by Troy Conway
Priscilla smiled faintly, brushing back her fallen hair with her fingertips. “I don’t think grandfather realized what a treasure had been given him. To him, they were just dirty pictures. He stole a few other things—some bronzes, a couple of paintings of non-erotic variety—and with them in his warbag, came home to prosper as a feed and grain merchant.
“He sold the paintings and the bronzes, but he could never quite dare to part with the scrolls. Personally, I believe he was ashamed of having taken them. People looked on thing differently in those days.”
I studied the scrolls, my heart still hammering out a fandango.
“As far as title goes, I suppose,” I murmured, “since there’s no more dowager empress—he has as good a right to them as anybody. But how did the Red Chinese know you had the scrolls?”
“My husband blabbed, offering them in return for his freedom. There was a wait, the Red Chinese had to consult one of the few scholars they’ve allowed to live. When he told the Party how priceless those scrolls are, the offer was made to my husband. I would be furnished with an airplane ticket to Hong Kong, together with some spending money—I guess they knew how poor we are—if I would bring the scrolls into Red China. Then they’d set my husband free.”
I began rolling up the scrolls very carefully.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked.
She shrugged casually. “Go on to Hong Kong, take the scrolls to be studied. Then go into Red China”
She had lost interest in her libido, I was sorry to see. Even as she finished speaking she stared down at her fleshy body so fully displayed, flushed and reached for a robe. She slipped into it, standing before me. Her breasts bounced half out of her black brassiere as she wriggled her arms into the sleeves.
“You’re a tease,” I grinned.
She blushed even more. She said, “I—I’m tired, all of a sudden. You—you won’t mind, will you, Rod?”
“Of course I mind,” I told her. “But I’m no rapist. If you say no, then it’ll be no. Though with infinite regrets on my part.”
Her quivering hands tied the belt about her waist. Her breasts were almost fully revealed in the low cut of her collar, but she was otherwise decent enough. I sighed for what might have been.
I got to my feet and held out the scrolls. “Sew these back onto your dress. It makes as good a hiding place as any.” A thought struck me. “You sure you don’t want me to sleep here? I mean on the couch, while you’re in your bed? I wouldn’t put it past the Red Chinese to make another try for the scrolls.”
She shook her head. “No. I’ll be fine, thank you.”
My own room seemed barren and lonely when I got back to it. The first thing I did was bring my Lugar automatic out of the bag where I’d been keeping it, together with its shoulder holster. Next time I might not be so lucky, or the men after those scrolls might be armed. I decided not to take chances.
I waited next morning, until Priscilla Saunders came out of her room. Then I joined her for breakfast.
“I’ve put you under my protection,” I informed her.
I heard the rustle of silk as we walked toward our breakfast table to feast on ham and eggs, buns and coffee. Our plane was taking off at noon, it was only a three-hour flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong. We chatted casually about world affairs. Priscilla confessed that she was still worried about her husband; he might be dead for all she knew. Her last letter from him had been more than six months ago; all the negotiations for the scrolls had been carried on by the Red Chinese.
I patted her hand and tried to cheer her. I was positive she was regretting her failure to let herself go with me in her bed. If her mind was not, certainly her female parts were. She was one needy woman.
We taxied to the airport and got back into our seats.
She was not so afraid now. She was becoming a veteran of the airways. Her eyes flashed proudly at me as she unfastened her seatbelt while we flew high above Kyushu island.
“You’ll be a world traveler yet,” I grinned.
“If I ever get out of China alive.”
I told her not to worry, her trip into the interior—she was headed somewhere around Lingling—would be attended with a lot of publicity. She shook her head at that, told me that the Red Chinese had forbidden any publicity whatsoever. Nobody except me knew where she was headed, and why.
“Where are you staying in Hong Kong?” I asked.
“The Carlton.”
“Too far out of town. I want you to be close at hand where I can keep an eye on you until you make that trip. We don’t want you to get yourself killed before you even get inside Red China, now do we?”
