Dark Eye of the Jaguar

by Robert Mitchell

  DARK EYE

  of the

  JAGUAR

  By

  Robert Mitchell

  All rights to the novel are reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the copyright holder. The situations and characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental.

  Robert Mitchell

  Queensland

  Australia

  robmitchell60@yahoo.com.au

  Other books by Robert Mitchell:

  The Lucinda Legacy

  Golden Eagles

  The Khilioi

  Beneath Yellow Clay

  The Emperor’s Jade

  The Stone Dog

  Thursday’s Orchid

  There are brief outlines of each of these after the conclusion of Dark Eye of the Jaguar.

  DARK EYE

  of the

  JAGUAR

  One

  I unfolded the dry brittle paper and laid it on the table top, trying not to bend the firm creases more than was necessary, knowing that it would tear if I did so. It was old, that much was obvious from the parchment-like quality of the grey-white paper and the musty smell, but how old I was now to find out.

  It was a letter and I was certain it had been in the writing box for at least a century, hidden in the secret compartment away from prying eyes. There was compacted dust along the joints of wood I had managed to spring apart, but that only happened after I had found the tiny hole in the base of the writing slope that had concealed the thin metal rod that activated the locking lever.

  The box was at least a hundred and fifty years old. It was huge: fifty-six centimetres wide and twenty-eight deep, with a height of twenty. The letter I now held in my hand could be anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and fifty years old. And if it had been hidden, then it had to be important. It was worth more to me than any purse of sovereigns or gold guineas, but how valuable, and deadly, I couldn’t in my wildest dreams have imagined.

  I’d only had the box for two weeks, but already it was one of my favourite things. I was glad I had told Susie that it was worth the money.

  “You can’t buy it!” she had said, her arms folded across her chest, lips tight, daring me to contradict her.

  “Why not, Suze?” I had replied as softly as I could, trying not to antagonize her even further, and wanting to appear as a reasonable human being, not one who wanted to purchase a large lump of antique wood and cart it all the way from China back home to Australia.

  “Because it probably weighs a ton and we’ll get hit with excess baggage, that’s why not,” she had said through clenched lips, not wanting those around us to hear us starting another argument.

  “Yeah,” I had replied. “But you’ve already bought three pairs of shoes, a couple of pairs of jeans, and God only knows what else. What have I bought? Nothing!”

  “That’s not relevant,” Susie had answered. “The money I’ve spent on a few clothes and things is a saving.”

  “A saving?”

  “Yes, a saving. If I had to buy those jeans back home they’d have cost at least three times as much, and the jacket was cheap. So, Ben, just leave that dirty great lump of wood right where it is!” She raised herself up on her toes to look me straight in the eyes, daring me to contradict.

  We were at the Dirt Market in Beijing. The guide book had it listed as the Panjiayuan Jiuhuo Shichang. I’m told that at one time, maybe twenty or thirty years ago, it had been an actual dirt market, with all of the vendors positioning themselves on the bare ground in this big area of maybe a hectare or two. One of my old school friends had been through the market back when China first opened up to the outside world. He had told me of the antique Chinese furniture that could be had for a song. When I asked him why he hadn’t purchased any, the answer was simple. There was no way to ship it out. Nobody spoke English. China wasn’t geared up for export. All he had been able to do was look and dream. Back then the only westerners at the market had been one or two people from the few foreign embassies in China, those who had an interest in Chinese antiques and the ability to get them out of the country, either in the diplomatic bag or in a few crates of personal effects when their tour of duty was over. But now, it was all different. Now there were tour buses bursting with tourists from all over the world, all ripe for the picking.

  The tour guide had told us that most of the items for sale were reproductions, fakes, and/or junk. We had heard the same story before, on our last, and what had also been our first trip to China. We had later talked to some of the members of that first tour group who had purchased valuable so-called antiques. Someone had organised a gathering six months after we had arrived back in Brisbane from that first trip. Not one of our fellow travellers had a good tale to tell. Every last priceless antique had turned out to be a fake.

  But Sue and I hadn’t made any rash purchases on that first trip, just a few souvenirs and clothes. I had only been retired for three months at that stage and we were being careful with my superannuation. On this second trip we had agreed to stick to the same rigid budget. At ages sixty-two and fifty-eight respectively we still had many years ahead of us and neither of us wanted to have to spend the later years existing on the meagre Australian pension. We had agreed that we would not be purchasing any Chinese antiques.

  But this box was different. For a start, it wasn’t Chinese. It wasn’t even Asian. It was English. I had always been interested in what is commonly known as campaign furniture, furniture taken overseas by Victorian officers on the various military campaigns they had fought in. I had a campaign chest that had been left to me by my grandfather. That chest was in two parts: one long drawer and two half-drawers in the top section and two long drawers in the bottom. The brass handles folded flush into the mahogany of the drawers, and there was heavy brass strapping on each corner and around the edges of the wood upon which the drawers moved. It had been built to withstand the rigours of travel. It had been constructed for some British army officer back in the days of the Raj, in the middle of the nineteenth century.

