When they halted at dusk on the third day, the servants lit small fires before erecting one tent for Mary, Matilda, and Guinevere and another for George Parker and Jonnie. The northern twilight was engulfed by the tides of blackness flowing across the vast inverted bowl of the sky. The moon was an incandescent sliver, and the stars were brilliant arc lights in the clear air, undefiled by smoke from huddled domestic hearths. But the valley was dark, and the flickering cooking-fires silhouetted the figures squatting around their yellow flames. High cheekbones shone under dark pools of eyesockets, and wooden chopsticks hovered over iron grills in disembodied hands to sweep up strips of mutton mixed with leeks, fragrant coriander, sesame oil, and soy-sauce. In the outer darkness, the ponies whinnied nervously.
“Just like the nomads on the steppes two thousand years ago,” young Jonnie thrilled, biting into a sesame bun stuffed with mutton.
“So it is, Jonnie, except we’re so much safer and healthier.” George Parker could never resist a didactic tribute to progress. “If we were nomads, we’d be afraid of attacks from other tribes. You’d lead the caravan because your mother and I would already be very old. Without modern medicine, you know …”
“Yes, Uncle George,” Jonnie agreed tolerantly. “I see.”
“That’s so interesting, Uncle George,” Guinevere flirted. “Can you tell us more?”
“Well,” the American answered, “you see, in the days when the nomads roamed North China and Siberia, they had no doctors, only medicine men who were called shamans. They tried to cure people of disease by expelling evil spirits.”
“Father McAllen,” Jonnie interjected, “says people can still be possessed by the Devil—but not often.”
“Perhaps that’s right,” Parker conceded. “But, as I was saying, today we are conquering disease. And no one would want to attack us.”
A pony whinnied, and the donkeys brayed hoarsely. George Parker cocked his ear to the sounds of the night. Only the soughing of the wind disturbed the still darkness beyond their fires.
Mary nodded, lulled by the soft chatter of the servants and an overwhelming sensation of ease. She had eaten too much lamb and drunk too much warm yellow rice wine. She nodded again, half-asleep.
A whiplash cracked, startling her into full wakefulness. She rose to her feet and reached toward the children.
“A shot,” Dr. Parker said, throwing himself to the hard ground. “Everybody down.”
Dazzled by the firelight, the guards fired their rifles blindly into the darkness. The whiplash cracked again, and a cartman fell. A fusillade of rocks scattered the fires and struck down a guard.
The soft, enclosing darkness that had lulled them into a sense of security was transformed into a vast, brooding menace. Immemorial China stalked the intruders from outside the minuscule circle of light cast by the embers of their cooking-fires. Hoarse shouts volleyed back and forth between their invisible assailants, and a tinny bugle pealed. Resentful of the foreigners’ complacent ease, the voices shrieked half-comprehensible threats.
“Sha! Sha yang kuei-tze!” The high-pitched command shrilled across the valley. “Kill! Kill the foreign devils!”
“Wang-ba tan! Tu-fei!” A guard shouted, emboldened by the abrupt lull in the attack. “Sons of turtle-bitches! Thugs!”
“Kill the running-dogs of the foreigners!” The enveloping darkness responded.
Dim figures on squat ponies circled the embers, firing their rifles into the air. The aggressive guard aimed carefully, and one figure toppled from its saddle. But the mounted men were drawing their cordon tight around the isolated travelers, and other men on foot were approaching closer. When two men burst into the circle of dim light, the guards clubbed them with their rifles.
Mary frantically drew the children to her, but Jonnie wriggled free in excitement. Almost as tall as she, he was determined to play a man’s role. She grappled with her son’s wiry strength, trying to pull him down. A black figure brandishing a rifle appeared in the embers’ light. The butt struck her head. Mary’s hands opened, and her limp fingers released her son.
Later, when she tried to remember, she dimly recalled an interminable journey in the jolting Peking Cart. Later, she dimly recalled jouncing across a roadless plain cradled in Matilda’s arms. Her first clear memory was the terror she felt when she opened her eyes to see George Parker’s distorted face hovering amid woolly grayness. She feared her sight was impaired, but a greater terror swept aside that first fear.
