The Island Where Time Stands Still
Page 43
‘Oh thank you! Thank you!’ she murmured, bursting into tears. ‘I feel simply terrible about this. But … but I’ve been in love with Tû-lai ever since I met him.’
‘There! There!’ he comforted her. ‘Dry your eyes, my pretty, and just think of me from now on only as a good friend. I’ll do the traditional thing and act as god-father to your first baby.’
In a remarkably short time she stopped crying, and a few minutes later she said. ‘One thing has been puzzling me a lot. Why did you make me go through that performance yesterday with Kâo’s opium pipe?’
A slight frown appeared on his face; and instead of giving her an answer he asked, ‘What was considered to be the worst crime in old China?’
‘Patricide,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘But, as ancestor worshippers, for a man to kill his father was almost unheard of.’
‘Was there not a crime still more heinous?’
After a moment’s thought, she said, ‘As the Emperor was the Great Father, to kill him would, of course, be infinitely worse.’
Gregory nodded. ‘And am I not right in thinking that such a crime would have brought life-long, indelible disgrace on every member of a regicide’s family?’
‘Yes. Their shame would be so great that they would never be able to hold up their heads again.’
‘I thought so. That is why I refrained from disclosing three of Kâo’s most terrible crimes. To take the last one first; there was one entry in Lin Wân’s diary that I did not read out. He wrote it only an hour or so before he died. It was to the effect that, on leaving, Kâo had made him a present of a most beautiful opium pipe, and that he meant to smoke it that night.’
Gregory paused for a moment, then went on: ‘Now we’ll go back to the very beginning of Kâo’s ruthless steps to remove everyone who stood between himself and Dictatorship. You will remember that towards the end of March both the Emperor’s little sons were drowned. It was said that by some oversight the Imperial boatmen were not warned for duty that afternoon; so rather than disappoint the children the Harbour-Master had them taken out by two of his men. From the terrace of the cage I saw them go to their deaths. Their nurse was kidnapped, although I did not realise it at the time. We were told afterwards that she had taken her own life from remorse at having neglected her charges. Perhaps she did, but it is more probable that she was murdered. The little Princes were taken outside the reef contrary to orders, and I feel sure that the boat was overturned deliberately as the culmination of a clever plot stage-managed by the Harbour-Master on Kâo’s instructions; then when the men who did the deed swam ashore they were promptly executed so that they could not talk. To close that episode for good, a week ago Kâo invited the Harbour-Master to his banquet, and had him poisoned, so that he could never talk either.’
Covering her eyes with her hand, A-lu-te murmured, ‘Those poor little boys! How terrible! There seems to have been no end to Kâo’s crimes.’
‘I have yet to tell you of his most infamous coup,’ Gregory said quietly. ‘On the night of the Emperor’s death Kâo was on duty as his gentleman-in-waiting. Kâo was the last person to see him alive, and the first person to enter his room, when the valet reported that he could get no reply to his knock, in the morning. The Emperor was thought to have died from a wasp sting on the tongue; but it was known to be his habit to smoke several pipes of opium before he went to sleep, and I’d bet my bottom dollar that the last pipe he smoked was Kâo’s. Perhaps Kâo had just made him a present of it, or it may be that he was already too fuddled with the fumes of the drug to notice that it was not his own when Kâo handed it to him. And, of course, the following morning Kâo was able to retrieve it before anyone saw the pipe and recognised it as his.’
A-lu-te looked slightly puzzled and asked, ‘Do you mean that Kâo put poison in the opium?’
‘No. It was the pipe that did the killing. Lin Wân was a much older man than the Emperor so he died much more quickly; but, both of them died as the result of a type of seizure, and the symptoms being much the same struck me as curious. After P’ei’s confessions we knew Kâo to be a murderer; so on our return to the House of Lin, having found Kâo’s beautiful pipe on Lin Wân’s desk led me to examine it carefully. I found that concealed in the mouthpiece it had a strong steel pin, which could be set by a hidden spring to fly out and pierce the tongue or lips of anyone who smoked it. In each case before setting, of course, the pin was smeared with cyanide, or some other very rapid poison. Kâo knew that Lin Wân meant to double-cross him by marrying off Josephine to Tû-lai or one of his other sons. That he killed Lin Wân that way there can be no doubt at all; so I think we can be pretty certain that he used the same method to murder the Emperor.’
After a moment A-lu-te looked up with fresh tears in her eyes and said. ‘Then I have cause to be even more grateful to you than I knew. Had it become publicly known that I was the niece of a regicide, I would never have lived down such a disgrace.’
