Bill for the Use of a Body (6 page)

‘Trade having come to a complete standstill in Canton the disgruntled British retired to the Portuguese colony of Macao. They had hardly had time to settle in before fresh trouble arose. Some of their ships were lying in the bay here. A party of sailors came ashore, got drunk and started a fight with some of the Chinese fisherfolk, one of whom was killed. Captain Elliot punished the men severely and compensated the bereaved family. But that did not satisfy Viceroy Lin. He demanded that one of the British sailors should be handed over for execution. Captain Elliot refused, so Lin attempted to blockade Hong Kong harbour and forced an approaching supply ship to unload her cargo. For Captain Elliot that proved the last straw and he retaliated by ordering one of his ships to open fire on some Chinese war junks. By November 1839 Britain and China were officially at war and, as you both must know, China got the worst of it.

‘Britain sent sixteen men-of-war from India and four thousand troops. The fleet sailed up the Yang-tse and occupied the island of Fing-hai. The Chinese could offer little resistance to modern European weapons. An expeditionary force advanced eight hundred miles. When they were within one hundred miles of Pekin the Emperor sent his Grand Secretary, the Mandarin Kishen, to gain a respite by entering into negotiations. Elliot, annoyed by Kishen's procrastination, forced his hand by seizing all the forts round Canton. On that Kishen agreed to surrender and signed a treaty with Elliot permitting the reopening of trade in Canton and ceding Hong Kong to Britain.

‘But matters did not end there. The British Government felt that Elliot had not driven a hard enough bargain to compensate them for the trouble to which they had been put; and, on his side, the Emperor, furious with poor Kishen for having given away anything at all to the barbarians, had him brought to Pekin in chains, sentenced him to death and repudiated the treaty. So the war was renewed and Sir Charles Pottinger was sent out to take charge of the situation. He arrived in the summer of 1841. Several more Chinese cities were taken and when Nankin was surrounded the Emperor threw in his hand. By the treaty of Nankin, in August 1842, he not only confirmed Britain in her possession of Hong Kong but agreed to open the five ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai to trade, and made restitution for the two million pounds' worth of opium destroyed by Lin.

‘This terrible trade was resumed and prospered, so that by 1850 India was shipping the drug to China at the rate of fifty-two thousand chests a year. In vain the Emperor tried to protect his subjects by punishing those caught selling the drug. In 1858, by another war, the British forced the Chinese to make legal the sale of opium, and in 1860 to cede to them the Peninsula of Kowloon.

‘Meanwhile the original Colony had passed through many ups and downs. For a long time the Governors sent out from England were men who knew nothing of the Far East and were always at loggerheads with the trader tycoons. In the early days, too, the merchants had visualised Hong Kong as a warehouse that would in time supply China with the greater part of the goods she would buy from the outer world, and when the Government put up for sale the land along the waterfront high prices were paid for all the plots. But a few years after the treaty by which China agreed to receive goods through five ports, each of which began to prove a rival to Hong Kong, property here became as valueless as shares in the South Sea Bubble. A plot for which a Mr. McKnight had paid
ten thousand Hong Kong dollars was auctioned in December 1849 and knocked down for twenty dollars.

‘The merchants were in despair and the island had acquired a most evil reputation. It was said to be the haunt of vice, piracy, pestilence and fever and the British Government was urged to give it up. It even became a saying, ‘Oh, go to Hong Kong', instead of ‘Go to Hell'. But a new Governor arrived, Sir George Bonham. He was a very different type of man from his predecessors. Instead of despising the wealthy merchants he invited them to Government House and sought their advice on ways to better the Colony. They offered him the funds with which to drain Happy Valley and transform it from a mosquito-infested swamp into a healthy suburb and helped him to improve conditions in many other ways. A local aristocracy, led by the Jardines, the Mathesons and the Dents, came into being. They fathered the Hong Kong Club, the Jockey Club, the Cricket Club and amateur theatrical and operatic societies. By their efforts Hong Kong at last began to prosper and the first tourists arrived. Relations with China improved and in 1898 she leased the New Territories to Britain for ninety-nine years, so that the Colony should have more land to supply itself with agricultural produce.'

Julian had already been aware of most of the facts that she had given in her obviously well-rehearsed speech, but that did not lessen his enjoyment of watching her mobile young face as she told the story of the island; and he remained enraptured, almost as though hypnotised, while gazing at her profile as she went on for a further quarter of an hour to tell of the great typhoon of 1906, the conquest of the island by the Japanese, the fears of bankruptcy when in 1949 Mao had bolted the door to Red China, the amazing way in which Hong Kong had saved itself to become more prosperous than ever before, and the wonderful work that was being done to rehabilitate the refugees.

