I have offered Mr John Jenkinson-Smythe US$1,000 for the piece in his possession, and I am confident that he will accept this amount. I am willing to pay you the same amount for each of the two pieces that you are holding. I can wire the money to any bank that you nominate. You may hold on to the jade until the money is deposited and I would have my agent collect the jade once the funds have cleared into your account.
I eagerly await your reply.
Jackson Lee.
“At least he’s come up with an amount,” Sue said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “But it’s strange that he hasn’t mentioned the gold ornament again.”
“Maybe he wants to establish some sort of bona fides with us. Maybe he wants to show us that he’s genuine, that he’s an honest person. What do you think we should do?”
“Sleep on it. Tell him we’ll think about it and get back to him in the morning. Ask him whether a thousand dollars each is his best offer, and then turn the bloody computer off.”
“Okay.”
There were two emails the next day. The first was from John Jenkinson-Smythe, offering to buy the other two pieces of jade for seven hundred dollars each, provided that we agreed by return email. The other was from Jackson Lee, increasing his offer to two and a half thousand dollars for the two pieces. He also agreed that he would have his representative hand over that amount in Australian dollars, in cash, at a place of our choosing, in exchange for the jade.
“Do we bother replying to John Jenkinson-Smythe?” Sue asked.
“No,” I replied. “What do you reckon Lee offered John for his piece?”
“Probably the same amount as he offered to us.”
“Yes, I suppose so. Do you think we should maybe get another valuation?” I suggested.
“Not really. The woman at Nudgee offered five hundred dollars for the three pieces, and she was selling the ones she had for three hundred dollars each.”
“Yeah, but we know bugger-all about Chinese antiques. The ones she had for sale might have been poor quality jade, or not as well made, or whatever.”
“Okay,” she replied. “We’ll try another antique shop.”
Two hours later we were back home again. This time the offer had been a hundred dollars each from one dealer and a hundred and twenty-five from another. They weren’t priceless antiques. Neither shop had made a second offer as we had walked out the door.
“So, do we sell?” Sue asked as she started to make the coffee.
“Yeah, I guess so, but we increase his offer to three thousand Australian dollars for the two pieces.”
“Don’t you think we’re being greedy?” Sue asked. “They’re worth no more than three hundred each.”
“Not really. He wants them, and we’ve got them. Let’s see what he says.”
“What about the gold ornament?”
“We wait until he mentions it again, but my guess is it’ll happen straight after he takes possession of the jade.”
Sue sent the email off and we waited. It didn’t take long, not more than an hour or so. He had arranged, so he said, for a business acquaintance in Sydney to fly up to Brisbane with the cash. He would be there in two days’ time, and asked where we would like to meet him. We emailed back, naming the Hog’s Breath restaurant in Indooroopilly, and selecting one o’clock in the afternoon to do the handover. We were there at twelve and had finished our meal an hour later. And, promptly at the stroke of one, as we were on our second cup of coffee, the door opened and a middle-aged Chinese man dressed in a dark suit entered the restaurant and went up to the receptionist. An arm was pointed in our direction and he walked across to our table.
“Are you Ben and Susan Dunlop?” he asked.
We nodded.
“I sit down?”
“Please do,” Sue replied.
After several more pleasantries, the cash was handed over in a large white envelope. Sue counted it below the apron of the table and nodded to me. I lifted the package from the seat which contained the two pieces of jade. The Chinese man opened the packet, took two photographs from his suit coat pocket, the same photographs that we had emailed to Jackson Lee with the acceptance of his offer, and compared these with the jade.
“Yes,” he finally said. “Most satisfactory. Mr Lee will be extremely pleased. Now, if you excuse, I have plane to catch.”
We watched him walk to the door and disappear into the distance.
“That was easy,” I said. “Almost too easy.”
“What were you expecting? Did you think he’d produce a gun, grab both the jade and the money, and run for it?”
“No, not really,” I replied. “I was just thinking about the house next door to Martin Jones, and all the damage that was done by whoever turned it over. I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
“We don’t know that it was Jackson Lee who organised that, and I for one don’t think it was. More than likely it was someone after the cross, and even though he’s kept asking us whether there was anything else, he hasn’t even hinted about a cross.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt,” I replied. “Do you think we’ve done the right thing? Maybe we should’ve asked for more.”
“Ben, for goodness sake! We’ve received ten times what that woman in Nudgee Road offered. Isn’t that good enough for you?”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” I said, giving in. “It’s just that they were part of the treasure, part of what was inside the writing box. I feel like we’ve lost something.”
“Hey, you sold the box to John Jenkinson-Smythe without any problems, and then you sold the piece of jade to him without giving it a second thought. Forget it.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Let’s go.”
We were half way home. I couldn’t stop thinking about Lee and the cross. Why hadn’t he asked about the cross? Was it because John Jenkinson-Smythe didn’t know about it? Did he only know what we had told Jenkinson-Smythe? I tossed the question at Sue.
