Sherlock Hong: The Legend of Lady Yue
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The king was impressed.
King Guojian: “You shall not be nameless anymore. From this day on, you will take the name of my kingdom.”
That was how she became Lady Yue.
After that, she gave sword fighting classes to the king’s loyal generals, who in turn taught this to their soldiers.
And so the Kingdom of Yue was able to defeat its many enemies and protect its land from invaders.
To ensure that Lady Yue’s teachings would not be lost, the court officials compiled the lessons into a training manual. They called it The Sword of Lady Yue.
The Art of the Honest Sword can be summarised in a few words:
Make your heart firm, but keep your movements as light as the clouds. Be like a great shadow, to bewilder your enemy. And never ever let your guard down.
Perhaps it was the magic of the late hour. Or maybe there was something in the story that inspired me.
That was when I realised that we had been looking in all the wrong places.
Clang, clang, clang.
I started to see the clues in a different light.
Nam ho chi tao!
CHAPTER 10
The next morning, I was back in Miss Priya’s room at the Adelphi Hotel.
Together with Ma, Constable Flint and the manager, Mr James.
“I have urgent hotel matters to attend to,” Mr James said curtly. “What is this about?”
Constable Flint looked at me for an explanation.
“Sir,” I said, “could you assemble all your watchmen, so we can ask them a few questions?”
Mr James looked annoyed. “We have only employed one watchman. His name is Hamish Morty. Constable Flint spoke to him yesterday. He didn’t see anything suspicious.”
Only one watchman! Then it wouldn’t take us long to find out if I was a genius, or an absolute goof.
Mr James went to get Hamish Morty. Meanwhile, I looked around the room to see if my theory might be correct. But I tried not to appear too interested in anything specific. I didn’t want to give the game away.
Morty was a tall man, probably around twenty years old. He had a thin face and his teeth were stained.
But what I noticed most about him was the pendant around his neck, a round disc that looked like silver. I squinted and thought I saw a five-pointed star engraved on it, with a “9” in the middle. In some parts of the world, nine is considered a lucky number.
I also noted that he wore three rings on his left hand, and four on his right, all with coloured stones and engravings. Clear signs of a very superstitious person indeed.
Mr James introduced us.
“My good sirs, and madam,” Morty replied, with a nervous bow, “I already spoke to Constable Flint yesterday. But I’d be happy to answer more questions.”
Constable Flint went to stand at the door, just as we had planned.
“What now, Sherlock?” he said.
I asked for silence.
I counted to one hundred under my breath, very slowly, and watched until I saw that everyone was starting to feel awkward.
Especially Morty.
Suddenly, I spoke. In a high pitched voice, almost a shriek.
“We have summoned a powerful ghost here today,” I said, “to protect us from evil, and tell us the truth. Yoo! Hoo!”
I seriously thought my mother would burst out laughing. She looked away. Somehow she managed to control herself.
Constable Flint and Mr James were startled. They weren’t expecting me to act like this.
Morty, however, looked thoroughly unsettled. He shook his head and turned towards the door.
“Please excuse me,” he muttered nervously. “I’d rather not be involved… ”
“Not so fast,” Constable Flint said, blocking Morty. “We need you to stay a while longer.”
I quickly continued.
“Yesterday, someone tried to blow up this room,” I yowled, still acting. “Yoo! Hoo! Great ghost, are you here to make him sorry? Please, tell us now!”
I raised my voice. “Please!”
Ma frowned at me, as if she thought I had gone too far.
But before she could speak, there was a strange sound.
Like a cat clawing at a wooden door.
Scrape, tap, scrape, scrape.
Pause.
Scrape, tap, scrape, scrape.
Everyone looked surprised.
Especially Morty.
Mr James checked under the bed, and then inside the cupboard.
“There’s no one else here,” he said. He swallowed hard. “What on earth did we just hear?”
I must admit, it wasn’t going quite as I had planned. But it was too late to stop.
“Yoo-hoo!” I screeched, trying to sound as sinister as possible. “Is the great ghost ready to help us?”
This time the answer came much quicker.