She agreed to do what I advised. I asked the stewardness to radio on to Hong Kong and make reservations for Priscilla Saunders at the Hilton, where I had my room. Then we settled back to doze a little and sip the tea which the girls in blue were serving.
Hong Kong is a British Crown Colony. It has no museums, no monuments of any interest, yet it is one of the most fascinating cities in the world. There is a large Chinese section, it has been said that any time it wants, Red China could take Hong Kong for its own. But it is so necessary to the economy of the huge country that it is considered quite safe from attack.
The stores teem in Hong Kong, and you can always buy at discount prices. Red China sends much of its wares to Hong Kong. Every year it grosses in the vicinity of close to half a billion dollars from its Hong Kong trade, a million a day in the food alone which it furnishes. So the eighteen-mile-wide corridor from Red China to Hong Kong is kept open. There are three million people living in the twelve square miles of habitable land that is Hong Kong proper. One third of these are Chinese, who maintain most of the outlet stores which display and sell wares and goods from their huge homeland.
Since the Korean War, Hong Kong has been slowly tuning into an industrial city. Public housing projects have changed the .old Shek Kip Mei shacks and huts into reasonably decent apartment compounds. Labor is cheap. So that today the city is not merely a trading post, it is actively engaged in competing with Lancashire cotton goods and American linen-ware, among other items.
The traveler rarely sees this part of Hong Kong. He is more interested in the vast shopping district that is Kowloon. Here among the ladder more are stores where a man or woman can buy almost anything—cheap, by American standards. It is in these shops and along the clean white sands of Repulse Bay, where the hest swimming is, that the traveler is most often seen.
Priscilla Saunders admitted that she would dearly love to shop in the ladder streets. What woman wouldn’t? But she had to go at once to the art galleries of Pak Dong to have her scrolls looked at. The sooner she was with her husband, the better.
We came down at Kai Tak airport without incident.
The Hong Kong Hilton is a big slice of western life decorated with Eastern touches. It had reserved a room for Priscilla Saunders and at my request it changed that room to move her across the hall from my own room. By this time it was late afternoon.
I suggested we go swimming at Repulse Bay, then dine together in the hotel. She pleaded tiredness and a desire to visit Pak Dong and have her scrolls verified as the work of Chao Meng Fu. She would shower, take a rest, then set out for the ladder streets of Kowloon.
My shoulders shrugged. So be it. I promised myself I would not be that eager to put myself in Red Chinese hands. So after a shower, I put on a lightweight business suit and my shoulder holster with the Luger fitting loosely into it, and knocked on her door.
She was ready, in a linen dress that came down below her knees. Her black hair was parted in the middle and drawn back in a bun at the base of her neck. She looked like my maiden Aunt Tillie.
“Why do you put yourself down all the time?’ I said.
“I couldn’t wear those mini-skirts the young girls adopt. I’d die of shame.”
“I don’t see why not. You have damn good legs. But you don’t have to wear mini-skirts to look presentable.”
She got angry at that, and maybe I didn’t blame her. But it puzzled the hell out of me why a woman who was as handsome as Priscilla Saunders, and with the body she could flaunt, chose to make herself up like a character in a movie.
In the taxi to Kowloon, she sat as far from me as possible, staring straight ahead. It was all right with me; I wasn’t romancing her. I was just playing bodyguard. We were silent along Queen’s Road East and Queen’s Road Central. We might have been lovers having a quarrel.
When we got out and while I was paying the taxi driver, telling him to wait for us and giving him a huge tip of twenty Hong Kong dollars—about three-fifty, American—to make sure he did, Priscilla set off by herself. We were in the shopping district, there were signs in Chinese hanging overhead while the smells of roast duck and frying pork intruded on us everywhere. It was growing dusk, and the shadows were getting longer.
