Lovelace. “Catalogues—we want to get them all outside! No time for pencils,” he muttered to Mannering, and turned and ran towards the main gallery, shouting to his men: “Grab all the catalogues you can. Get them outside!” He snatched one off the nearest table, tried to slip the pencil out, but failed. “Catalogues!” he roared again. He snatched another as he was moving, and Mannering was aware of two things: that at any moment a catalogue might burst into flame, and if it did then any man close by would be severely burned, perhaps burned to death, perhaps blinded. Oliver was calling orders, and only now did he fully appreciate how these men had been trained. A Chinese officer and an American naval lieutenant took up the cry; orders were shouted in two languages. Catalogue after catalogue was snatched up, some men carrying half a dozen.
“Windows!” cried Mannering. “Open the windows.”
“Windows!” bellowed Oliver.
The museum, which had been so quiet, so beautiful, with a few men standing about, a few working on the finishing touches, was suddenly a seething mass of moving men, mostly in uniform. Windows were flung open, books were carried out, doors were opened, and men rushed into the grounds. Every second Mannering feared that he would hear another explosion and would see a man enveloped in smoke and flame, but there was none. He saw four policemen by the information desk, picking up piles of catalogues.
Raymond Li Chen lay on the floor nearby, as if someone had felled him. Charles Li Chen was sitting like an image at the desk where so many catalogues had been.
The thunder of footsteps and the sharp ring of heels on the tiles and the mosaic of the floor was almost gone. The moving men were outside now, most of them still running, but some had already dropped the catalogues and were backing away.
Two British soldiers, catalogues piled so high that some were level with their faces, were running in opposite directions: one man tripped and fell. The catalogues crashed to the ground, and as the man struck it, head towards the books, one of them burst. Mannering saw that the flash and a sheet of flame came from the pencil. Flame and smoke billowed out until the man and the books were enveloped. The other soldier half turned, with the pile still in his arms, then hurled the books away from him like a man tossing a caber, and swung round towards his friend. Smoke and flames nearly hid him from sight, but Mannering saw him clutching for the fallen man’s ankles, and drawing him away.
Then there was another explosion ten times louder, and smoke and flame blotted out the whole area, and the two men.
“One thing to be thankful for,” Oliver said in a husky voice. “They were the only serious casualties among our chaps. The pencils are miniature contact incendiaries. Fiendish idea.”
“A wonderful job,” said Lovelace hoarsely. “My God, what a wonderful job.”
“The Li Chens” began Oliver, and turned to look at the two brothers.
Neither of them had moved, except that Charles Li Chen had leaned a little towards one side, so that his head was propped up against a table-lamp; he looked as if he were asleep. So did Raymond. But they were not asleep, they were dead by their own hands. By Raymond’s fingers was a small bottle of tablets, and one of the tablets had rolled a few feet away. As Mannering and the others drew nearer there was the unmistakable sickly odour of bitter almonds, proving almost beyond doubt that these men had taken tablets of potassium cyanide, knowing that it was the quickest way to death.
“But why?” breathed Oliver.
“There can’t be much doubt about it now,” said Lovelace in a subdued voice. “Insurance. If the place had gone up in fire and smoke no one could have proved where the explosions had started, or who put them there. The Li Chens, the manufacturers, anyone who had access to the catalogues. Don’t you think so, Mannering?”
“What’s that?” Mannering said. “Insurance? I should doubt—” He broke off. “The one person who might be able to tell us is Raymond Li Chen’s wife. Will you have her picked up?”
“I’ve told one of my chaps to telephone the Commissioner to arrange it,” Lovelace said. He stood looking about the gallery, where the smoke was dispersing and even the stench was less offensive. “It’s two hours to opening time. We could get this place cleared up enough, if we’re going to allow the public in, but without the Li Chens, I don’t know.” He touched his forehead with his hands, a gesture very like Brabazon’s. “I’d better check with the boss. Any feeling either way, Mannering?”
“Yes,” Mannering said.
“What way then?” Lovelace sounded irritable.
“I think that everyone possible should come and see these treasures,” Mannering said. He felt almost as if the diamonds from the neck of the Bodhisattva were emanating their strange power over him. “I think the world ought to see it. Would you like me to talk to Sir Hugh?”
“Must say I agree with you” said Brabazon, “but I’ll have a word with the Governor.”
“I think yes,” said the Governor, “but it might be wise to have a word with General Suno and Doctor Hanno.”
“I would be most disappointed if it were not opened,” said the General.
“I myself will be there, of course,” said the Doctor.
“Shouldn’t think there could be any argument,” said Dooley.
“Yes,” said the Governor to Brabazon. “Have the galleries cleaned up as much as possible, and when everyone is there I think you’d better make an announcement saying that an attempt was made to burn the place down, and that the Li Chens are dead. No need for more detail yet. Is there any news about Madame Li Chen?”
“She’s waiting for me to go and talk to her,” said Brabazon. “I think she knows what’s happened, but at the moment she isn’t saying a word. I think it might be a good idea if Mannering talked to her. They seemed to talk the same kind of language.”