  This large writing box beckoning to me from the dealer’s table had been built to the same specifications. There was brass strapping running around each corner, around the edges of the sides and bottom, and across the middle of the front. It had been built to keep people out, with a triple-tongue, double-pin lock, and heavy hinges. There was even a device that enabled the box to be screwed to a wooden floor, making it extremely difficult to steal. There was nothing else remotely like it anywhere else in the market. It was half-hidden by dented, dirt-stained, lacquered Chinese work boxes, several of them reproductions even to my untrained eye, which meant that the others probably were as well. There was a rusted Chinese bayonet from the Second World War lying across the top of the box, presumably to highlight the box’s military connotation, although I doubted if the dealer really knew what era it had come from.

  Nobody else had seen it, or noticed it, but I had. But then, I knew what it was. I ran one hand across the top, feeling the sharp ridge of the brass corner strap, visualising what the whole box would look like once I had polished it with beeswax and removed most of the dullness from the brass.

  “It’s worth a fortune, Suze!” I had pleaded, turning to her. “And it can’t weigh more than maybe nine or ten kilos.”

  I had then picked it up and was certain it tipped the scales at fifteen kilos, but I wasn’t passing that little snippet of information on to my wife of thirty-five years. The dealer saw the gleam in my eyes and I began to kick myself, knowing that I had just broken the fir
st rule of bargaining. Never show your true interest to the seller. But it was too late for that, and anyway, this was the dirt market, the price had to be reasonable.

  “Ten kilos!” she had almost yelled. “Our allowance is only twenty-five each, and we came over here with almost that much! The clothes we’ve bought will probably take us over that; just think what that great dusty box will do to it!”

  “Yeah,” I had replied quickly, turning away from the dealer, trying to moderate the pleading tone of my voice, and hide my enthusiasm. “But our luggage will all be lumped together with the rest of the tour party on the way back,” I had then said quietly. “Remember what happened last time we were here? You remember that woman, the one who had to buy two extra suitcases to carry all of the clothes and souvenirs she bought?”

  “Which woman?” she asked, turning away from the dealer’s table and moving towards the next.

  I described the woman. She had been a real pain and Sue hadn’t liked her one little bit. The woman had always been the first in line to check in at the hotel, always the first one to dip her chopsticks into whatever plate of food had just been placed on the table and always in front whenever the guide would point out something of interest. And this woman’s huge bulk had usually obscured the view from my diminutive wife.

  “Oh, her,” she replied, the corners of her mouth turning down.

  “Yeah. Remember how she just dumped her three suitcases in with everybody else’s, using up everyone’s spare allowance, plus a bit extra besides. She had no trouble at all.”

  “So, you want to be like her, do you Ben?” Susie replied mockingly. “You want everyone on this tour to think the same about you?”

  “Oh, come off it, Suze. I’m not like her at all. She was a real pain in the neck.”

  “And you’re not?” she asked sarcastically.

  “No. I’m just saying that we should take advantage of the group luggage. And anyway, even if we do have to pay excess baggage on it, it wouldn’t be more than maybe ten dollars a kilo. That’s only a hundred dollars.”

  “It’s a hundred dollars more than we can afford!”

  “But the box is cheap. The guy is asking three thousand renminbi for it. That’s only about four hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “Four hundred and fifty dollars!” she had yelled. “You complained when I bought that third pair of jeans for twenty dollars!”

  “Yeah, but this box is worth a thousand dollars back home, and I’m certain I can get him down. These guys always ask five times what they really want.”

  “A thousand dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re going to put it on eBay then, are you? You’re only buying it so we can make some money? Is that the idea?”

  “No, you know it’s not.”

  “Well then, why do we need it?”

  “Because it’ll look great sitting on top of grandfather’s campaign chest, especially after I’ve cleaned it up.”

  I could see the dealer’s eyes starting to glaze over as he listened to the unintelligible argument between the two Australians, which was probably a good thing. He could see that Susie was dead set against me buying the box, so he might be receptive to a reasonable offer.

  “Please, Suze,” I had pleaded. “I won’t buy anything else. If you want some more clothes, I won’t even raise an eyebrow.”

  “You promise?” she had asked, weakening slightly. Susie had a weakness for clothes, especially skirts and tops.

  “Yes, you know me.”

  “Oh, I know you all right,” she had replied. She turned so that her back was towards the dealer. “If you can get it for half of what he’s asking, then okay. But if we get stuck with a huge bill for excess baggage, I’ll be really pinged off.”

  In the end I managed to get the dealer down even further than half way, to one third of what he had been asking; one hundred and fifty dollars. I didn’t care whether it cost another two hundred dollars to get it back home. It was the biggest writing box I had ever seen, and one of only a very few that I had seen in books which had the screw-down device that enabled it to be fastened to a desk, table, or to the deck of a ship. The heavy lid had a brass plate with the name of the officer who had originally owned it:

  Captain Montgomery Jenkinson-Smythe

  16th Bengal Lancers

  I turned to Susie as I handed the money to the seller.

