The Shanghai Incident

by Bryan Methods

  “Should we catch him?” I asked.

  Mr. Scant nodded and pulled down his hat a little before breaking into a short run. He cleared his throat as he approached the man.

  “Mr. Adams?”

  The little man turned to look at Mr. Scant and frowned suspiciously. “Yes?”

  “My name is Richard Welles. Do you have a moment?”

  “I’m in a bit of a hurry. My manager doesn’t take kindly to us being even five seconds late.”

  “It won’t take a moment.” He produced a letter. “I’m told you will understand if you read this.”

  The man hesitated but then took the letter and looked at the seal. Seeming to recognize it, he opened the letter, then looked at Mr. Scant with renewed interest. “An esteemed customer indeed, Mr. Welles. Please, come with me. Ah, these are your children? Let’s go together.”

  He led us into the large bank, nodding at two large guards, all the while chattering brightly at Mr. Scant. “It’s rare to welcome one of our exclusive customers, a splendid treat and no mistaking.” He turned to a young clerk and, without stopping, said, “Please tell Mr. Linden that I have upper-tier guests and I’ll be at the meeting just as soon as we’re finished.” He grinned back at Mr. Scant again. “As we promised when the deposit was made, our security is the finest in the world and constantly improving. You have your key and pass phrase, I presume?”

  Mr. Scant nodded, patting his jacket demonstratively.

  “Splendid, splendid. Please step into the elevator.”

  Once we were inside and the doors were pulled closed, Mr. Adams looked at us with the twinkling eyes of a toymaker showing off his latest creation. He put a key into a small hole under the elevator buttons, and the elevator shuddered into operation, going down. After some time, it stopped, and Mr. Adams opened the doors again, letting in air so chilly that we had clearly traveled deep underground.

  Ahead of us was a large safe. A big, bearded security guard stood beside it, but judging by the stool behind him, he had been sitting until we appeared.

  “A happy day, Jeffreys!” Mr. Adams said to the guard. “A customer has come to retrieve his deposit. Open the vault!”

  The big man nodded, and after Mr. Adams went forward to enter his combination, the guard turned the big wheel that opened the door. I wondered if this was all for show—until the large door swung open and I saw just how thick the metal was. On the other side of the doorway were a number of smaller locked safes and cabinets.

  “I’m afraid you are not permitted to step inside,” Mr. Adams said to Mr. Scant. “May I have your pass phrase?”

  Mr. Scant licked his lips and then carefully said, “Know thine enemy and know thyself: win a hundred battles without danger.”

  Mr. Adams nodded and held out his hand, into which Mr. Scant put a golden key. I wasn’t sure whether he had procured this from the Star and Stone Association or from Mr. Jackdaw. Then Mr. Adams turned to go inside the vault, while Mr. Jeffreys, the guard, stood blocking our way. After a time, Mr. Adams came out holding a box, a look of excitement on his face. “Let’s go back upstairs to finish the paperwork,” he said. “To tell the truth, I mostly wanted to show the little ones the vault entrance. Rather exciting, don’t you think?”

  “It was,” I agreed.

  Upstairs, we went to a counter in the main room of the bank, and Mr. Scant was instructed to sign several pieces of paper. Then, finally, Mr. Adams turned the box toward us and opened it with a flourish, saying, “Voilà!”

  I caught a glimpse of a golden statue of some sort in the box, but pink smoke immediately started to pour from the box into the room. Mr. Scant and I both reacted without hesitation, slamming the box shut together, but I drew my hand back just as quickly, because the box was hot enough to scald. The smoke began to force its way out from between the cracks, some of it now black as well as pink, and Mr. Adams went into a panic. “What is this? What is this?” he kept saying.

  When the box burst into flames, more cries of surprise rang throughout the bank, and somebody set off an alarm. “Out! Everybody out!” Mr. Adams cried.

  Mr. Scant pulled me and Victor toward the exit, but a crowd of people all trying to get through had created a blockage at the door, so for a time we were stuck in the room as the pink gas filled it. I held my handkerchief to my mouth and pulled Victor’s out, showing him how to do the same. Looking back at the burning box, I watched as some of the wood fell away, revealing a golden dragon inside, with red eyes that seemed to stare directly at me.

