by Alex Archer
“We think so. We’ve traveled a long way to find out.”
Nodding, Li motioned them into the shop. “Come. Come. We talk to my wife.”
Li shut the door after they entered, hung up a Closed sign and drew the drapes. He cleared a space on the wooden counter beside the big, old-fashioned cash register.
“Please. Put lantern here. I will go get my wife.” He turned and disappeared into the back of the shop, through a heavy curtain.
Annja shivered. She’d learned that having someone she had just met vanish wasn’t always a good thing. On several occasions those people came back with weapons they were eager to use. She reached for the sword, brushing it with her fingertips.
“Easy.” Fiona’s voice was quiet and reassuring at her side. “He’s only telling his wife about the lantern. She’s excited, but she doesn’t believe it.”
Edmund fidgeted. “Frankly, neither would I. Family heirlooms usually don’t reappear two hundred years after they went missing.”
A moment later, Li returned with a tiny woman about his age. She wore a black dress and had her hair in a bun. The couple talked hurriedly, and the woman kept touching the dragon’s face on the lantern as if to make sure it was truly there.
Finally, Li focused on Annja. “This is my wife, Xiaoming. She is very pleased to meet you, and she wants to know if you have eaten.”
“Ni chi le ma” or “Have you eaten” was one of the standard greetings in many provinces in China.
“We have just come from breakfast. Thank you.”
Li translated for his wife. “She has very little English.”
That bothered Annja because it was the woman’s family that had been entwined with Dutilleaux.
“She wants to know how you find lantern.” Li licked his lips hesitantly. “And I want to know why you brought it here.”
* * *
SEATED ON THE COUPLE’S RED couch behind the shop in the living room, with the Chinese husband and wife in small chairs across from them, Annja told the story. Li translated for his wife and had to stop only at a few points to clarify a word or a phrase. Fiona hadn’t offered to translate, but the woman probably thought keeping her knowledge of the language to herself might prove beneficial.
Perhaps it was, because the Li’s seemed to be involved in an argument.
Xiaoming’s husband shook his head. She glared at him balefully, but he refused to budge.
And then Fiona said something in Mandarin.
Xiaoming looked shocked, then happy, and addressed Fiona with renewed excitement. Li got up and walked away in apparent disgust.
After the exchange went on for a time, Xiaoming left the room.
“What was that about?” Annja asked Fiona.
“Mr. Li doesn’t believe his wife should tell us anything. We are gweilo. White people. Outsiders. He’s afraid we are here to do something bad, and that having anything to do with us will only bring bad luck to them.”
Edmund snorted. “Explain to Mr. Li that we are the least of his worries, that he could have been found by someone a lot less friendly than we are.”
“I don’t want to bring that up if we don’t need to. I’d rather communicate on a need-to-know basis.”
Annja nodded. “We’re the outsiders here, and these people didn’t ask for any of this.”
After a few minutes, Xiaoming returned carrying a small lacquered chest. As she spoke, Fiona translated for her.
“My family has carried the story of the dragon lantern and the Frenchman named Anton Dutilleaux for many generations. My ancestor, Tsai Chien-Fu, was a low-ranking administrator at one of the Qianlong Emperor’s banks and worked with the Europeans and Americans. He became great friends with Mr. Dutilleaux because the Frenchman was a magician.
“One day, Tsai Chien-Fu told Mr. Dutilleaux that he would like to disappear from Shanghai. My ancestor’s life here was very hard and he was a young man. After hearing stories of France, he believed he could make a better life for his family in Paris.
“My ancestor and Mr. Dutilleaux made a pact. They would raise money to move the family that wished to come. It was a very big thing they planned to do. Almost an impossible thing.”
Annja thought of how dangerous it would have been to try to take a family so far to unknown lands—without aid of modern technology.
“Together, Tsai Chien-Fu and Mr. Dutilleaux invested in shipping. They made money. They were very good at what they did, and they were motivated. Mr. Dutilleaux had dreams of becoming a performing magician in Paris.