“I’ll be very interested to hear what she has to say, whoever she talks to,” said the Governor. “I shall leave here at five-thirty. Will you be at the galleries?”
“If I’m through here,” said Brabazon. He was already lifting another telephone, and almost before he put down one receiver he said into the other: “Oh, Mannering, I wanted a word with you. The Governor and I would be most appreciative if you would come over here and have a talk with Madame Li Chen. It’s insurance. I don’t see what else it can be.”
“More than half of the things weren’t the Li Chens’,” said Mannering. “Most that were theirs had comparatively little value. And I can’t see Raymond Li Chen carrying out that act of vandalism for money. He loved the art treasures passionately. He had a feeling for them which it’s impossible to explain, but if you feel like that you don’t destroy them for the sake of insurance. You told me he was wealthy?”
“Several times a millionaire,” said Brabazon. “Well, what did they do it for?”
“All I know is that it must have been for a very powerful reason. It would have been like a sacrifice of everything precious to them.”
“That’s the kind of thing which explains why I want you to talk to Madame Li Chen,” said Brabazon gruffly. “I don’t really know what you’re talking about, but I think she probably will. Will you come over?”
“I’d much rather talk to her in her shop,” Mannering said. “Can you arrange that?”
When he went into the shop, half an hour later, he was quite sure that Madame Li Chen knew that her husband and her brother-in-law were dead. It was an expression in her eyes, and the way she held her head and looked at him, as if there was nothing which could make her suffer more than she had suffered already. She watched him as he approached her where she stood by one of the showcases. Within hand’s reach of her was the Ming vase which Mannering had saved from destruction.
Mannering did not go too near, but stood and watched her for what seemed a long time. No one else was in the shop, but outside there were police and military, on guard.
“Madame Li Chen,” Mannering said. “I am very, very sorry.”
Her lips moved. “Thank yo
u,” she said.
He could imagine that Lorna might look and behave like this if she had just learned of his death. There was much in this woman which reminded him of Lorna, and so it was easier to talk to her than it might have been.
“There is a theory that your husband and his brother committed these acts because of the money they would receive from insurance,” Mannering said. “It is a common belief.”
“Do you believe it?” Madame Li Chen asked.
“No,” answered Mannering flatly. “There is money, and there are treasures like those in the galleries, and they do not mean the same thing.”
The woman smiled, but sombrely.
“That is what Raymond always said,” she told him. “That you are one of the few men who feel towards old and beautiful things as if they were of flesh and blood, and as if they still hold the life of the past in them. They are so real to you. And they were so real to him. In those treasures there was the history of his country, the legacy of four thousand years. That became more to him than money. It even became more than life.”
“Why did he try to destroy so much that he loved?” Mannering asked gently.
Madame Li Chen answered quietly and without passion, but it was obvious that all the words caused her pain; yet she did not falter.
“He destroyed them because he believed that it might help to re-unite his country,” she said. “He was British, and was very loyal to Britain, but his true country was China. He saw two Chinas, always at war, hating one another, setting brother against brother and family against family. He believed passionately that they should find some way of re-uniting, and he learned that all of these beautiful things were being brought from China by thieves and bandits, more and more of them, many without the knowledge of Peking or Formosa. Some were sold, some were allowed to be smuggled across the border because Peking is in such need of currency from the outside world, but the whole of Chinese culture was being ravaged. It was bad enough that many were sold to Americans; it was worse because both the government in Peking and that in Formosa were selling these treasures. To Raymond, neither was true to China, they were deliberately selling the culture of the centuries. So it was that Raymond realised for four years he had aided and abetted both, making the situation worse, by buying these goods, by storing them for Americans, by using British territory as a repository for them.
“For year after year he brooded about this. It was this deep reflection which made him feel so desperately that the two Chinas must come together, and that to salve his own conscience he must try to do that. He believed that some great shock was needed, something which was not political, not military, not commercial. And he believed that if he collected everything he could, everything he owned and all he held in trust, and then destroyed it, he could make both governments understand the wickedness of what they are doing.
“I thought he was wrong. I pleaded with him not to do these things, but he believed it was the only way, and his brother believed that, also. I was Raymond’s wife, and so I kept silent.” After a while, she went on in a voice which Mannering could only just hear: “I think I am not sure whether he was wrong. I am not sure whether I disagreed with him because I thought it wrong, or because I knew that it would lead him to his death. I only know that I tried to prevent him, with the help of my own brothers, my own family.”
She took a photograph from the show case, and handed it to Mannering. It was the man who had questioned him at the hotel, and whose description he had given to the police.