I frankly didn’t go far the running-away act my companion was putting on. Already she was about fifty feet ahead of me. I was afraid I might lose her in the crowd. So I hurried my steps to a half run, and when she turned sideways into a ladder street and began going up the stairs, I wasn’t too far behind her.
Maybe that distance between us was a lucky thing. Because I was able to see four young, husky Chinamen step out of the shadows at sight of the woman, and move after her. I slowed my pace but I put my hand inside my coat pocket to the Luger and loosed it in the holster.
They were on top of her in a blurring movement that bespoke long practice at the art of robbery. One of them clamped a hand over her mouth and an arm about her neck. A second grabbed her skirt hem and yanked it up to show off her handsome legs in gun-metal nylons and red-and-black lace panties, plus a garterbelt to match.
The goons were not intent on sex. They wanted those scrolls. The second man produced a sharp knife, bent forward and began to saw at the threading with which Mrs. Saunders had resewed the scrolls into her dress. The threads started falling away.
The fourth man was the lookout. He crouched in the shadows, staring around him. When he saw me coming up the steps three at a time he moved out of the shadow to stop me, waving an arm and yelling in Chinese at me.
“Ni Hao! You go ‘way!”
I didn’t waste any breath on him, I just kept on caning. He sprang to meet me, hands out and fingers widespread to grip and choke. He must have figured I was a dumb western tourist seeing a lady in distress. His contempt was written all over his face. He would choke me a little, knock me down and kick me a few times just to teach me to mind my own business.
My hand caught his wrist and whirled. I caught the impact of his lunge on my back as I bent. His body rose upward. I yanked hard on his arm. He went flying through the air.
His high-pitched yell of surprise stopped when he bit the brick wall of a building. He slammed into it hard and slid, still upside-down, to the street. He was out cold.
I paid him no more attention, too busy with the man who had been holding Priscilla Saunders. He leaped away from her and whipped out a knife, coming at me on the run.
I met him more than halfway, dodging a wicked slash of the sharp blade, pivoting on a heel and ramming my fist into his belly. He grunted and rocked back a foot. He was a dangerous man with that knife in his hand so I forgot about chivalry and brought my heel up, right into his manhood.
He screamed and dropped, clinging with both hands to his most precious possessions. The knife flew through the air to clank against the flaggings of the steps. His body flip flopped up and down as he went on screeching.
The man who was working on the scrolls never turned his head. He got them undone, he did not dare rip them so as to put a tear in the scrolls; he had been well-briefed as to their value. He let the third man come for me.
I could have shot them both, of course. But I wanted no more trouble, and the Hong Kong police might interfere at the sound of a shot. I dropped to one knee and my hands went out to grab him by his left ankle and knee.
He yelped in surprise. By that time I was putting pressure on the knee, pushing at it while I yanked his left foot toward me.
He went backward, off balance.
I dove for him, the Lugar in my hand. I slammed the barrel across his temple, hard. His eyes rolled in his head and he sagged limply as the body bounced. I recovered my balance and turned toward Priscilla Saunders.
Before he could come to me, the last man had to let her go. She was busy fighting for her scrolls, tearing scratches down the face of the burly young tough, who had managed to get the scrolls by this time, but who couldn’t duck away from her fingers.
I was on top of them both in an instant.
My right foot came up in a savate kick. My heel thudded into the side of his jaw. He whooshed and sagged. I leaped on him, slammed the Lugar barrel under his jaw. He lay like a dead man.
I eased the scrolls from his hands.
Priscilla Saunders was crying, now that it was over. “Wha—what would I have d-done without you?” she sobbed. “You’d have been in a bad way, but never mind that Where’s Pak Dong’s shop?”
“This—this way!”
We ducked under a big sign about a hundred yards from where the four goons lay. Priscilla opened the door. A bell sounded in the rear of a neat little shop covered from floor to ceiling with art objects thrown on tables, hung from wall pegs, dangling from the ailing on lengths of string. Shelvings held statues and ceramics. Everything I saw was beautiful. Pak Dong was a connoisseur Chinese art, all right.