“I think he got on to the gold piece first,” she replied. “It might have been by accident, or he might be the sort of person who continually checks the internet site. Maybe he’s a collector. Anyway, he might’ve recognised the gold piece as possibly being the one that was stolen from his grandfather and, rather than deal with us openly, thought he would get sneaky, cracked into the website, then got into our emails, and into the email we had sent to John with the pictures. Can you imagine what he would have felt when he realised that he’d finally found his family’s jade?”
“It sounds plausible,” I replied. “But what about the cross?”
“He’s said nothing about it. The gold piece and the cross were on completely different sites. There was nothing to connect the two. I logged in with different usernames. Don’t worry, Ben. He’ll only be after the gold piece now.”
When we arrived home there was another email from Jackson Lee.
My associate has just called to confirm that he has collected the two jade pieces from you. I am wondering as to whether you would be kind enough to either call or email Mr Jenkinson-Smythe concerning my offer to him for his piece. I initially offered to pay him the same amount that I offered you, and then increased it to the sum of US$1,500, but he is proving a most difficult person. He seems to feel that the jade is worth considerably more. He is becoming quite recalcitrant.
If you could reassure him of the jade’s low commercial value, and of my sincerity, I would be most appreciative.
Jackson Lee.
“What do we do?” I asked. “Who does this Jackson Lee think he is, one of our best friends?”
“We email John Jenkinson-Smythe,” Sue replied. “We tell him we’ve sold the other two pieces of jade to Lee. We tell him how much we were paid, and we copy the email to Jackson Lee. That way Jackson Lee will think that we’re reasonable people, and we have nothing to hide.”
And that was what we did. Next morning there was an email from Jenkinson-Smythe.
As far as I am concerned, your
Mr Lee can go to hell. Those pieces of jade were part of my family’s inheritance. The writing box belonged to my ancestor, and you purchased stolen property from that Chinese thief in Beijing. Everything in that box, and I mean everything, belongs to my family. I’m still thinking about suing you, so keep your nose out of my business. You might be a retired solicitor, but I’m a retired policeman and I know how to deal with your lot.
I’m copying this email to your pal Jackson Lee so he’ll know not to bother me again!
John Jenkinson-Smythe.
“That’s pretty straight forward,” I said. “Do you reckon he’s really a retired cop?”
“Well, maybe he was a policeman,” she replied. “I can try looking him up on Google if you want. But does it really matter?”
“Not really. I wonder what Jackson Lee’s going to say when he reads it.”
“He won’t be happy, but what else can he do?” Sue replied.
We found out two days later, at about three in the morning, what Lee could do. There was a phone call from John Jenkinson-Smythe. Sue passed the telephone across to me and I could hear the yells and foul language even before I pressed the handset to my ear. Jenkinson-Smythe was livid; accusing me of being in league with Jackson Lee, of giving Lee his address, of me telling Lee that John had the piece of jade in the first place. When the tirade had calmed down to a mere shout I was able to ascertain that there had been a burglary and the jade piece had been stolen. Nothing else had been taken; nothing had been smashed or thrown about. The writing box was still in pride of place on the hall table. The thief had simply opened the writing box, removed the jade, and had left.
“Bloody hell, John,” I said. “If it was me, if I’d had anything to do with it, don’t you think I would’ve got them to take the writing box as well? I don’t know this Mr Jackson Lee. I’ve never met him. I’ve never spoken to him. We’ve only had emails from him, the same as you.”
“But you met with him and handed over the other two pieces to him!”
“I didn’t meet with him. The bloke was a business acquaintance of his, a guy from Sydney. Anyway,” I continued. “I would have thought that a retired cop would’ve had his house secure against this sort of thing.”
“You owe me fifteen hundred US dollars!” he screamed into the phone.
“John,” I said quietly, “As you told me to tell Jackson Lee, you can go to hell.”
I passed the telephone back to Sue and she put it gently back on the cradle, and the cursing stopped. I didn’t think we would hear from John again. He had no case against us, and I was certain that any lawyer would tell him so. Besides, there was no money in taking the matter to court, and all John seemed to care about was money. Nobody was going to go to court over fifteen hundred dollars.
“What do you think?” Sue asked as I filled her in with what John Jenkinson-Smythe had said.
“I think that Jackson Lee arranged for the jade to be stolen. I think that if John had doubled his price, Lee would have paid it. That cross and the gold pieces will go into the safe custody box at the bank first thing in the morning. Do you think I should go downstairs and check to see if all the windows are locked?”
“Ben, just go to sleep.”
“I can’t,” I replied. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?” she asked.
“The length of trouble that Lee has gone to get those three pieces of jade.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, yawning.
“Well, he’s paid us five times what they’re worth, and he’s risked being involved as an accessory to a burglary charge in England.”
“So?”
“So, there’s got to be more to it. There’s got to be some reason why he wanted the pieces so badly, why he was willing to go to such lengths, why he was prepared to pay more than five times what they were worth.”
“What about his grandfather?” Sue asked sleepily. “The man is Chinese for goodness sake. Maybe they think more about family than we do. Just leave it and turn the light off.”
