The Island Where Time Stands Still (39 page)

Misinterpreting his meaning, she hurried on, but in a lower tone, ‘I will be obedient and make you happy. I swear I will! I was well taught, and my limbs are strong and supple. I know the seventy caresses, and have practised the forty-one ways of attaining complete enjoyment. I can sing French songs, as well as Chinese; and at the Feast of Lanterns I will hire five other girls to assist me in making for you the wheel of love.'

Suddenly she threw the satchel containing the money on the bed behind her, raised her two hands to the low-necked frill of her night-dress, and ripped it down the centre. It slid to the floor. Standing naked before him, she cried:

‘Look! Am I not beautiful? Men have paid sums which would keep their families for a month to spend a single night in my company. But I am yours for as long as you wish, if only you will save me.'

Without shoes she stood about five feet high, so was moderately tall. She had a graceful neck set on broad shoulders and her hips too were broad, but neither gave an impression of heaviness, owing to their good proportions and her long shapely legs. Her breasts were full, round and firm; her skin had the texture of satin, and her lovely golden body had not a single blemish on it. Gregory could well believe that she had paid high dividends to the Canton tea-house from which Lin Wân had bought her.

‘Listen,' he said. But he got no further. A sound came of the door to the balcony being opened. He saw Shih-niang's eyes open wide, then dilate with terror. The thought flashed into his mind that it must be Lin Wân's men come to rob and kill her. Instinctly, fearing to be knocked on the head from behind, he ducked. As he did so a knife streaked over his shoulder. It caught Shih-niang in the side of the neck. She
gave a high-pitched screech that ended in a groan and fell back on the bed.

As Gregory swung round, the door was already being pulled to. He caught only a glimpse of a fluttering robe that might have belonged to anyone; then it slammed shut. For a second he hesitated whether to give chase or go to the assistance of the stricken girl. The thought that, as she had been pierced in the neck; her life might hang on a matter of minutes decided him.

Running to the bed, he bent over her. Blood had gushed from the wound. Her head lay in a pool of it, and it was dripping down on to the floor. One glance was enough. Nothing could be done for her. The blade had severed her jugular vein. She was already unconscious, and no attempt to staunch the bleeding could now prevent her death.

Gregory's glance fell on the satchel she had flung down before tearing off her night-dress. Chou and his men could not have forgotten it, as it was for it that one of them had killed her. It looked as if on finding Gregory in her room they had lost their heads. Their leader must have had his knife ready, so thrown it, then panicked. But there were five of them, and they might come back for the money at any moment. Meaning to run from the room and raise an alarm, Gregory grabbed it up, so that they should not get it if they returned while he was absent. As he did so, some of the notes fell out on to the floor. His back was still turned to the door as he heard it open a second time. Swivelling round he saw that A-lu-te stood framed in the darkness of the doorway.

He was between the candle and the top half of the bed, so the deep band of shadow he threw hid Shih-niang's head and bloody throat. From where A-lu-te was standing she could see clearly only Shih-niang's dangling legs, the lower half of her naked body, and that it was Gregory who had been bending over her.

‘So it
is
you!' she exclaimed, her voice vibrant with fury. ‘From your recent conduct, when I heard someone talking in here I thought it must be. At least you might have had the
decency to refrain from an attempt upon her in a place where I could hear you.'

Making an impatient gesture, Gregory was just about to cut her short, when a horrible gurgling came from behind him. It was Shih-niang's death rattle. It was the sort of noise that a dumb girl might have made during such a scene; so although she had made no attempt to sit up and pull the bed-clothes over herself, A-lu-te assumed her to be fully conscious. Her golden eyes darkening with anger, she continued to storm at Gregory:

‘Are you not ashamed! As for her, from the first she has shown more the characteristics of a gutter-wench than of a Princess. After this betrayal of what she owes to her position, I would rather die than serve her. And what will Kâo have to say about this pretty plot of yours to establish yourself as our future Empress's lover? You have——'

‘For God's sake shut up!' Gregory broke in, at last checking her tirade. ‘The girl is dead!'

