Robert Gulik - The Chinese Gold Murders

"Well," Ma Joong said, "I am glad to know that I still can trust my own eyes. I was getting a bit worried about my having mistaken a basket with garbage for a sitting man!"

"Why did Dr. Tsao join that criminal scheme, your honor?" the sergeant asked. "After all, he is a man of letters, and-"

"Dr. Tsao loved luxury," the judge interrupted. "He couldn't get over the loss of his money, which forced him to leave the city and live in that old tower. Everything was false about that doctor, even his beard! When Koo approached him and promised him a large share in the profits, he couldn't resist the temptation. The staff the almoner Tzu-hai. was carrying that night when he met Mrs. Koo and Po Kai contained a bar of gold, part of the doctor's share he was receiving regularly. Koo made a bad mistake when he let his desire for Miss Tsao prevail over his caution, and ordered Dr. Tsao to marry her to him. That proved to me that there was a connection between those two men."

Judge Dee sighed. He emptied his teacup, then resumed.

"Koo Meng-pin was an utterly ruthless, greedy man, but he was not the leader of the ring; he had only been acting on orders. But I couldn't let him name his employer. For that man could have other agents here, who would have warned him. This very nightor rather this very morning!-I shall send posthaste to the capital the platoon of mounted military police you saw waiting outside in the courtyard, to forward my accusation of that man to the president of the Metropolitan Court. By the way, their corporal informed me just now that the military police have caught that fellow Woo, Fan's servant, when he was trying to sell the two horses. He had indeed discovered the murder just after Ah Kwang had left the farm. Woo was afraid he would be suspected of having committed the crime, and fled with the cash box and the horses, exactly as we had surmised."

"But who was the archcriminal who led the smuggling scheme, your honor?" Sergeant Hoong asked.

"Of course that treacherous scoundrel Po Kai!" Ma Joong shouted.

Judge Dee smiled.

"As to the sergeant's question," he said, "I really can't answer that, because I don't know who that criminal is. I am waiting for Po Kai to supply me with his name. As a matter of fact, I am wondering why Po Kai hasn't shown up yet. I expected him to come here immediately after our return from the temple."

As his three assistants burst out in astonished questions, there came a knock on the door. The headman rushed inside and reported that Po Kai had calmly walked in through the main gate of the tribunal. The guards had arrested him at once.

"Show him in," the judge said in an even voice. "Without the guards, mind you."

When Po Kai came in the judge quickly rose and bowed. "Please be seated, Mr. Wang," he said to him politely. "I have been looking forward to this meeting, sir!"

"So have I!" the visitor replied placidly. "Permit me, before we get down to business, to clean myself up a bit!"

Ignoring the three men who were staring at him dumbfounded, he walked over to the tea stove, took a towel from the hot water basin and carefully rubbed his face. When he turned round, the purple spots that gave his face its bloated appearance and the red nosetip had vanished, and his eyebrows were now thin and straight. He took a round piece of black plaster from his sleeve and stuck that on his left cheek.

Ma Joong and Chiao Tai gasped. That was the face they had seen in the They both exclaimed at the same time. "The dead magistrate!"

"His twin brother," Judge Dee corrected them, "Mr. Wang Yuan-te, senior secretary of the Board of Finance." To Wang he continued, "That birthmark must have saved you and your brother much embarrassment, sir, not to speak of your parents!"

"It has indeed," Wang answered. "Apart from that, we were as much alike as two peas in a pod. After we had grown up it didn't matter any more, though, for then my poor brother was serving in the provinces, while I always remained in the Board of Finance. Not many people knew indeed that we were twins. But that is neither here nor there. I came to thank you, magistrate, for your brilliant solution of my brother's murder, and for supplying me with the data I needed for righting the false accusation his murderer brought forward against me in the capital. I was present at the gathering in the temple tonight, disguised as a monk, and heard how you have successfully unraveled this complicated plot, while I never got further than vague suspicions."

"I suppose," Judge Dee asked eagerly, "that Koo's employer is a high official in the capital?"

Wang shook his head.

"No," he replied. "It is a fairly young man, but very old in depravity. A junior secretary in the Metropolitan Court called Hou, the nephew of our secretary-general, Hou Kwang."

The judge grew pale.

"Secretary Hou?" he exclaimed. "He is one of my friends!" Wang shrugged his shoulders.

"Often," he remarked, "one makes mistakes in judging one's closest friends. Young Hou is a gifted man. In due course he would certainly have risen high in official life. But he thought he could find a short cut to wealth and influence by swindling and deceiving, and when he saw that he had been discovered, he did not hesitate to commit a base murder. He was very favorably placed for evolving his evil schemes. For through his uncle he knew every-thing about the affairs of our Board of Finance, while as a secretary of the Court he had access to all documents there. It was he who was the leader of the plot."

Judge Dee passed his hand over his eyes. Now he understood why Hou, when six days before he had seen him off in the Pavilion of Joy and Sadness, had insisted so much on his giving up the plan of proceeding to Peng-lai. He remembered the look of entreaty he had seen in Hou's eyes. At least Hou's friendship for him had not been entirely feigned. And now it was he who had brought about Hou's downfall. This thought took away all the elation he had felt about his solution of the case. He asked Wang in a toneless voice, "How did you obtain the first clue to this plot?"

"Heaven has granted me a special sense for figures," Wang replied. "It is to that gift that I owe my quick promotion in the Board. One month ago I began to notice discrepancies in the statements on our gold market drawn up regularly by the Board. I suspected that cheap gold was entering the country illegally. I started an investigation of my own, but unfortunately my clerk must have been a spy for Hou. Since Hou knew that my brother was magistrate here in Peng-lai, the source of his smuggled gold, he-quite wrongly-concluded that my brother and I were working together on exposing him. As a matter of fact, my brother had written me only once about some suspicions of his that Peng-lai was a center of smuggling, I had not connected that vague information with the gold manipulations in the capital. But Hou made the mistake of many criminals, he assumed too soon that he had been discovered, and took precipitate action. He ordered Koo to murder my brother, and he had the clerk killed. He took thirty bars of gold from the Treasury, and had his uncle accuse me of those crimes. I succeeded in fleeing before I was arrested, and came to Peng-lai disguised as Po Kai, in order to discover evidence of Hou's scheme and thus avenge my brother's murder, and at the same time clear myself of the false accusation.

"Your arrival here placed me in a difficult position. I would have liked to co-operate with you but could not reveal my identity, for then it would of course have been your duty to arrest me at once and forward me to the capital. But I did what I could in an indirect way. I approached your two assistants and took them to the floating brothels in order to interest them in Kim Sang and the Korean girl, whom I suspected. In that I succeeded fairly well." He gave Chiao Tai a quick glance. The tall fellow hastily buried his face in his teacup. "I also tried to draw their attention to the Buddhist crowd-but in that I was less successful. I suspected that the monks were concerned in the gold smuggle, but couldn't discover any clues. I kept a close watch on the White Cloud Temple; the floating brothels were a useful observation post. I saw the almoner Tzu-hai leave the temple in a stealthy way and followed him, but unfortunately he died before I could interrogate him about what he was going to do in the deserted temple.