Scrape, tap, scrape, scrape. Scrape, tap, scrape, scrape.
And louder.
SCRAPE! TAP! SCRAPE! SCRAPE!
Morty touched his lucky pendant with his right hand and started muttering to himself. I rushed over and stared at him. He tried to push me away.
“Is this the bad man?” I rasped. Then I rolled my eyes and swished my saliva through my teeth so that it made a really disgusting sound.
“Yoo-hoo! Will you come back from the ghostly world and punish him? Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!”
Perhaps that last bit reminded Morty of some scary tale or incident from his childhood. Because he broke out in sweat. He ran behind Constable Flint and started to curse.
“The boy’s bewitched!” Morty said. He was trembling. “Keep him away from me!”
I lunged at Morty, as though I was going to choke him.
“Yoo-hoo! Pssst!” I hissed like a serpent. “The great ghost saw everything!”
At this moment, the room was filled with a sudden flurry of taps and knocks and scrapes.
So loud and furious that it sounded underworldly.
And finally a woman’s voice filled the air.
“I am here. Yoo-hoo! And I saw what you did yesterday. You must pay!”
It was Miss Priya.
There was no mistaking.
Morty was petrified. He looked around in terror. Then his face turned purple and he threw up.
“It wasn’t my fault!” Morty croaked at last. He was still struggling and trying to leave the room. “I didn’t want to use explosives, but he insisted!”
After that, Morty told us what really happened.
Also, Miss Priya came out from her hiding place.
CHAPTER 11
Hamish Morty was from Penang. Last year, he met a man there who wanted to open a sword fighting school.
Traditional sword fighting schools have a strict code of conduct. They only accept students who are respectable and sincere. However, this man was willing to take in all sorts of shady characters. Thugs, pirates, bandits, cheats, and so on. As long as they were willing to pay the high fees that he was charging.
This man had already been buying up crates of used swords for his school. But he needed something else before he could launch his business. He needed a proper sword fighting manual. Or else the students would quickly realise he was an imposter.
The man was William Fong. He had joined Harmston’s Circus as an assistant, and was using this as a cover to move freely around the region and smuggle swords into Singapore for his sword fighting school.
Clang, clang, clang.
That was why I found the sound so familiar. I had heard it at William Fong’s house when I was investigating the Case of the Immortal Nightingale.
After Old Master Foo kicked up a fuss about Pa recommending Miss Priya instead of Robert Foo, William Fong somehow heard about it.
He knew that The Sword of Lady Yue would be a great asset to his business. So he acted quickly. He hired Morty as the vice principal of his sword fighting school. He also promised to make Morty very rich. Morty was overjoyed.
But first, Morty had to mo
ve to Singapore and work at the Adelphi Hotel as the watchman so that he could spy on Miss Priya and help steal the book from her.
Morty kept a close watch on her room, but he couldn’t find an opportunity to enter and search it.
William Fong got impatient.
The morning the circus came in, he expected that many of the hotel guests would be at the pier. So he sent Morty a small block of explosives. Morty was supposed to blow up the lock on the door so he could get inside and steal The Sword of Lady Yue.
Morty messed up. He didn’t know how to attach the explosives properly. So there was an explosion. But the lock remained in place.
Morty panicked and his mask slipped off his face.
When Miss Priya heard the explosion just outside her door, she guessed that someone was after the book. She peeped out of her keyhole at that very moment, and she recognised Morty.
Morty then ran out of the hotel. He was the man in black that John Chung saw.
Meanwhile, Miss Priya decided to disappear with the book, until it was safe to come out again.
When Ma first entered Miss Priya’s hotel room, she was completely focussed on looking for the book. It didn’t occur to her that Miss Priya might still be somewhere in the room.
But as I read about how the Nameless Lady of the Southern Forest taught herself sword fighting, I was inspired to think creatively and find new ways to make sense of the clues.
So I put myself in Miss Priya’s shoes.
Instead of coming out after the explosion, what if she had decided to hide somewhere in the room with the book, until she was absolutely sure that it was safe to show herself again?
My guess was correct.