As he spoke he took a pace forward. At the same moment a bulkier form appeared in the doorway behind A-lu-te's. It was Kâo, and now that the candle-light shone upon Shih-niang's gaping mouth and staring eyes, he took the whole scene in at a glance. Evidently he had caught A-lu-te's last words, for, pushing her aside, he thrust out an accusing hand at Gregory, and cried:

‘Not her lover, her murderer!'

Since Shih-niang's scream as the knife pierced her throat, barely two minutes had elapsed. A-lu-te had been first on the scene as she had already been awakened by Shih-niang's desperate pleading; but the cry had roused a number of other people who had rooms opening on to the long balcony. Kâo had hardly arrived when several other men came crowding up behind him, demanding to know what was happening.

Gregory still clutched the satchel bulging with notes. Kâo's arm dropped, pointing at the notes scattered on the floor, and he shouted:

‘He has killed her! He killed her for her money! We must seize him!'

Instantly Gregory saw that he was in as desperate a situation as could possibly be imagined. Shih-niang was dead. There was no one who could confirm the fact that she had been attempting to bribe him to run away with her; no proof that she believed Lin Wân's men to be plotting her death. He had even destroyed her message asking him to come to her room. There was no reason he could offer for being there. If he allowed himself to be seized, no amount of swearing to the truth on his part would be accepted as proof of his innocence. There was only one thing to do. He must fight his way out and make a bolt for it.

That swift decision taken, he stepped back towards the main door of the room, which led out into a corridor. Thrusting a hand behind him he found the door knob. It turned but would not give. Assuming that he would come to her by way of the balcony, Shih-niang must have shot the bolt of the door to the passage. He dared not take his eyes from the hostile faces now glaring at him from less than two yards distance. With frantically fumbling fingers he found the bolt, but was given no chance to draw it back. As his fingers closed round it, one of the men from a neighbouring room launched himself upon him.

With a kick that would have done credit to a ballet dancer, Gregory landed the toe of his right shoe under the man's chin. He was brought up short, his head snapped back, and he dropped to the floor like a sack of coals. While the man was still falling Gregory sprang past him. His chance of getting the door behind him open had gone, and he knew that his only hope now lay in seizing the initiative. Slamming his right fist into one man's face, he hit another with his left a glancing blow on the ear. The first went down with a howl, the second reeled away, but had already drawn his knife and came at him again from the side. Swerving, he seized his attacker's wrist, threw himself flat against him and kneed him in the groin. The poor wretch gave a scream of agony, dropped his knife and doubled up.

Terrified at the sight of the havoc wrought by this human tornado in a few seconds, two less courageous visitors flattened themselves against the wall of the narrow room. Except for Kâo, whose portly form still blocked the door, the way was now clear. This was no time to argue, so Gregory gave him a swift jab in his fat stomach, thrust him aside, and ran out on to the balcony.

A-lu-te had stepped back there after Kâo had pushed past her into the room. But she had seen, as he had, the awful spectacle of Shih-niang, a dark streak of blood across her throat beneath her thrown-back chin, making her appear as though she had been decapitated. At the sight A-lu-te had screamed with horror, and on seeing Gregory dash through the doorway she screamed again.

But no further outcry was needed to rouse the caravanserai. Shouts, cries and the sound of running feet were coming from both inside and outside it. Shadowy figures were running towards Gregory from the far end of the balcony. For a second he thought of scrambling over it and jumping down into the garden; but it was a twelve foot drop. The risk of a broken ankle was too great. With such a handicap he would never get away. Only one line of possible escape was left open. There was no one on the short length of balcony outside A-lu-te's room; and beyond it was the corner of the building.

Kâo, half doubled up, with his hands pressed to his paunch, was groaning in the doorway of Shih-niang's room. Before Gregory had time to move, someone pushed past Kâo and darted at him. As the man ran out, Gregory side stepped, then, holding his open hand rigid, brought the side of it down like an executioner's axe on the back of the man's neck. The force of the blow, added to his own impetus, sent him crashing into the rustic railing of the balcony. It gave way under his weight. With a terrified cry, he hurtled head foremost into the garden.