“The children?” she asked. “Are they all right?”
“The kids are fine, Mary,” Parker soothed her. “But you have severe concussion. You must rest, otherwise …”
Reassured, she sank gratefully into oblivion. Later, she was told that she had hovered on the edge of unconsciousness for eight days, sustained by Matilda, who spooned thin millet gruel into her mouth. Later, she was told that she had suffered a hairline skull fracture from the blow. But her own memories were as hazy and distorted as a bad dream.
She knew flashes of lucidity. She clearly remembered waking when Dr. Parker’s stubby fingers changed the dressing on her wound.
“It’ll be all right, Mary,” he said. “We’ve been taken by bandits, common bandits. They’re talking about ransom. They must let us go. I think they’re a bit frightened by what they’ve done.”
During another moment of fitful consciousness, she saw Matilda’s plain, tear-stained face. Guinevere and Jonnie stood behind their aunt.
“Are you all right, Mummy?” her daughter asked. “Are you feeling better?”
“Uncle George says you’ll be fine,” Jonnie told her with masculine assurance. “Crikey! What an adventure! Bandits holding us in a cave for ransom. If I were bigger, I’d …”
Even Jonnie’s ebullience yielded to fear on the fifth day after their capture when two angry brigands stalked stiff-legged into the cave. The smaller, wearing a tattered red tunic that had obviously been taken from the body of some British sergeant long dead, fingered the hilt of his sword. The half-moon-shaped blade, three feet long and a foot broad, gleamed from repeated polishing. It was the only clean thing about the angry brigand chief, whose clawed fingernails were rimmed with filth. The burly subchief beside him was dressed in the faded blue-cotton jacket and trousers of the North China peasant. A constellation of blackheads surrounded his broad nose, and his coarse hair was grimy. He wore a heavy bandolier slung across his chest, and he swung his battered submachine gun in malicious menace.
“It’s finished!” The chieftain spat out his words like venom. “All finished! If there’s no reply tomorrow, we send them your ears.”
Matilda strained to comprehend the heavy Shantung brogue and began translating in response to George Parker’s gesture. But the brigand silenced her.
“No reply in three days,” he stormed, “and we send them heads, your heads.”
After the chief permitted Matilda to translate, Parker pondered his reply.
“Tell him,” the American finally said, “not to be afraid.”
Though Matilda looked at him astonished, Parker overbore her fears.
“I know what I’m doing,” he asserted. “Go ahead.”
While Gwinnie gazed adoringly at the young doctor, Matilda haltingly repeated his words in Mandarin.
“Afraid?” She interpreted the chieftain’s answering tirade. “He says we should be afraid, not him. He has nothing to be afraid of. We’re in his power—and he can kill us easily as stamping on cockroaches, dirty foreign cockroaches.”
“Tell him,” Parker replied, “that we understand why he is afraid, why he is blustering. No one, no sane Chinese harms the Sekloongs, and he is obviously a man of intelligence. We know he has been misled.”
The chieftain replied briefly, and Matilda’s voice quavered as she translated: “If that’s true, he says, then … then the best thing he can do is kill us and bury us all right now. No one could ever know.…”
“I’ve written as he asked, to the most appropriate man
, to Harry, Sek Sai-loong,” Parker said. “The ransom will come soon. If he treats us well, with courtesy, we will understand it is not his fault, that he was misled. If he threatens further or harms us, no power can save him from the vengeance of the Sekloongs. The Societies, the Green and Red Bands, will hunt him to the furthest corner of Mongolia, even to Turkestan or Tibet.”
“He asks: ‘Can you guarantee the ransom?’” Matilda passed on the reply.
“Of course. Just as I can guarantee his fate if he mistreats us. But the Sekloongs will forgive him, since he is only a tool—if he treats us with courtesy.”
George Parker’s hectoring was effective, though similar scenes were played almost daily. His pretence of calm confidence subdued the brigand leader, who was indeed fearful of the consequences of the kidnapping. It had seemed a simple affair when it was originally proposed to him by emissaries from the capital. Even he did not know whom he served, though the emissaries had hinted that the Universal Ruler in Peking himself approved the punishment of the arrogant foreigners. Worse, he had not known that the seemingly insignificant foreigners were connections of the Sekloongs until after he had seized them.
