The tomb of Ts'in
“Makee piecee solly,” she repeated. “So it meant ‘I am sorry for you!’
Why should he be sorry?”
Later she understood, and was sorry enough for herself.
Her destination was farther than thirty miles. They halted that night
at a village where rough but reasonable accommodation was provided for
her, and Hoo Sin was promised in the morning.
But it was not until the evening of the next day, after hard going,
that they passed through the deserted streets of a big city, and
turned into a walled courtyard and came to a halt before a handsome
building.
She got out of the palanquin, stiff and aching. She was feeling
depressed and untidy, and in no mood to meet the man of her choice.
They made it clear to her that she might go to her room, and for this
she was grateful.
Again there was no Talham, but the commander of the escort was at
pains to explain that possibly her lover would not be in till later,
and that he had not expected her arrival so soon.
She was shown to the room which she now occupied, a curious little
room filled with Western knick-knacks, and evidently prepared for her.
She had made her hurried toilet, and was wondering exactly how she
could summon the attendant, when the door opened and a Chinaman walked
into the room.
She saw at once that he was of a different class to the men who had
escorted her. His garments were of silk and beautifully embroidered;
his face was almost aesthetic, his mien lofty and commanding.
“I hope you have everything you want,” he said in perfect English.
She gave a gasp of horror, for she recognised the voice of the man in
whose power she had been before.
He smiled genially, reading her thoughts.
“Yes,” he said, smoothing the breast of his silk jacket delicately. “I
am Soo T’si, whom your friends ‘bottled up.’”
There was something in that expression which had been particularly
hateful to the man. His weakness lay in his vanity, perhaps, and the
implied reflection upon his inability to evade the English police had
rankled.
“Bottled up,” he repeated, as with relish; “and now I think I have you
‘bottled up’ also.”
“You must let me leave here at once,” she said.
“I am sorry that cannot be done,” he replied coolly. “You see, you are
not in Hoo Sin. You are in Tai Pan, which is my particular stronghold,
and where I hold certain rights which you would describe as feudal. I
owe you an apology,” he went on, “for telegraphing to you.”
“Then it was you?” she said.
He nodded.
“I thought you would have guessed that. Hoo Sin is some distance,” he
went on, “and I am afraid your lover is pursuing his warlike
preparations in blissful ignorance of the fact that some forty _li_
away the lady of his heart is a prisoner in the hands of his worst
enemy.”
She made no reply.
What use was there in arguing with this man? Whatever was to happen,
no word of hers could move him to pity or to compassion. She must face
whatever had to be faced with all the courage which God would give her
in her extremity.
Fortunately, Soo did not prolong his visit. He made a few enquiries as
to whether she was comfortable, and left her, having first brought
into the room a Chinese girl who was to act as her servant.
“I have decided what I shall do with you,” was his parting speech,
“and you may be sure it will be something highly entertaining.”
For two long days, where every minute seemed an hour and every hour a
year, she was kept prisoner in the little room under the roof of the
Yamen. No indignity was offered to her. Her commands, such as did not
procure greater freedom of movement, were instantly obeyed. Even her
food was cooked in Western style by Soo’s own chef.
They called him Ho-Lao-Ae, “the river Mandarin,” and the name of Soo
T’si seemed to be unknown to them. That he was a person of the
greatest importance she realised from the fear in which his servants
held him.
He had returned from Europe in time to quell a rebellion against his
father, a rebellion which had brought about the death of his
distinguished parent, and a multiplication of deaths amongst other
parents not so distinguished, for Soo punished swiftly and terribly,
and the execution ground outside the city walls ran red with blood as
the executioner wielded his long, heavy sword.
On the third night of her arrival she was awakened by the Chinese
maid, who signalled to her to rise. The girl would have dressed, but
the servant snatched the clothes away.
“Puh p’a!” she said. (“You have nothing to fear”.)
It was a conventional assurance, and the girl attached greater
significance to the phrase than it deserved.
She was allowed to put on her dressing-gown, and thrust her feet into
her slippers, and she followed the beckoning finger through the door.
There was nothing to be gained by resistance as she saw, for in the
corridor outside were six men of the Yamen Guard.
With terror in her heart, but with her head erect, she followed the
serving-maid through what seemed innumerable corridors until she came
to a door before which hung a heavy curtain of orange velvet.
She had no idea as to what was the time. Her own watch had stopped,
but from the glimpse of sky she caught as she passed a window, she
thought it must be nearly three o’clock in the morning.
The servant pulled aside the portière and knocked timidly on the
door, and a voice bade her enter.
Yvonne followed the girl. She was in a larger room than that to which
she was accustomed. It was hung around with Chinese embroideries, the
floor was of polished wood, and divans, cushions, and little stools
formed the only furniture in the place, save for a few carved Buddhas
and a huge hanging lamp suspended from the ceiling. It was unlit, the
only light in the room being a small lamp placed on the floor within
reach of Soo.
He was there alone, but what caught her eye and held her was something
which stood in the very centre of the apartment.
