He remembered Aristotle Quance. “Vargas!”
“Yes, senhor.”
“How’s Mr. Quance doing?”
“It’s very sad, senhor. Very sad.”
“Send him here, please.”
Quance appeared at the door shortly.
“Come in, Aristotle,” Struan said. “Close the door.”
Quance did as he was ordered and then came and stood unhappily in front of the desk.
Struan spoke rapidly. “Aristotle, you’ve nae time to lose. Sneak out of the factory and get down to the wharf. There’s a sampan waiting for you. Get aboard
Calcutta Maharajah—she sails in a few minutes.”
“What, Tai-Pan?”
“Help is at hand, laddie. Make a huge scene as you get aboard
Calcutta Maharajah—wave and shout as you sail out of harbor. Let everyone know you’re aboard.”
“God bless you, Tai-Pan.” A flicker of light returned to the eyes. “But I don’t want to leave Asia. I can’t leave.”
“There’re coolie clothes in the sampan. You can sneak aboard the pilot’s lorcha outside the harbor. I’ve bribed the crew but not the pilot, so keep out of his way.”
“Great balls of fire!” Quance seemed to have grown inches. “But—but where can I hide? Tai Ping Shan?”
“Mrs. Fortheringill’s expecting you. I’ve arranged a two-month visit. But you owe me the money I’ve laid out, by God!”
Quance threw his arms around Struan and let out a bellow which Struan cut short. “God’s blood, watch yoursel’. If Maureen has any suspicion, she’ll make our lives a misery and she’ll never leave.”
“Quite right,” Quance said in a hoarse whisper, and raced for the door. He stopped short. “Money! I’ll need money. Can you make a small loan, Tai-Pan?”
Struan was already holding up a small bag of gold. “Here’s a hundred guineas. I’ll add it to your bill.”
The bag vanished into Quance’s pocket. Aristotle embraced Struan again and blew a kiss at the portrait over the fireplace. “Ten portraits of the most beauteous May-may. Ten guineas under my regular price, by God. Oh, immortal Quance, I adore you. Free! Free by God!”
He danced a Kankana, then threw himself into the air and was gone.
May-may stared at the jade bracelet. She took it closer to the sunlight that streamed through the open porthole and examined it meticulously. She had not mistaken the arrow that was delicately carved on it, or the characters that read: “Nestlings of hope.”
“It’s beautiful jade,” she said in Mandarin.
“Thank you, Supreme of the Supreme,” Gordon Chen replied in the same language.
“Yes, very beautiful,” May-may replied, and gave it back to him. He took the bracelet and enjoyed its touch for a moment, but he did not put it back on his wrist. Instead he threw it deftly out of the porthole and watched it until it had disappeared under the sea.
“I would be honored if you would have accepted it as a gift, Supreme Lady. But certain gifts belong to the sea darkness.”
“You’re very wise, my son,” she said. “But I am not a Supreme Lady. Only concubine.”
“Father has no wife. Therefore you are his Supreme of the Supreme.”
May-may did not reply. She had been staggered when the messenger turned out to be Gordon Chen. And the jade bracelet notwithstanding, she decided to be very cautious and talk in riddles in case he had intercepted the bracelet—just as she knew that Gordon Chen would be equally cautious and talk in riddles.
“Will you take tea?”
“That would be too much trouble, Mother.”
“No trouble, my son,” she said. She went into the next cabin. Gordon Chen followed and was awed by the beauty of her walk and her tiny feet, his head swimming with the delicacy of her perfume. You’ve loved her from the moment you saw her, he told himself. She’s your creation in some ways, for it was you who gave her barbarian speech and barbarian thoughts.
He blessed his joss that the Tai-Pan was his father and that his respect for him was immense. He knew that without this respect his love for May-may could not remain filial. Tea was brought and May-may dismissed Lim Din. But for propriety she allowed Ah Sam to stay. She knew that Ah Sam would be unable to understand the Soochow dialect in which she resumed her conversation with Gordon.
“An arrow can be very dangerous.”
“Yes, Supreme Lady, in the wrong hands. Are you interested in archery?”
“When I was very small we used to fly kites, my brothers and I. Once I used a bow but it frightened me. But I suppose that sometimes an arrow could be a gift from the gods and not dangerous.”
Gordon Chen thought a moment. “Yes. If it was in the hands of a starving man and he aimed at game and hit his prey.”
Her fan moved prettily. She was glad that she knew the way his mind worked; this made the transfer of information easier and more exciting. “Such a man would needs be most careful if he had but one chance to hit the mark.”
“True, Supreme Lady. But a wise hunter has many arrows in his quiver.” What game has to be hunted? he asked himself.
“A poor woman can never experience the masculine joys of hunting,” she said calmly.
“Man is the yang principle—he is the hunter by choice of the gods. Woman is the yin principle—the one to whom the hunter brings food to be prepared.”
“The gods are very wise. Very. They teach the hunter what game is fit to eat and what is not.”
Gordon Chen sipped his tea delicately. Does she mean that she wants someone found? Or someone hunted and killed? Who could she want found? Uncle Robb’s late mistress and his daughter, perhaps? Probably not, for there’d be little need of such secrecy—and certainly Jin-qua would never involve me. By all the gods, what hold has this woman over Jin-qua’s head? What has she done for him that would force him to order me—and through me the full power of the Triads—to do whatever she wishes?
Then a rumor he had heard clicked into place: the rumor that Jin-qua knew before all others that the fleet was immediately returning to Canton, and not going north as all had presumed it would. She must have sent word privately to Jin-qua and thus put him into her debt! Ayeeee yah, such a debt! Such foreknowledge certainly saved Jin-qua three to four millions of taels.
His respect for May-may increased. “Sometimes a hunter has to use his weapons to protect himself against the wild beast of the forest,” he said, giving her a different opening.
“True, my son.” Her fan snapped closed and she shuddered. “The gods protect a poor woman against such evil things.”
So she wants someone killed, Gordon thought. He examined the porcelain teacup and wondered who. “It’s joss that evil walks in many places. High and low. On the mainland, on this island.”
“Yes, my son,” May-may said, and her fan fluttered and her lips trembled slightly. “Even on the sea. Even among the highborn and the very rich. Terrible are the ways of the gods.”
Gordon Chen almost dropped his cup. He turned his back on May-may and tried to collect his scattered wits.
“Sea” and “highborn” meant only two people. Longstaff or the Tai-Pan himself. Dragons of Death, to go against either would precipitate a holocaust! His stomach turned over. But why? And was it the Tai-Pan? Not my father, oh gods. Don’t let it be my father!