At dusk on the ninth day, Mary returned to full consciousness. A small fire burned near the mouth of the cave, and she lay bundled in quilts on a tarpaulin spread over millet straw. George Parker beamed with professional satisfaction, and Guinevere seized her mother’s hands with fierce affection. Matilda smiled tremulously, and Jonnie jumped up and down, bubbling with long-suppressed words.
“Mummy, you know what, Mummy? Today …”
“Your mother needs her rest,” George Parker admonished. “I’ll tell her quickly. Mary, the ransom’s promised. Tomorrow—or the next day—we’ll be free. I’ll give you a sedative now.”
Mary was ravenous when she awoke the next morning. She insisted on feeding herself from the earthen pot of millet gruel. Matilda yielded, as Matilda always yielded, and afterward produced a pocket mirror. Shocked at the grimy, wild-eyed visage that stared back at her amid a turban of stained bandages, Mary set to work with a damp cloth to repair the worst ravages.
“They’ve come,” Jonnie shouted from the mouth of the cave. “They’ve come. I can see.… It’s Uncle Harry and a big foreigner with six guards on ponies.”
Harry Sekloong erupted into the cave. He swept up his niece and nephew without breaking stride and kneeled beside their mother. When he kissed Mary’s cheek, she felt her tears welling. Behind Harry padded the ponderously comforting figure of Two-Gun Cohen, his broad face beaming.
“At your service, Madam,” he boomed. “Rescues rapidly and painlessly performed. No charge, courtesy of the Gazetted Bank of Gibraltar and Asia.”
“Are you all right, Mary?” Harry whispered, “Mary, my dear!”
“Fit as a flea.” She smiled to reassure him, and pain scythed her temples. “Fit as two fleas—and crawling with fleas.”
“That’s my girl!”
If only I were, she thought bleakly for an instant. But relief swept aside her momentary grief. She heard the Two-Gun General’s rumbling voice. His words puzzled her, perhaps because she was still half-dazed.
“… and a fine addition to our war chest,” he seemed to say.
September 28, 1924
Mary Sekloong’s perception of the next month was fogged by pain. She was bedridden when European civilization began its systematic self-immolation in August 1914. The armies of the Great Powers marched after the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the crowns of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ignited the war that was to destroy the world created by nineteenth-century optimism, dynamism, and imperialism. No human mind could yet conceive the awful consequences of the Great War, but the Sekloongs were well prepared for the immediate commercial opportunities. Despite his preoccupation with the Wheatleys’ threat, Sir Jonathan had acted upon Mary’s advice to purchase large quantities of raw materials and basic commodities. Yet the lingering optimism of the golden era just ending was so pervasive that Jonnie was sent back to Stonyhurst with hardly a thought of the dangers he might face on the journey or in England. The Hong Kong business community, equally complacent, saw no need to alter its accustomed style of life. Everyone knew the war that had begun in August would be over by Christmas.
By mid-September Mary felt strong enough to press Sir Jonathan for an explanation of why her party had been kidnapped and how the ransom had been paid. He was evasive, pleading the press of business and admonishing her that she must rest free of care until she was fully recovered. Though she gathered from Charles’s casual remarks that the Sekloongs were on excellent terms with His Majesty’s Government, while the Wheatleys were in disfavor, she had to restrain her curiosity until the Old Gentleman was quite ready to speak. He finally chose to do so on September 28, the first day she was well enough to attend a family dinner at The Castle to celebrate both her own recovery and Harry’s fleeting visit to Hong Kong. Giving the family champagne in the library, Sir Jonathan offered the information she had sought earlier.
“We, the Allies and China, will finally defeat our enemies,” he observed. “But it will be a long war. However, I want now to give Mary her share of the profits already earned as a result of her advice. We’ve acted most honorably, and we’ve profited thereby.”