It was a huge glass bottle, ten feet in height, and modelled in the
shape of a medicine bottle. That, in fact, was the design which Soo
had given to his artificers to cast.
The servant left her. The door closed with a click behind the girl,
and she was left alone confronting this man with his cruel, smiling
lips and his sly eyes.
He was smoking a Chinese pipe and was a model of comfort and
self-satisfaction.
“I have sent for you,” he said, “because you represent the last
fragment of opposition offered to me in Europe, and I desire that you
shall be disposed of with the ceremony which the occasion demands.”
Planted against the bottle’s neck was a light bamboo ladder; inside,
dangling from the top, and secured from the outside by a ring fastened
to the wall, was another ladder, a ladder of silk.
He saw her wondering eyes surveying this, and smiled.
“When I was in Europe,” he said cheerfully, “there was a phrase
employed which interested me more than ordinarily. It was the phrase
of ‘bottled up.’ Now, I have never seen any human being so
circumstanced.”
He spoke slowly, choosing his words with great deliberation. “And I am
particularly anxious that this reproach should be removed. You will
mount those steps,” he pointed to the ladder, “and lower yourself
gently to the bottom of the bottle. You will notice that there is a
down cushion upon which you may sit, and you will probably find it
most comfortable.”
“Suppose I refuse?” she said.
He smiled again.
“I think you will not refuse,”--he was very urbane, almost gentle of
speech--“but if you do refuse, I will promise you that you shall be
glad to have that bottle as a place of refuge.”
He uttered two words sharply. The doors at the farther end of the
apartment opened and four men came in naked to the waist--great
muscular coolies with scarcely any humanity in their brutalised faces.
“Suppose,” suggested Soo, “suppose, instead of putting you into the
bottle and disposing of you as I shall in an especially novel fashion,
I find a quicker death for you by handing you to these cattle?”
Her hands went to her face.
“No, no, no!” she shuddered.
At a nod from Soo the men departed.
“_Montez!_” said Soo mockingly, and she went up the creaking ladder
without hesitation.
It said much for the immense size and solidity of the bottle that it
did not budge under the strain of her weight. She sat for a moment on
the edge of the neck with her feet dangling in the cavity where, in a
bottle of ordinary dimensions, the cork would be fixed.
“Go on,” said Soo, and glanced at the door.
She lowered herself with hands that shook down the swaying rope
ladder, and came to rest on a cushion below.
She was in the room, but not of it. She saw Soo speaking but did not
hear his voice till quite a second later, when it had travelled over
the neck of the bottle and down to her. He came across and gave a pull
upon the silk ladder and withdrew it flinging it down on the ground,
and kicked the bamboo steps away. He spoke again, and his servants
removed the only means by which she could escape.
She had to attune her ear to her strange position, and after a while,
when she had learnt to ignore the movements of his lips and wait for
the words to float down to her, she knew as well as though no solid
wall of glass was between them.
He was sitting cross-legged on a cushion, still smoking his pipe. By
and by he knocked the pipe out on to a little porcelain tray and
devoted the whole of his attention to her.
“You may wonder,” he said, “why I have awakened you at this
inconvenient hour to begin a process which is to end your earthly
career.”
She made no reply.
“I do not doubt,” he said, “that you expected sooner or later that
your lover would learn of your unhappy plight and come hastening
across China like a modern knight-errant to your rescue.”
He spread out his hands in deprecation.
“Alas,” he mocked, “your lover is not in a position to assist you, and
far less is he in a position to assist himself.”
“What do you mean?” she was startled into asking, and her voice
sounded strange in that confined place.
“Alas!” repeated Soo. “He sits in the house of the dead, waiting for
death.”
She stared at him in horror.
He picked up another pipe and lit it from the tiny flame in the
smoke-box by his side.
“He discovered the secret of the Emperor’s tomb, you will be pleased
to learn, and even penetrated its interior. I watched his interesting
operations for close on an hour and a half without learning much, for
the Emperor’s tomb was known to me, and I might have forestalled him.”
He thought awhile.
“It was better that he should do the work,” he said, “and that I
should have no more to do than to take the reward of his industry. I
watched him enter, he and his Italian friend, and closed the door
behind them. It was very simple, and was a matter of inductive
reasoning, for the pulling on one silver lamp would open the door as
the pulling on the second silver lamp would close it, since the
robbers must find some way of veiling from the outside world the fact
that they had been guilty of sacrilege. So it proved. Waiting there in
the darkness whilst your friends were exploring the chamber below, I
tested the second lamp and found that the door moved slowly. A dozen
steps lay between them and liberty and life when I pulled with greater
strength, and the door closed upon those inquisitive foreigners--that
is all.”
Something in his tone told her that he was speaking the truth. What
hope was there now? In her heart of hearts she had depended upon
Talham discovering her capture. If he were dead, nothing mattered. If
all this man said was true, death could not come too quickly on her.
She sat crouched at the bottom of the bottle, her hands clasping her
knees, her face fixed on his.