  Once we were outside, Mr. Scant swept us away from the group gathering outside the building and into a nearby passageway.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “We were set up.”

  “Set up for what? Is it a bomb?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t see what this achieved. Sheer idiocy.”

  Mr. Scant led us around a few buildings and then back to the road, where we called over a cab. Its cabin only provided for two people, but we squeezed in. The driver didn’t speak English, so Mr. Scant showed him the business card for the Shanghai Club, the site of our lodgings. The driver nodded, and we were in motion.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “We ask Jackdaw what he was playing at.”

  “What was that smoke? Was it dangerous?”

  “Just a kind of flare smoke, I think,” Mr. Scant said. “Nothing harmful. But I can’t be sure. We can only be certain that someone wanted to send a message.”

  Back at the Shanghai Club, Mr. Jackdaw was waiting in the bar, a copy of the Times and a gin and tonic at his side. The way Mr. Scant marched up to him, I thought a fight was about to erupt. Mr. Jackdaw’s smile wavered just a little. “Something’s wrong,” he said, peering at Mr. Scant over his reading glasses.

  “Yes, something’s wrong,” Mr. Scant snapped. “This was a setup. There was no package for Mr. Richard Welles, only a smoke bomb to be set off in the middle of the bank.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You tell us. I assume the Star and Stone Association wanted to show the foreign banks it can get to them at any time it pleases.”

  Mr. Jackdaw folded the paper neatly and placed it down, then took off his glasses. “Was there an explosion?”

  “It was just a smoke bomb,” said Mr. Scant. “To cause panic. I’m sure it will be in all the newspapers.”

  “It most certainly will not,” Mr. Jackdaw replied. “I’ll see to that. But do you mean to say that for however many years, at no doubt a great expense to the organization, the Star and Stone has stored a smoke bomb inside the bank vault, just to cause a bit of harmless panic when it goes off? There are so many ways to make a political point. Something else must be afoot here.”

  “That man Adams will know my face.”

  “I’ll look for him,” Mr. Jackdaw said distractedly. “This is very peculiar. I need to talk to my hongmen contact. I don’t mind telling you, I’m vexed. Quite, quite vexed. But even so, a deal’s a deal. Here’s what you wanted.”

  Mr. Jackdaw handed over another of the clubhouse’s business cards, on which someone had scrawled a number of Chinese characters.

  “Is it an address?” I asked.

  “More or less,” said Mr. Jackdaw. “Show this to a cab driver or a rickshaw man. He’ll take you where you need to go to find out about your niece. And now, I have a mess to sort out. Excuse me.”

  He pushed his hat onto his head, but I interrupted him. “Mr. Jackdaw, one moment?”

  “One and only one,” Mr. Jackdaw said sharply.

  “What about Victor’s brother? Is he here?”

  Mr. Jackdaw gave a little nod. “I can’t give a full confirmation because names haven’t been recorded, but the Yard understands that the Star and Stone Association has brought a number of young Frenchmen to the city. I don’t know where they’re kept, but it’s likely the boy is with the rest.”

  There was no time to rest. Victor asked Mr. Scant whether we were going to find Julien, and to the
best of my understanding, Mr. Scant told him that we were going to find the people who might know where Julien was. By the time we were outside again, we were almost running.

  After showing the address to the first driver we hailed, the man looked at us as though we were insane and drove away. The second laughed. The third appeared incredulous but called over a rickshaw driver, who shrugged and held out his palm for payment.

  When we were crammed into the man’s little conveyance, he said, “Okay, here we go,” and set off at a remarkable pace. The ride was bumpy, but the man seemed to be enjoying hauling us along, often laughing or shouting at someone he passed, even jumping in the air once or twice. We passed what must have been the cathedral Mr. Jackdaw mentioned, two tall proud steeples stretching up into the sky like red bishops from some immense chessboard. The rickshaw rolled on until finally our driver stopped in a crowded and unremarkable city street, waited until we alighted, then crowed out, “Bye-bye now!” and disappeared.

  Men walked past, talking in French, and Victor’s eyes widened. He shifted his feet as though to chase after them, but then he heard another voice and realized all the Europeans around us were speaking his language. Delighted, he greeted a young couple, and they happily exchanged pleasantries with him. Mr. Scant went to join them and showed them the characters on the card, but they shrugged, clearly unable to read what it said.