“They traded the money they made into pearls and gems, always saving and saving, always dreaming of the future. They put the savings into the dragon lantern that my ancestor got from his mother as a wedding gift. When the day came that they filled the lantern and it could hold no more, they decided Mr. Dutilleaux would return to Paris and prepare a home and send for Tsai Chien-Fu.”
Edmund couldn’t wait. “Did Anton Dutilleaux steal from your ancestor?”
Surprised when the question was translated, Xiaoming hurriedly shook her head. “No. Mr. Dutilleaux was a very honorable man. They were good friends. Mr. Dutilleaux was in love with my ancestor’s sister.” The woman grimaced. “It was that bad luck caught up with them. My ancestor was not a greedy man. You must understand this. He was just desperate. And he wasn’t dreaming for himself. He was dreaming for his whole family. A large family. A very large dream.”
For a moment, the room was silent. They waited patiently for the woman to resume the story, and Annja feared for the worst.
“In his desperation, my ancestor made a mistake. A terrible mistake.” Xiaoming looked miserable and her eyes were wet with unshed tears. “This story I tell you now, it is not one my family likes to share. We have told no one.”
“I understand, Mrs. Li. But this lantern has drawn the attention of several bad men.” Annja kept her voice soft. “And if we do not solve this mystery, those men may one day show up here.”
36
For a long moment, the woman made no reply. Annja knew no amount of pushing would make the woman decide any faster. Trusting someone was always a big decision, and she’d known them for only a few minutes.
Xiaoming glanced at the mantel to pictures of what might’ve been a daughter. In the photographs, the girl aged from a baby to a teenager. The woman shook her head. “We were not blessed with a boy. My husband works very hard, but he knows that he has no son to give this shop to. There is no one to care for us in our old age. The day will come when our daughter will marry and she will go live with her husband’s family. But I do not want my daughter harmed.”
“We’re going to keep this away from you. If we can… . Please.”
Xiaoming sipped her tea. “Tsai Chien-Fu took something of the Qianlong Emperor. He should not have done this, but he was desperate. He knew, that were he to be caught, his life would be forfeit. But he wanted to ensure his family’s survival.”
“Do you know what Tsai Chien-Fu took?”
“The Qianlong Emperor was a writer and an artist. Did you know this?”
Annja nodded. “Over forty thousand poems and more than a thousand texts.”
“Yes. And the Qianlong Emperor also added calligraphy to paintings and other works of art. In the bank where Tsai Chien-Fu worked, there was a royal seal. The Qianlong Emperor’s seal.”
“Your ancestor took the seal?”
“That, and some jade figurines the Qianlong Emperor himself had carved to be hung in a museum. Tsai Chien-Fu didn’t know the figurines or the seal belonged to the Qianlong Emperor at the time he took them. They were only things. There was no name associated with them. He took them from the bank manager’s office and thought they belonged to that man, who he had cause to dishonor. The bank manager was a very evil man.”
“Why did Tsai Chien-Fu take those things?”
“Because Dutilleaux told him the Europeans sought out Chinese art. He thought they could sell those, as well. Besides, they fit in the lantern.” X
iaoming gazed at the lantern on the small coffee table. “That lantern.”
Edmund studied it. “Even if that were filled with pearls, would the amount really be worth so much now?”
Annja laced her fingers together. “You don’t know much about antiquities, do you?”
“If they don’t relate to magic, no.”
“A royal seal that belonged to the Qianlong Emperor recently sold for over twelve million dollars.”
Edmund’s eyes widened. “Oh. My.”
“Couple that with the jade figurines, which can also be tied to the Qianlong Emperor, and you can plan on the contents of that lantern being worth several millions more.”
“But what happened to those contents?”
Fiona translated the question to Xiaoming.