The group of men running along the balcony were already within twenty feet. Swerving away, he raced past A-lu-te's room. At the corner of the building he cast a
glance over his shoulder to assess his chances. With a gasp of surprise and thankfulness he saw that A-lu-te had thrown herself in front of his pursuers, in an attempt to bar their advance. He knew that the respite she had gained him could be only momentary, but even the grant of time to draw breath was incredibly welcome.

There was no one on the balcony along the side of the building, but he saw that thirty feet from the corner further advance along it was blocked by a solid wooden partition. Again, it seemed that his only hope lay in risking a drop to the ground.

Then a new thought sprang to his mind. In Europe the long range of rooms at the back of the inn would have been regarded as attics. Like a series of peaks and valleys each had its separate roof with a ridge sloping down to gutters. Inside, at their apex, the rooms were not more than eight feet high and their side walls were barely six. The corresponding slopes outside were little more than the thickness of the tiles higher. The gutter of the end roof near which he stood actually came down to a level with the top of his head.

Grasping the gutter with both hands, and praying that it would not break under his weight, he heaved himself up. After a frantic struggle he succeeded in getting one knee on it, then the other. Clutching at the sloping tiles he hoisted himself on to them, and swiftly spread himself like a starfish, to lessen the risk of any separate tile clattering down through the pull his wriggling exerted upon it.

To his immense relief they held, but he was still supporting himself by his toes in the gutter, and he felt that he dared not try to climb higher for the moment, in case his full weight brought both the ancient tiles and himself slithering down on to the balcony like an avalanche.

It was an extremely precarious position, but he knew that he must now gamble on the fact that when making an excited search for anyone, people rarely look upward. Flattened against the tiles as he was, if he remained quite still there was a good chance that his pursuers, finding this
dead-end of the balcony empty, would assume that he must have jumped down into the garden.

With a heavy trampling of feet they came pounding round the corner, and slowed to a halt just beneath him. As far as he could judge from their voices there were about six of them. Holding his breath, he waited. Panting from their exertions they gasped exclamations to one another.

‘He's got away!' ‘He must have jumped over!' ‘There's no one there!' ‘He couldn't have without breaking a leg.' ‘Where else can he have gone?' ‘He may have crawled into the patch of shadow beneath us.' ‘Quick! Let's get down stairs and see!'

With the mentality of the herd they turned and ran back the way they had come. The sound of their pounding feet died away in the distance. Gregory drew in a deep breath. He was safe for the next few minutes, and must make the best possible use of them.

To have dropped down on to the balcony again would have been the height of rashness. An excited clamour was still coming from the long stretch of it; so any second another batch of men might come round the corner. On the other hand he feared that if he remained where he was much longer the ancient gutter which was bearing most of his weight would give way. To be safe on the roof for any length of time he knew that he ought to get into one of the valleys between its gables. The nearest lay between Shih-niang's room and A-lu-te's, and as he was lying on the outer slope of the latter, to reach it meant climbing over the ridge that cut the sky-line about six feet ahead of him.

That sky-line was the trouble. Even if the tiles held as he clambered up to the ridge, anyone glancing up from below could not have failed to spot him, in the starlight, as he crossed it. He decided that the risk was too great. But there was another possibility that might give him slightly better cover than he had at the moment, and enable him to take the strain off the gutter. Like most Chinese buildings that are over a hundred years old, the roof came down at each corner in a graceful saddle that terminated in an upturned
sabre tooth. By working his way along to within a few feet of this curved corner ridge, he could lie in the bend it made and gain concealment on one side from its ornamentation.

It lay only about ten feet off to his right. Gingerly he eased himself towards it until the slope lessened and he no longer had to cling on to the tiles. For a few minutes he rested there, thinking only of the narrowness of his escape and wondering if his luck would hold; then he began anxiously to consider his next move.