  “Hu Bao,” I said. “La nom est Hu Bao.” I couldn’t remember whether la nom or le nom was right for the name, but I knew they would understand either way. And they clearly did, because their expressions darkened. The man pointed at a shop a few doors down, then pulled down his hat a little, while the woman covered her mouth and whispered to him as they hurried away. Undeterred, Mr. Scant led us to the door the man had indicated.

  Once inside, we were met with silence, the silence of a room full of people who had stopped talking to stare at the newcomers who had walked in through the doors.

  The room was smoky enough that you could tell the cigarette smell would linger long after the people had cleared out. Customers sat shoulder to shoulder around hexagonal tables, dressed in unremarkable Chinese clothes in various shades of green. Every man in the room was wearing green, in fact, or brown with small green accents. Their teapots bore green patterns, and I could see that even the dice some of the men were rolling on the table had green detailing. None of the men wore a queue—all had their hair shaved very close to their heads, like the images of Buddhist monks I had seen, only the men here bore scars and false eyes instead of serene expressions of peace.

  One particularly tall and fearsome-looking man, with a face that looked as though it had been made with a bare minimum of skin to cover the skull beneath, stood up. “Oui?” he said.

  Emboldened by hearing his mother tongue, Victor couldn’t help himself. “Mon frère Julien est—”

  Unfortunately, Victor had decided to step forward as he spoke about his brother, and the reaction had been instant and terrifying. Men jumped up at once, pulling out knives and pistols and even a curved sword or two. Someone had stepped forward to grab Victor, but Mr. Scant rushed forward to grab the man’s wrist, and then another two men advanced on Mr. Scant with blades drawn. With a deft movement across his hip, Mr. Scant brought his free hand up with the claw in place, raised to deflect the knives if they came too close. That was when everything exploded into a blur of motion and I felt myself grabbed from behind, strong arms seizing me around my chest.

  “Stop!” I yelled, but it made no difference. “Let go of me! Let go of me!”

  But someone else had their arm around my neck now. Mr. Scant was coming my way, but too many blades had appeared in his path, so I took the deepest breath I could and shouted the one thing I thought could help us. “Cai Zhao-Ji!”

  From deep in the room, another voice pierced the noise, and the tall man shouted in turn. All weapons were sheathed and hidden back under clothes and tables, and everyone was seated again. Everyone except for the tall man and, in a dark corner of the room, a small group of young people, two men and two women. The men I did not know, but the women I had seen before. One was the only other Westerner in the tearoom, the girl we had searched around the world for: Uncle Reggie’s daughter, Elspeth Gaunt. The other was her partner and our savior, Miss Cai Zhao-Ji, who was now stepping forward. For a time, the only sounds were her footsteps and Victor’s soft whining.

  “You’re here at last,” Cai Zhao-Ji said when she was upon us. “And just as I’ve come to expect from Englishmen, you’ve brought a big mess with you.”

  X

  The Viridian Clan

  he day after tomorrow is Duanwu, the festival of the dragon boats,” said Cai Zhao-Ji. “The Xuantong Emperor himself will be in the city. That’s when we expect the Star and Stone to make its move.”

  “Mr. Jackdaw mentioned something about that,” I said. There weren’t enough seats at the table in the corner, so we stood awkwardly around the place where the small group had been sitting. The men, who had not yet introduced themselves, were regarding us with suspicion. They resembled university students, wearing Western suits and neckties despite the heat, and while they wore their hair short, it was not shaved close to their heads.

  Mr. Scant was uninterested. “With all due respect, Master Oliver, we’ve found what we were looking for. Elspeth, please come back to England with us. Your father is waiting and took a terrible beating searching for you in Paris.”

  “I haven’t finished my tea,” Elspeth said. “Nor have I finished my business in China. I’ll write Father a letter. I didn’t want to worry him by writing from Shanghai, but it seems he is worried anyway.”

  Miss Cai seemed to remember something. “Ah, speaking of letters, did you not get mine when you were in Paris? It would have told you what was happening here, without your having to come. I sent it with a man I trust. He should have brought it to you at any cost.”