Mary accepted a check as large as a page from an old family Bible. Startled by the barbaric display, she folded the thick paper and tucked it into her silver-mesh evening purse. Her finicky genteel mother had instilled the convention: One never so much as glanced at the amount of remuneration in the donor’s presence. Besides, she always left accountings to Sir Jonathan. The sum, she was confident, would buy her a necklace, a sumptuous present for Charles, and a few baubles for the children.
“Have a look,” Sir Jonathan urged.
Mary overcame her reluctance and stiffened in astonishment: Pay to Mary Philippa Osgood Sekloong—£116,327/6s./11d. The single sheet of paper made her independently wealthy.
“But, Father,” she protested, “it’s too much, much too much. I never dreamed …”
“Actually, Mary, it’s too little,” Sir Jonathan interjected. “The finder’s fee I’d normally pay for information and the profits from your personal trading account total 151,378 pounds, 3 shillings, and 8 pence.”
“He’s cheated you, old girl,” Charles guffawed. “He’s holding out, let me see, 35,055 pounds, 6 shillings, and 10 pence.”
“Correct, Charles,” Sir Jonathan said. “Whatever your failings, your reckoning’s excellent. By the way, it’s for Mary’s individual use, not your joint account.”
“So I gather,” Charles laughed. “But, Mary, he wants you to ask why the deduction.”
“Yes, Father,” she responded mechanically, still shocked by the sum, “why the deduction?”
“I deducted your share of the ransom, 35,000 pounds, plus out-of-pocket expenses totaling 53 pounds, 6 shillings, and 10 pence. You’ll note I’ve debited you with only one fifth the ransom.”
“My share of the ransom, I see,” she echoed unthinking, then flared: “Shouldn’t you deduct Jonnie and Gwinnie’s share? What about George Parker?”
“No need,” Sir Jonathan answered softly. “Charles pays for his children—and Dr. Parker was looking after you, my valued business associate. His ransom’s a legitimate charge on the firm.”
“Then,” Mary persisted, “why must I pay my part?”
“Because you’re an independent trader, doing business on your own account. Besides, it was your rashness, your foolishness that got you all captured. You were responsible for the family. I’d put you in charge. Therefore, you pay for yourself—until you learn how to make others pay for you.”
Mary’s resentment was diluted by amusement. The sting in the tail of a princely payment was characteristic of the Old Gentleman’s business philosophy, as was the meticulously precise figure. He was normally scrupulously fair; he could be excessively punctilious when it suited his purposes; he occas
ionally shaded reckonings in his own favor, though always honestly; and he insisted to the last farthing upon receiving all sums due him. She acknowledged the force of his argument and took the moral.
“You never told us, Father,” Matilda ventured, “how you paid our ransom. The Wheatleys must’ve had us kidnapped. But what then?”
Sir Jonathan deliberately chose a panatella, decapitated it with his gold cigar-cutter, and lit it before speaking.
“All right, I’ll begin and let Harry sum up. Of course the Wheatleys were behind it, and others even more powerful. Otherwise, no brigand would’ve dared kidnap a Sekloong. The Wheatleys were desperate after their gold shipment somehow disappeared. They thought they could recoup by putting immense pressure on me. Jonnie, Charles’s heir, and Mary, my invaluable aide—they were taken as hostages. I was to be compelled to end my interference with their plot—the plot blessed by His Majesty’s Foreign Office—to make President Yüan Shih-kai Emperor. Yüan’s men, agents of the Tsung-tung, the Universal Ruler in Peking, actually put the brigands up to the kidnapping.”
“The story, Father,” Matilda reminded him.
“My part was simple. They asked a ransom of 60,000 taels, say 350,000 pounds. But the Wheatleys themselves ended up footing half the bill. That’s the story.”
“Don’t be provoking,” Mary pressed. “That’s an accounting, not an explanation.”
“Harry?” Sir Jonathan nodded to his younger son.
“I can’t be quite as brief. You all know the Wheatleys’d arranged to lend two million taels, about 11 million pounds, to Yüan Shih-kai, their collateral the Imperial Treasures. The Sekloongs were supposed to take the blame, and the Republic of China was to be the real victim. The House of Sekloong would be damned for trafficking in stolen goods; the republicans would be crushed by a new Imperial Dynasty.”
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