“I can’t see it,” I replied, my eyes starting to close. I lay there for a minute or two and listened while Sue’s breathing slowed down to a steady rhythm as she drifted off to sleep. “Maybe the three pieces of jade form part of a map,” I said, more to myself than to her. “Maybe when you put them together as a group they show the way to the chest that Captain Monty buried, or maybe they list what had been buried in the chest.” But that was stupid. How would Lee even know about the chest?
“Ben,” she mumbled. “Go to sleep.”
“Maybe there’s a whole bunch of chests buried somewhere that were stolen by the Boxers,” I said quietly to myself. “And Lee’s grandfather, or someone’s grandfather, carved parts of a map on each one of the pieces of jade.” I switched the light off and lay there, staring at the darkened ceiling, listening to the sounds of the night, listening for the sounds of somebody prowling about down in the garage, hearing the clicking of tumblers turning on my old office safe.
Sue started to snore softly and I began to feel a little foolish talking to myself. But there had to be some sense somewhere. Why else would he have spent and risked so much to obtain them?
I was back where I had started. Maybe the simple answer was that the three pieces of jade had some historical relevance, a relevance which increased their value tenfold. A flintlock pistol owned by one of Napoleon’s officers might be worth one or two thousand dollars, but one that had been owned by Napoleon himself would be worth twenty times as much. The answer might be as simple as that.
We sent an email to Jackson Lee first thing the next morning, telling him of the call from John Jenkinson-Smythe. His reply was to the effect that he was very sorry to hear of the theft and was most disappointed that the jade had now been lost. He then repeated his offer for the gold piece and pointedly suggested that we should keep it hidden in a secure place. Sue started typing a reply, saying that it was safely tucked away in a bank, even though that step was still some hours away.
“What do we tell him about his offer for the gold piece?” she asked.
“Maybe we tell him that we’re driving down to Sydney for a week or so and we’ll be taking a whole stack of pictures we’ve taken of the gold piece. Tell him that we’re going to try and get a valuation from a couple of auctioneers, and from some of the classier antique shops.”
We were due to leave for Beijing in two days. If we could get him to believe that we would be in Sydney instead, I would feel a whole lot better.
His reply came back an hour later.
I am certain that you will find that it is worth more than the $5,000 that I offered to you, but you must appreciate that the money that I am offering to you is not for the purchase of the piece, but as a reward for its return to my family. The money that was paid to you for the two jade pieces was also a reward. It was an amount substantially more than their commercial value as antiques, but they were made by my uncle and therefore priceless as far as my family is concerned. The gold piece on the other hand, does have a higher commercial value than the sum of $5,000, but the money is as a reward, not as a purchase price. The value of the piece is not the consideration.
Please reconsider.
Jackson Lee.
We wrote back to him and told him that he would have to wait until we returned. We told him that we were not wealthy people like he appeared to be, and would be very foolish indeed if we did not ascertain the value of the piece before dealing further with it. We also told him that we would like further information from him about his family, about his grandfather, and the source of the valuables that had been stolen by the bandits all those years ago. I wanted him to think that we doubted his story, that perhaps we thought he was just a dealer trying to make a profit. The drawings that his grandfather was supposed to have made could have been of the family treasure of some other person, and had been merely copied by Lee. If they were really part of his family’s heritage, then he had to show us more. We had to know w
ho we were dealing with.
It was the afternoon of our departure for Beijing. The cases were packed and waiting by the front door. The taxi had been ordered, with a collection time of nine o’clock that evening for our midnight departure from Brisbane airport. There was nothing to do but pace about the house, double-check the windows, water the plants for the third time, and generally try to control my excitement.
“For God’s sake, Ben!” Sue exclaimed. “Go and watch some television or something.”
She was saved from my sarcastic reply by the ringing of the telephone.
“Ben Dunlop speaking,” I said into the mouthpiece.
“Ah, Mr Dunlop,” the voice said. “I am so glad that I caught you before you left for Sydney.”
“Who is this?” I asked, but knowing we had only told one person that we were going to Sydney.
“I am Jackson Lee. I decided to call you rather than sending an email. An email is so unfriendly, don’t you think so?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I replied. “What do you want? I thought we told you what our intentions were.”
“I hoped that I could get you to change your minds. I have spoken to some of my relatives and they have been able to raise a little more money. Did I tell you that I am not purchasing these items just for myself? No, I have a younger brother, two aged aunts and four cousins. They are all anxious for me to recover our grandfather’s inheritance back to us.”
“Listen Lee,” I said, raising my voice. “We sold the jade to you. That gold piece is a lot older. Your grandfather didn’t make it and neither did your bloody great-grandfather, or any of your other bloody relatives. I told you in my email that we’re going to get it valued. If you keep bloody pestering us, you won’t even get a chance to bid on it. So just back off, and wait for us to get in touch!”
And with that I slammed the telephone down on to its cradle.
Dark Eye of the Jaguar Page 11