“That is my eldest brother,” she said. “He is one of seven, and there are relatives of my family in many parts of the world, tied to me by blood. Please listen, Mr. Mannering, and try to understand.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Story Of Madame Li Chen
Mannering stood near the airport building, two days later, and saw the B.O.A.C. jet coming in, bright against the azure sky, brighter against the range of hills beyond the airport, hills which were in the China ruled from Peking. He pretended that he could see Lorna at one of the windows, but of course that was nonsense; but she was third to come off the plane, and he had special dispensation to go straight towards her, and not to wait for any formalities. She saw him at once, and almost broke into a run; then she checked herself. He checked himself, too, and they were half laughing when they met.
They hugged each other as if they had been parted for years.
“Yes, it’s all over,” Mannering told her when they were in the car put at their disposal by the Governor for the duration of their stay in Hong Kong. “I told you most of it over the telephone, and there’s a whole edition of the Tiger Standard devoted to it, and to what the Li Chens tried to do. It doesn’t come down on the side of whether it was worth trying or not, it simply hopes that it might do something to bring the two parts of China together.”
“Do you think it will?” asked Lorna.
“I wouldn’t like to have even an opinion about politics,” said Mannering. “But I don’t think that the General and the Doctor hate each other very much. It’s probably like so many other things, a single step forward, an opening of the eyes, and the mind, to a common cause. A quite remarkable thing has happened since I phoned you, though.”
“What’s that?” asked Lorna. She was looking about her at the fascinating streets, and Mannering knew just how much they would appeal to her. He was anxious to be able to give her an easy mind, so as to look about her without anxiety, and to revel in this magic island. So he said: “Listen to me now, and you won’t have to concentrate on it again. The Americans who owned most of the treasures, some galleries, some big foundations, some individuals, are leaving them here in Hong Kong, on permanent loan. In one or two cases wealthy foundations are buying them from private owners, but nearly everyone is giving up something. The collection is to be housed in the Ho Sun Galleries, which will be given by the Ho Sun Trust and the Colony to another Trust, with Trustees being British, American, and Chinese, with representatives from Hong Kong territory, Peking, and Formosa. We can’t ask for much more.”
Lorna had almost forgotten everything around her, except what Mannering said.
“Then it has done some good already, John, that’s wonderful. It’s almost unbelievable!”
Mannering grinned.
“Everyone agrees that it’s unbelievable, but the new Trust is actually being formed. I believe it will work, and the galleries will be a permanent memorial to the Li Chen brothers as well as to Ho Sun himself.”
After a moment, Lorna said: “There’s one thing I simply can’t understand. Why were there such efforts to keep you away? Why were the invitations cancelled? Wouldn’t it have been better if collectors and dealers from all over the world had been at the exhibition, giving it more impact everywhere?”
“That was what Madame Li Chen was afraid of,” Mannering said.
“Raymond’s wife?”
“Yes,” said Mannering. “And she told me her story. She believed that Raymond meant precisely that. He meant to set the galleries on fire during the reception, to make a human sacrifice as well as to sacrifice all the artistic treasures there. So she cancelled the invitations, she arranged the burglaries and raids to make men like Christiansen and Vansitter rush back home. She thought that if no one from overseas was here he would not go on with what he planned. She was his wife and could not betray him, but she could create the conditions which would make it almost certain that he would be stopped!
“There was another factor: she believed that someone knew what her husband was really doing. She knew there had been police inquiries, and she knew I was an investigator at times. She sent the two men to Quinns: the old man was her uncle, the young one her cousin. He is still awaiting trial, I had a letter from Bristow today.”
“Never mind Bristow,” Lorna said impatiently. “Go on.”
“When they could not keep me away Madame Li Chen concluded that I was coming to investigate. At all costs she wanted to make sure I didn’t get to the
exhibition, even by preventing it from opening. She and her relatives made the attempt to poison Charles Li Chen, preferring to murder an old man with little of life left to betraying Raymond, and they hoped a murder on board would force the authorities to forbid the exhibition. They killed the little man who was caught on the aircraft-carrier because they feared he would talk. They attacked me in the hotel, and later fired at me in the street, still trying to force the authorities to call the exhibition off.”
Mannering paused.
The car turned a corner, and the street would have led to the Li Chen Galleries on their triangular site, but he did not direct it there.
“The fire started before the reception, surely,” Lorna objected. “Wouldn’t he have got what he wanted if he had waited until the Governor and all the official party was at the opening reception?”
“Yes, and he meant to do that,” said Mannering. “But Madame Li Chen knew that the pencils in the catalogues were incendiary, which would explode on contact during the reception. She had to make sure that didn’t happen, and she fitted a tiny timing device in one of the pencils, to go off earlier than they planned. We know what happened. We know that she was almost sure what her husband and her brother-in-law would do. She had done everything, even trying again and again to kill me. Finally, she made her own sacrifice to prevent the wholesale slaughter.”
They were silent for a long time.
They said nothing of importance until they reached the hotel. Mannering took Lorna up to the room on the seventh floor, his own room with that magnificent view, led her to the window, and watched her face as she looked out. A kind of wonder dawned in her eyes, and she stared at the beauty of the scene for a long time.
Then she turned to look at Mannering.
“And we nearly decided that you wouldn’t come. What a dreadful thing that would have been,” she said.
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