  “I told you I could get him down. Just wait until I get into the secret drawers. I bet there’s something in there that’s worth money.”

  “Secret drawers?” she had asked. “You’d be lucky.”

  “Yeah, they all have three small secret drawers behind a panel just under the compartment that holds the inkwells and the pens. You never know. The box was owned by a Captain. There could be a couple of gold sovereigns.”

  “Gold sovereigns?” she had replied. “I don’t think our luck runs to gold sovereigns, Ben.”

  “Well then, maybe a small piece of ivory,” I had replied. “The guy was in the Bengal Lancers. That’s an Indian regiment. He’d have been certain to pick up a few pieces from time to time.”

  It was just then that the seller had opened the lid again, reached in, pulled up the small wooden divider at the side of the left-hand ink well, and smiled as the secret flap sprang out; revealing the three small drawers safely nestled underneath. He opened each one as though revealing something to me which I did not know existed, as though he was performing some magic trick. And each one was empty except for a thick film of dust.

  Susie burst out laughing and walked off, shaking her head, and no doubt planning a lengthy shopping trip to the Silk Market that afternoon. We had been there the previous day and I had dissuaded her from spending more than a few dollars, emphasising our tight budget every time she had picked something from one of the racks. The budget would now take a hammering. But I didn’t really care. I had what I wanted.

  With her laughter ringing in my ears, I had shrugged my shoulders, picked up the box and followed the rest of the group as they went from stall to stall, buying the odd bit of rubbish; wrist watches with images of Chairman Mao waving his hands, rare antique jade bangles made only last week, and two-thousand-year-old swords from the Chin dynasty that were at least two to three years old, and which had been wrapped in cloth, soaked in horse urine, and buried in the ground for eighteen months or more. It didn’t matter how much I tried to persuade our fellow tourists, they always seemed to believe the seller over my advice. But then, what they were paying was such a minor amount that I suppose it didn’t really matter. What mattered was the thrill of bargaining and buying in a place that was completely foreign, one that was full of strange sights, the constant babble of a number of different languages, the dark dull clothing of the people, and the smells. If there is something that will always remain with me, it will be the earthy smell of the place, the aroma of the people, the merchandise and air itself, the exotic atmosphere of that walled enclosure - the dirt market.

  The box had cost me another fifty dollars by way of excess baggage. The entire group had been over the weight limit and the fifty was our contribution. Sue had given me a dirty look when I handed over the fifty. I knew that she wanted me to maybe double it, but that would have meant a re-calculation of each person’s share, and it had already taken ten minutes to arrive at the fifty dollars, so I just kept quiet.

  But Susie had been wrong when she had laughed at the empty drawers and the lack of gold or ivory. In hindsight I should have expected the dealer to know about the three secret drawers. Anyone with only a small knowledge of antique writing boxes knows of the three secret drawers that almost every writing box has tucked away beneath the pen and ink shelf. But then again, the box was British, and not something that the Chinese dealer should have been familiar with. Maybe I really had been hoping that there had been something secreted in those three tiny drawers.

  I had almost spun back to Sue when the drawers were revealed, and shouted at her that there would
be other secret compartments, hidden spaces which would not be so easily found. But I had held my tongue. I’d been made a fool of once and I didn’t want it to happen again, just in case the dealer reached in and tripped another secret catch and revealed another empty space. There was always the possibility that whoever had commissioned the box had only wanted something that was safe from a thief, not something that had to hide a secret, and there were no other hidden cavities. But I didn’t believe that was the case with this box, for if it were true, the box would be a rarity. They all had more than one concealed niche.

  And this box was big. It was heavy - exactly fifteen kilograms. This box was built to keep important documents and money safe. The bigger the box, the more secrets it could contain. I was certain there would be a special place where the owner would have kept a number of gold sovereigns or guineas safe and secure against future need. Most of the large boxes had such a hidey-hole. I only had to find it. I hadn’t wanted to poke and pry while we were in China. I knew that I had to take my time and would probably need fine instruments, needles, a pair of callipers to compare internal spaces against outside measurements, a strong lamp, and a clear head. If there was something valuable I didn’t want to have to hide it from Customs when we got back to Australia, or from the Chinese when we left.

  I started working on the box on the third day after our arrival home. The first day was spent sleeping and getting over jet-lag. The second day was unpacking and admiring all of Susie’s new clothes. But the third day was mine. The lawns and all of the household chores that had piled up during our absence could wait. The box was still where I had left it on our return, on the sideboard in the lounge room, still wrapped up in newspaper and the used cardboard box I had managed to obtain from a small supermarket near our hotel. I’d had to pay for the cardboard box, which surprised me. It was only a few cents, but, as our guide explained, everything in China is recycled and the few cents was its value.