  “No letter,” Mr. Scant said.

  “That’s a worry.”

  Mr. Scant shook his head. “In any event, we find ourselves in this situation, and the most important thing for me is to get you, Elspeth, back home to your father.”

  “Father sent me away under the care of a criminal organization when I was seven years old,” said Miss Gaunt. “He can wait until my business in China is finished. I’ll write to him.”

  “I’m afraid I really must insist.”

  One of the men in Western suits spoke for the first time. “What makes you think you’re in any position to insist?”

  “Ah, we haven’t done introductions,” said Miss Cai. “Deng, Song, as you know, this is Mr. Scant, Master Diplexito, and Master Veyron. The older boy and his valet helped us with the Woodhouselee business in England. Mr. Scant, Master Diplexito, Master Veyron, may I present Deng Shu-Ming and Song Yu-Sheng?”

  The men bowed from where they sat, so I did the same, and chorused “Very nice to meet you,” along with everyone else—including Victor. But something had struck me. “Master Veyron?” I said, as realization struck. “That’s Victor’s surname? I never thought to ask . . .”

  “How amusing,” said Miss Gaunt.

  “But how did you know it?” I asked.

  “We have our networks,” said Miss Cai.

  “Does that mean you know about his brother? Is he here?”

  “Not here,” said Miss Cai. “But close.” She had a clever face, with thin lips that were always twitching with amusement and bright dark eyes that darted from place to place as though calculating how to disassemble and reassemble everything she saw. She was in many ways opposite to Miss Gaunt, whose every movement seemed languid and simple, as though calculated in advance to be as effortless as possible. Elspeth Gaunt had her uncle’s piercing gray-green eyes and thoughtful brow, albeit without his bushy eyebrows, and her mouth was always turned down as if in disappointment with the world.

  “I do hope we can find the boy’s brother,” said Mr. Scant, “but I made a promise that I would return my niece s
afely to England. That is my priority.”

  “Your niece can decide for herself where she goes,” said Miss Gaunt, fixing her uncle with a stare that he returned. When their eyes met, I felt as though the room’s temperature dropped several degrees.

  “Uncle Reggie is very worried about you,” I said in what I hoped was a placatory tone. “We can work everything out about debts, and I promise you he’s sorry for everything that happened because of the Society.”

  Miss Gaunt broke eye contact with Mr. Scant to look at me. “Neither of you understands my situation at all. Father’s debt hasn’t mattered for months. The owner of this teahouse, our leader here, took on the debt for my sake, and I have worked to repay it, very nearly in full. I wanted my father to pay his own debts, but that became impossible to arrange. What matters is that I’m part of something important now.”

  She let those words hang in the air. “Well said,” murmured one of the young men, Mr. Song, as he raised his cigarette to his lips. The two men, Deng and Song, looked similar to one another, though not similar enough to be brothers. They were both handsome young fellows, with determined faces and serious expressions, confident in their own strength and intelligence. Mr. Deng was slightly broader in the shoulders than Mr. Song, with a wider jaw and wider nose, while Mr. Song’s eyes were set farther apart.

  “This something, is it . . . some sort of international police?” I chanced, remembering what Mr. Scant had said in London. The reaction from the two men was sudden and fierce.

  “Who told you that?” barked Mr. Deng. “What are your sources?”

  “Relax,” said Miss Cai. “After Elspeth and I intervened in England, it would not have been hard for Oliver or his valet to figure out the rest.” She let out a little sigh as the two men settled down, and then looked at me very seriously.

  “In Shanghai, there are three secret societies. The largest is the Star and Stone Association—a group that’s spread all over the country but is most visible here. Its members have a lot of money and influence, and mean to overthrow the emperor. Then there is the Tri-Loom, which is serious about being a secret society. We know of a few members, but the Tri-Loom operates in the shadows, without a leader or a headquarters. And then there is the Viridian Clan, based in the Hu Bao Tea House, where we now sit. Not everything the Viridian Clan has done in its long history has been exactly noble, or indeed legal, but the leader has bright ideas for the future. He’s a man you should meet. In fact, you will meet him now, having come into his teahouse and drunk his tea. Leaving without paying your respects would be a great insult.”