Gregory smiled at her. ‘You must not thank me, but the gods who decided Kâo to take poison when he did, instead of fighting the case out to a finish. Had it not ended as it did, I might have been forced to disclose these other crimes in a final bid to save our lives. I was hoping that as he had left the pipe with Lin Wân, the sight of it would make him realise that I still had one last card up my sleeve. To my enormous relief, it did the trick; and he threw his hand in.’
‘Tell me just one more thing,’ A-lu-te said, brushing her last tears away. ‘It is about the three wishes that the Mandarins offered you yesterday, for the great service you had rendered them. When they said you could ask any three things that it was in their power to grant, your first wish was that you should now be free to leave the Island, and your second was for permission to return here as often at you liked; but you refused to state your third wish openly, and wrote it for them on a piece of paper. Please tell me what it was?’
Gregory took her hand and kissed it. ‘My dear,’ he said with a very fond note in his voice. ‘I’ve seen the way the wind was blowing for a long time—ever since we were together in the great House of Lin. My third was that, should you decide to marry Tû-lai, they would make him their new Export Manager, and that his wife should be permitted to accompany him on his travels. That is my wedding present to you.’
1 The Cage
1. The pronoun ‘I’ is rarely used by the Chinese, as to do so is considered outrageously immodest. It is also customary for them to belittle self in almost every sentence, and to use most involved methods of expressing their meaning. Even ‘pidgin’ is far from easy to understand by those unaccustomed to it. Any attempt to give a literal rendering of the dialogue spoken by the Chinese characters in this story would therefore, be most tiresome for the reader. In consequence it has seemed preferable to give only, where possible, a Chinese flavour to their speech, while interpreting their expressions into the vernacular.
9 The Big Decision
1. Since the establishment of the First Republic most Chinese place names have been altered—many more than once and some so drastically that they no longer have any resemblance to those they bore for many centuries. Therefore the better-known originals, as given in The Times Atlas of 1922, have been used throughout.
A Note on the Author
DENNIS WHEATLEY
Dennis Wheatley (1897 – 1977) was an English author whose prolific output of stylish thrillers and occult novels made him one of the world's best-selling writers from the 1930s through the 1960s.
Wheatley was the eldest of three children, and his parents were the owners of Wheatley & Son of Mayfair, a wine business. He admitted to little aptitude for schooling, and was expelled from Dulwich College, London. In 1919 he assumed management of the family wine business but in 1931, after a decline in business due to the depression, he began writing.
His first book, The Forbidden Territory, became a bestseller overnight, and since then his books have sold over 50 million copies worldwide. During the 1960s, his publishers
sold one million copies of Wheatley titles per year, and his Gregory Sallust series was one of the main inspirations for Ian Fleming's James Bond stories.
During the Second World War, Wheatley was a member of the London Controlling Section, which secretly coordinated strategic military deception and cover plans. His literary talents gained him employment with planning staffs for the War Office. He wrote numerous papers for the War Office, including suggestions for dealing with a German invasion of Britain.
Dennis Wheatley died on 11th November 1977. During his life he wrote over 70 books and sold over 50 million copies.
Discover books by Dennis Wheatley published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/Dennis Wheatley
Duke de Richleau
The Forbidden Territory
The Devil Rides Out
The Golden Spaniard
Three Inquisitive People
Strange Conflict
Codeword Golden Fleece
The Second Seal
The Prisoner in the Mask
Vendetta in Spain
Dangerous Inheritance
Gateway to Hell
Gregory Sallust
Black August
Contraband
The Scarlet Impostor
Faked Passports
The Black Baroness
V for Vengeance
Come into My Parlour
The Island Where Time Stands Still
Traitors’ Gate
They Used Dark Forces
The White Witch of the South Seas
Julian Day
The Quest of Julian Day
The Sword of Fate
Bill for the Use of a Body
Roger Brook
The Launching of Roger Brook
The Shadow of Tyburn Tree
The Rising Storm
The Man Who Killed the King
The Dark Secret of Josephine
The Rape of Venice
The Sultan’s Daughter
The Wanton Princess
Evil in a Mask
The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware
The Irish Witch
Desperate Measures
Molly Fountain
To the Devil a Daughter
The Satanist
Lost World
They Found Atlantis
Uncharted Seas
The Man Who Missed the War
Espionage
Mayhem in Greece
The Eunuch of Stamboul
The Fabulous Valley
The Strange Story of Linda Lee
Such Power is Dangerous
The Secret War
Science Fiction
Sixty Days to Live
Star of Ill-Omen
Black Magic
The Haunting of Toby Jugg
The KA of Gifford Hillary
Unholy Crusade
Short Stories
Mediterranean Nights
Gunmen, Gallants and Ghosts
This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader
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First published in 1954 by Hutchinson & Co. Ltd.
Copyright © 1954 Dennis Wheatley
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