He came from the rear, an old man with a wispy white beard and a bald pate, in black shantung mandarin coat. His black eyes were bright and sly. He made a little bow. From his first glimpse of us, his eyes had been drawn to the scrolls that I held in my fist.
“Ahh, welcome, American visitors. You wish to trade?”
Priscilla said, “I’ve Wrought the s-scrolls.”
The thin white eyebrows lifted. “Scrolls?”
I told him, “The six scrolls of Chao Meng Fu. The legendary paintings about Hsi Wang Mu and her young lovers in their attitudes of love worship.”
His eyes turned to me, surprise plain to read in than. “You know of Chao Meng Fu? Of the goddess-queen of the west?”
“I know these scrolls are priceless. I’d give an arm to own them. We’re here to have you verify their authenticity. But you know all about that”
Pak Dong looked irrigate. I am sure he knew of the attack to be made on us; he never expected to see the scrolls with Priscilla Saunders. But he made the best of a bad bargain.
He bowed low. “If this is true, please to enter my establishment. It will be an honor to see the work of Chao Meng Fu, if it is his work.”
I figured I might as well let him bow we were no babes in the woods. “It’s his work, no doubt about it. I’ve seen enough Chinese erotic art to know. But don’t take my word for it, have a look yourself.”
He did not believe we possessed original art by the great master. In his place, I might not have believed it either. He was going on orders from Mao Tse-tung. I think, a from someone else who was high up in the Chinese hierarchy. He was to give his opinion, and arrange for further travel by Mrs. Saunders if, by some miracle of fate, these were authentic paintings.
He led the way into the rear of his gallery, which was a combination office and workshop. He extended a hand for the scrolls. I handed them to him.
Quite casually he unwrapped them and took a glance at the first one. His whole body stiffened, his mouth opened and the breath wheezed in his throat. He bent forward, forgetting our presence.
His bright black eyes scanned that first silken scroll, up and down and sideways. He was hunting for the telltale signs that would say, as might the voice of Chao Meng Fu from the grave, that this was his work.
“Ho t’ sai,” he breathed.
He placed the first painting very reverently on his desk. He examined the second scroll just as carefully. One by one, he went through them all. When he raised his head, I saw tears in his eyes.
“It is so. These are the works of Chao Meng Fu! I never believed I would see them. I did not believe they existed, though I have heard rumors that once they might be seen in the Imperial Palace in Peking. They have been gone from China for half a century.”
“Now they are back,” I murmured. “And they will be turned over to the Mao government, if the Reverend Martin Saunders is allowed to leave Red China.”
The old head bobbed in agreement. “Of course, of course. It shall be done at once. You may stay to verify the fact.”
He reached for a telephone. Moments later he was talking Chinese into the phone so fast I could hardly follow it. I am a good linguist and I have mastered several of the Chinese dialects, but this was a new one on me. I got a few words, no more, but the substance of the conversation was clear enough.
The American lady had the 8croIls. Yes, yes, they are the work of the fabled Chao Meng Fu. Art treasure worth all the money Red China could pay. It was a crime for them to be outside the motherland. China must have them back again at all costs.
He would arrange for the passage of the American lady, with his own funds he would buy her ticket into the provinces of Kwantung and Hunan. He would write out the papers with his own hand that would give her safe conduct.
He listened for a time; to words of praise, I imagine, for a job well done, because he beamed and nodded. When he hung up, he was very businesslike.
“I shall hold the scrolls here while——”
“Hold it, Pak Dong,” I snapped. “None of your oriental tricks. The scrolls stay with the lady until her husband is released.”
He looked disappointed, but shrugged philosophically. He sat down at his desk and scratched Chinese characters on a sheet of rice paper. This he handed to Priscilla Saunders. He scowled at me.
“Do you accompany the American lady?”