“While my ancestor awaited word from Mr. Dutilleaux, the theft was discovered. The bank manager was going to be executed. Tsai Chien-Fu stepped forward and informed the Qianlong Emperor’s guards that he was the thief.” Xiaoming’s expression hardened. “At first Tsai Chien-Fu would not tell of his partnership with Mr. Dutilleaux, but he was tortured. My ancestor was beheaded for his crimes, as was the bank manager for allowing the theft.”
Edmund sat enraptured, his elbows resting on his thighs. “And Dutilleaux had already left for Paris.”
Xiaoming nodded. “They never found the things Tsai Chien-Fu stole. The guards killed him too quickly. In turn, for their failure, they were killed. My ancestor’s immediate family was fortunate to survive. After that, their lives were very hard.” She sat a lacquered chest on the table. “Weeks after Tsai Chien-Fu’s death, a package arrived from Mr. Dutilleaux. This package. And there was a letter describing the contents of this chest.”
Edmund looked hopeful. “Do you still have the letter?”
“No. It was destroyed as dangerous. But in the letter, Mr. Dutilleaux wanted to show his good faith to Tsai Chien-Fu. He said that the items in this chest would show him the hiding place he had found for their futures.”
After unlatching the chest, Xiaoming opened the top to reveal three glass lenses sitting on rice pillows. Inscriptions in different colors stood out against the glass.
There was a moment of silence as they all stared.
Annja gestured to the lenses. “May I?”
“Please. I would like answers as much as you would.”
Annja studied the first lens. The glass was uneven, proof that it had been hand ground, shaped and polished. The lines painted on the lens made no sense, though. They weren’t any kind of symbols that Annja recognized as language or a glyph.
“Do you have a candle I can borrow?”
Xiaoming got up and quickly fetched a candle and a lighter.
Annja lit the candle and placed it inside the lantern. When she closed the lantern, a spray of light erupted from the dragon’s mouth and threw an oval of light onto the wall behind the couch. They all shifted so they could see it.
The lenses only fit into the dragon’s mouth one way, as Annja had expected. She popped them in one at a time. The first lens projected a pile of skulls with red serpents running through them.
“This looks like one of the images Dutilleaux might have used in his phantasmagoria show.”
“It has to be more than that,” Fiona said. “Why would he send a phantasmagoria image to Tsai Chien-Fu?”
The second lens projected a moldering corpse with the bones showing through the skin. And more red snakes.
Xiaoming spoke up and Fiona translated. “When my ancestor’s family first received the lenses, they almost threw them away, thinking they were the work of a demon.”
Annja removed the second lens and inserted the remaining one. A black-cloaked figure pulled a skeleton from an open grave. More red snakes.
“Well, that’s macabre.” Fiona tapped her chin with a forefinger. “But I fail to see what point Dutilleaux was trying to make.”
Annja cycled through the images again, then again. “They all focus on death.”
“Morbid, but it hardly gives us a direction.”
“I think it does. We know he hid the treasure in Paris. And there’s one place Dutilleaux knew intimately that focuses on death, skeletons and bodies being removed from their graves.”
“The catacombs,” Edmund whispered.
“Where he was killed.” Annja nodded. “I don’t think Dutilleaux went far from the wealth he and Tsai Chien-Fu collected.”
“People have been searching that chamber where Dutilleaux was killed for years.” Edmund shook his head. “The story about the curse and the possible treasure brought out all the fortune hunters. If anything was there, it would have been found.”
“Yet no one ever admitted to finding anything.”
“Perhaps the treasure had been lost in one venture or another.”
“And it may still be there waiting. You and Xiaoming both believe Anton Dutilleaux was a good man, Edmund. Do you think he was the kind of man to steal from his partner?”
“I want to believe in Dutilleaux, Annja. But this was over two hundred years ago. Whatever was there is surely lost.”
Acting on impulse, Annja placed two of the lenses in the dragon’s mouth.
The images created a confused jumble on the wall, and the red snakes ran rampant.
Carefully, Annja adjusted the lenses, gently turning them in the dragon’s mouth until they overlapped each other. Then, slowly, the snakes lined up and made longer snakes.
