“You idiot,” he said, examining him quickly but scrupulously. No broken bones. No teeth missing. Signet ring and watch gone. Pockets empty.
“You’ve been rolled, laddie. Perhaps for the first time, but surely na the last.” Struan knew that slipping a drug into a lad’s drink was an old trick in whorehouses.
Servants brought pails of warm water and filled the iron bath. Struan lifted Culum into the bath and soaped and sponged him. Lo Chum supported the lolling head.
“Mass’er plentee terribel crazy drink, plentee terribel jig-jig, heya.”
“Ayee yah!” Struan said. As he lifted Culum out, a stabbing pain soared from his left ankle, and he knew that today’s walking had tired his ankle more than he had realized. I’d better bandage it tight for a few days, he thought.
He dried Culum and put him into bed. He slapped him gently around the face but this did not bring him around, so he had dinner and waited. His concern increased with the hours, for he knew that by this time, however much Culum had drunk, he should be recovering.
Culum’s breath was deep and regular. The heartbeat was strong.
Struan got up and stretched. There was nothing to do but wait. “I go-ah number-one Missee. You stay watchee werry good, heya?” he said.
“Lo Chum watchee like mummah!”
“Send word, savvy? Wat time Mass’er wake, never mind, send word. Savvy?”
“Wat for Tai-Pan say ‘savvy,’ heya? A’ways savvy werry wen, never mind. Heya?”
But Lo Chum did not send word that night.
At dawn Struan left May-may’s house and returned to the residence. May-may had slept peacefully, but Struan had heard every passerby and every sedan chair—and many that were only wraiths of his imagination.
Lo Chum opened the front door. “Wat for Tai-Pan early, heya? Brekfass ready, bath ready, wat for Tai-Pan wantshee can, heya?”
“Mass’er wake, heya?”
“Wat for ask? If wake send word. I savvy plenty werry good, Tai-Pan,” Lo Chum replied, his dignity offended.
Struan went upstairs. Culum was still heavily asleep.
“One, two time Mass’er make like—” and Lo Chum groaned and chomped his jaws and snuffled and yawned and groaned loudly.
After breakfast Struan sent word to Liza and Tess that Culum had returned, but he did not tell them how. Next he tried to apply his mind to business.
He signed papers and approved heavier spending on the Hong Kong buildings, indignant at the rising costs of lumber and brick and labor and all manner of ships’ stores, ship repairs, ship equipment.
The pox on’t! Costs are up fifty percent—and no sign of them coming down. Do I lay keels for new clippers next year or gamble on what we have? Gamble that the sea will na sink any? You have to buy more.
So he ordered one new clipper. He would call her
Tessan Cloud and she would be Culum’s birthday present. But even the thought of a new, beautiful clipper did not thrill him as it should. It reminded him of
Lotus Cloud soon to be abuilding in Glasgow, and the sea fight next year with Wu Kwok—if he was still alive—or Wu Fang Choi, the father, and his pirates. He wondered if Scragger’s lads would get home safely. It would be another month at least before they were home—another three months for the news to come back.
He closed his office and went to the English Club and chatted to Horatio for a moment, then with some of the traders, and played a game of billiards, but got no enjoyment from the company or the game. The talk was all business, all anxiety about disaster signs on the international level and the extent of their huge trade gambles of the season.
He sat in the large, quiet reading room and picked up the last mail’s newspapers of three months ago.
With effort, he concentrated on an editorial. It told of widespread industrial unrest in the Midlands and asserted that it was imperative to pay a fair wage for a fair day’s work. Another article lamented that the huge industrial machine of England was operating at only half capacity and cried that greater new markets
must be found for the productive wealth it could spew forth; more production meant cheaper goods, increased employment, higher wages.
There were new articles that told of tension and war clouds over France and Spain because of the succession to the Spanish throne; Prussia was spreading its tentacles into all the German states to dominate them and a Franco-Prussian confrontation was imminent; there were war clouds over Russia and the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire; war clouds over the Italian States that wished to throw out the upstart French King of Naples and join together or not to join together, and the Pope, French-supported, was involved in the political arena; there were war clouds over South Africa because the Boers—who had over the last four years trekked out of the Cape Colony to establish the Transvaal and the Orange Free State—were now threatening the English colony of Natal and war was expected by the next mail; there were anti-Semitic riots and pogroms throughout Europe; Catholics were fighting against Protestants, Mohammedans against Hindus, against Catholics, against Protestants, and they fighting among themselves; there were Red Indian wars in America, animosity between the Northern and Southern states, animosity between America and Britain over Canada, trouble in Ireland, Sweden, Finland, India, Egypt, the Balkans . . .
“Does na matter what you read!” Struan exploded to no one in particular. “The whole world’s mad, by God!”
“What’s amiss, Tai-Pan?” Horatio asked, startled from his hate-filled reverie.
“The whole world’s mad, that’s what’s amiss! Why the devil will people na stop hacking each other to pieces and live in peace?”
“Quite agree,” Masterson shouted from across the room. “Absolutely. Terrible place to bring children into, by God. Whole world’s going to the dogs. Gone to the dogs. Much better years ago, what? Disgusting.”
“Yes,” Roach said. “World’s going too fast. The cursed Government’s got its head in its proverbial rectum—as usual. By God, you’d think they’d learn, but they never will. Every God-cursed day you read that the Prime Minister said, ‘We’ve all got to tighten our belts.’ For the love of God, have you ever heard anyone say we could loosen them a bit?”
“I hear the import tax on tea’s being doubled,” Masterson said. “And if that maniac Peel ever gets in, that bugger’s sure to bring in income tax! That invention of the devil!”
There was a general outcry and venom was heaped on Peel’s head.
“The man’s a damned anarchist!” Masterson said.
“Nonsense,” Roach said. “It’s not taxes, it’s just that there are too many people. Birth control’s the thing.”
“What?” Masterson roared. “Don’t start on that blasphemous, disgusting idea! Are you anti-Christ, for God’s sake?”
“No, by God. But we’re being swamped by the lower classes. I’m not saying
we should, but they should, by God! Gallows bait, most of the scum!”
Struan tossed the papers aside and went to the English Hotel. It was an imposing, colonnaded building like the Club.
In the barbershop he had his hair trimmed and shampooed. Later he sent for Svenson, the Swedish seaman masseur.
The gnarled old man pummeled him with hands of steel and rubbed ice all over him and dried him with a rough towel until his flesh tingled.