None of us noticed this at first, but one of the walls in Miss Priya’s room was built at a slight angle. Because of this, at the far end of the room, there was a gap between the back of the cupboard and the wall.
There was just enough space for Miss Priya to climb up the cupboard, squeeze her way through the gap between the top of the cupboard and the ceiling, and then drop into the small space at the back.
Miss Priya had been standing there quietly for about a day, listening to our conversations. She knew that Constable Flint and his men were watching the hotel, and so, for the time being at least, the book was safe.
Mr James did know about the space behind the cupboard, but he didn’t imagine that anyone could have found a way over the cupboard like that, or squeezed themselves into that gap.
How was Miss Priya able to pull off such a feat?
She had learnt from her father how to be agile and flexible, and after many years of practising yoga, she was able to control her body in all sorts of unbelievable ways.
Through meditation, she slowed down her heartbeat, so that she felt calm and relaxed, even in that stressful situation.
And because she had always practised fasting, she could go without food and water for an extended period of time.
After being inspired by Lady Yue’s story the night before, I decided to decode the taps and scrapes myself, using the copy of the Morse code that Jayathri had made for me.
I discovered that there were actually just eight letters in the message.
In a way, Jayathri wasn’t wrong. If you said it out loud, the message could indeed sound like “nam ho chi tao.”
But this is how it is spelt:
namhctaw
And if you tried reading it backwards:
watchman
The first time Miss Priya heard me enter the room with Ma and Constable Flint, she tried to communicate with me secretly using Morse code. Hence the taps and scrapes.
She didn’t reveal herself then because she thought the watchman might still be spying on the room, ready to snatch the book. So Miss Priya was counting on my help.
She flipped the letters around so that even if anyone else knew Morse code, the message wouldn’t make sense to them.
She actually thought I would be able to decode it, conduct my investigations discretely, inform Constable Flint, and come back for her, all within an hour or two.
But it took me a lot longer. In the meantime, Miss Priya decided not to come out until she knew for sure that the coast was clear.
She just wasn’t expecting my ghostly performance.
From what I had heard about the watchman, I could have guessed that he was an extremely superstitious person.
After Morty’s confession, he led us to his sleeping quarters. We found two crates there, packed with different types of swords.
This was why more and more thugs had been gathering around the hotel. They were there to sign up for William Fong’s sword fighting school. Morty was also selling them William Fong’s used swords, so they could start practising.
Constable Flint and his men went to the circus to look for William Fong. Only to discover that he had pulled off another disappearing act.
As such, Mr James is offering a big reward for any information that would aid William Fong’s arrest.
Old Master Foo was actually full of praise for Miss Priya. He even wanted Miss Priya to accept Robert Foo as her research assistant.
Miss Priya and Robert arranged to talk about it over dinner at the Celestial Reasoning Association’s villa.
Miss Priya invited me to go along and take notes on their behalf. I was excited. I wore my best shirt and I got there early.
But they didn’t talk about The Sword of Lady Yue at all.
Instead, they discussed their favourite books, the places around the world that they wished to visit, and whether Miss Priya would like to stay in the guest house at Foo Mansion while she worked on the translation.
I was bored to tears. I finished my food as quickly as I could. Then I excused myself, so that I could come home and write this report.
Tomorrow, Aisha, Pui and I will be visiting the circus. You might remember that I was keen to see the hypnotist, while Aisha wanted to see the performing animals.
Thanks to Miss Priya, we’re now excited to watch the contortionist as well.
One final thing.
I see that The Sword of Lady Yue is not just a book about fighting. It’s about overcoming your challenges, no matter how great they might be, by doing whatever you can, with whatever you have, wherever you are.
Just as Miss Priya did in that locked room.
I wish you great happiness. And always
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Don Bosco describes himself as “geeky, cheeky and magicky”. His books include the Sherlock Hong series and the Time Talisman series. These stories are full of fun, adventure and mystery, all inspired by Asian history and culture. Don is also the author of the bestselling Lion City Adventures. He lives in Singapore. To find out more, visit his website: http://www.SuperCoolBooks.com