Annja picked up the third lens and fitted it into place. Again, she twisted and adjusted. The glass ground and squeaked against the groove. Then, after a moment, the red snakes on the third lens lined up with the others and made a solid line.
“It’s a map.” Edmund’s voice was a croak.
Annja nodded. “It is a map. Probably through the catacombs, and hopefully to where Dutilleaux left the treasure he and Tsai Chien-Fu collected.”
“But there are nearly two hundred miles of tunnels and rooms beneath Paris.” Edmund shook his head. “You’re still looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“Dutilleaux was killed in 1793, right?”
“Yes.”
“The catacombs would have been smaller then. The work of moving the bodies didn’t start until 1786 and continued until 1814. I think we can start at the beginning—Place Denfert-Rochereau, which was called the Barrière d’Enfer when Dutilleaux was alive. I can match this up to a map and see what we have.”
Walking over to the wall, Annja examined an interlocking image on one side. Lines from at least two of the lenses came together there and formed the barest outline of a gate.
Fiona joined her. “That is your starting point, you think?”
“The Barrière d’Enfer remains the main entrance to the catacombs. It was located inside the old Wall of the Farmers-General. The wall was originally built to keep merchants from evading taxes, and they called it the Barrière d’Enfer.”
“The barrier of hell.” Fiona smiled. “I imagine merchants didn’t think highly of the tax collectors.”
“And once the catacombs opened up, the name took on a whole new connotation.” Annja tapped the gate. “That could be the marker for the wall.”
“If this is a true map, then there has to be a legend. In order to follow the route, you have to have a reference, a scale to estimate the distance.”
Annja searched the combined image projected on the wall. Fiona was right. Dutilleaux wouldn’t have made the map without a key.
Xiaoming came close and studied the image, as well. She spoke briefly with Fiona. Judging from the intonation, it was a question. Fiona replied and gestured with her hands, showing different sizes. The woman peered more closely, then pointed to something.
“This one.” Her English was heavily accented, but she got her point across. “One equals eighty-eight.” Her finger indicated three characters.
Annja didn’t recognize either one of them. One of the characters was a single vertical line, which might have represented the number
one, the next looked like the Roman numeral III only with the right crossbar missing and turned on its side. The second number was next to the same symbol, sitting upright to the III with the lower crossbar missing.
“What is that?”
Understanding the question, Xiaoming spoke to Fiona, making her grin.
“That is your key. We were looking for numbers written in English. These are written in Chinese. Very old Chinese, actually. Suzhou numerals.”
Annja closed her eyes. “Missed that. The Suzhou numerals were also called the huama system. It was used in the Chinese markets before Arabic numbers replaced them.”
Edmund shook his head. “Maybe you’ve heard of it, but I haven’t.”
“The Suzhou numerals were based on the rod numeral system involving horizontal and vertical strokes. There were two different styles, the traditional and the Southern Song. The Southern Song replaced symbols for the numerals four, five and nine to reduce the number of strokes necessary to make the symbol. Like changing the symbol for the number four from four vertical or horizontal strokes, depending on which way you were writing on the paper, to an X. That was quicker and more efficient.”
“Eighty-eight seems like a strange number to use as a base.”
Annja traced her finger over the combined lines, following the path along and counting marked divisions that showed in the changes of snake scales. “The number eight is considered a lucky number. It sounds like the Mandarin word for prosper. Same in Cantonese. The Summer Olympics in Beijing started on August 8 in 2008, at eight minutes after 8:00 p.m., just for that reason.”
Annja followed the winding trail to its final destination. There was no marking, just the end. “And if we can follow this correctly, if Anton Dutilleaux’s hiding place has been left undisturbed, we’ll find the treasure.”
Fiona already had her phone out. “I’ll have Ollie get us back to Paris.”
Annja stepped back from the map again and took in the bigger image. Excitedly, she realized they were in the final stages of the hunt.
“You’re smiling pretty big there, Annja Creed.”