When she had done, Urata said, ‘Thanks a lot, Merri, You've certainly given us a good picture of how the place has grown. But, as you know, I'm in shipping and you've said nothing about pirates. It's said they are still pretty active in these parts. Would that be so?'

Merri gave a slow nod. ‘Yes; piracy still goes on. But not in a form that should worry you. As far back as anyone can remember there have been bad men sailing these seas who attack small coastal vessels and rob them of their cargoes. If, too, they find a passenger on board whom they know to be wealthy they take him prisoner and hold him to ransom. But in these days they would never dare to attack anything larger than a junk.'

‘How about the drug traffic?' Julian enquired.

‘That, too, continues, in spite of all efforts to prevent it. In 1917 the British Government agreed to stop importing opium into China, but after nearly a hundred years the habit of smoking it had become ingrained in the Chinese people, and for a long time past they had taken to growing it for themselves. Today China is not an importer but an exporter of the drug and it is largely from there that the addicts in Hong Kong receive their supplies.'

‘Are there many addicts here?'

‘Alas, yes. It is a terrible problem, and has become much more difficult to deal with since the practice started of converting opium into heroin. That greatly reduces the bulk of the drug so makes it much easier to smuggle.'

‘In the States they're doing a big job reclaiming addicts', Urata put in. ‘Are they doing anything of that kind here?'

‘Oh, yes,' Merri informed him. ‘Out at Tai Lam we have a special prison for the treatment of addicts who have been convicted, and at the new hospital at Castle Peak there is a special ward set aside for addicts willing to submit voluntarily to a course of treatment. My mother works for the Hong Kong Advisory Committee on Narcotics, in a special section of the Customs employed
in preventing the smuggling of drugs, so I could tell you a lot about such matters. She wanted me to work in her office, but I would not like such a life, and as I have never travelled I greatly enjoy talking to people who come from all parts of the world. That is why I asked Major Stanley, who is the head of the Hong Kong Tourist Association, to take me as one of his private guides.'

‘Are you very booked up?' Julian enquired casually.

‘I expect to be free after tomorrow,' she replied. ‘I have been taking Mr. Urata round for the past few days, but on Wednesday he is leaving for Manila.'

‘In that case I wonder if you would care to act as guide for me? I arrived only yesterday and it's over twenty years since I was in Hong Kong, so there are lots of places that I would like you to take me to.'

Producing a card from her bag she handed it to him and said, ‘It would be a pleasure, Mr. Day, if my office has not already booked me for another engagement. Here is the address. Please check with them. Where are you staying?'

‘At the Repulse Bay.'

‘You are wise. It is much more pleasant out there than at the hotels in the town. If all is well, then, I'll call for you with a car at half past nine on Wednesday morning.'

Urata got to his feet and said with more geniality than he had previously displayed, ‘You're a lucky guy to be staying on here, if you get Merri for a guide. But now it's about time that we got back to the city for lunch. Merri's car is parked down where the road ends. Can we give you a lift back?'

Julian was more than satisfied at having achieved such a promising opening to his acquaintance with the beautiful Miss Sang; so he resisted the temptation to deprive Urata further of having her to himself, and said, ‘Thanks, but I think I'll walk. It was good of you to let me join you.'

Seating himself again, he watched them go down
the steps in the grassy slope. Ten minutes later he followed. A mile's walk brought him to the highest station of the cable railway that serves the many fine private properties scattered about the seaward slope of the Peak. In one of its cars he made the precipitous descent to the city. There he took a rickshaw to the office of the Tourist Association. To his relief he learned that Miss Sang would be free on Wednesday morning, so he booked her services from then for the remainder of the week, then he lunched at the Parisian Grill. When he had finished his meal he began to wonder how to while away the afternoon.

Filling in time was Julian Day's perpetual problem. For years he had drifted round the world doing little else. He had a fine house in Gloucestershire, but since he had inherited it he had never been there. With it he had inherited a baronetcy, and his real name was Hugo Julian du Crow Fernhurst; but he never used it. As a product of Eton and Oxford he should have been able to come to Hong Kong with a sheaf of introductions to some of the most interesting people, to sign his name in the book at Government House and to be made a temporary member of the Hong Kong Club; but none of these things was for him, because his real name might have aroused in people's minds a most discreditable affair of the past in which he had been the principal figure.

The fact was that he was absurdly oversensitive about the folly which had ruined his career when young, and underestimated both the shortness of people's memories and the fact that few of them took the view that a youthful indiscretion damned a man for life. His dread of being recognised and ostracised was so great that for years he had avoided mixing with English people of his own class and for company made friends with foreigners or casual acquaintances met on liners or in hotel bars.

Any thought of marriage he had long since ruled out as impossible, because he was by nature fastidious, and the only sort of woman he would have cared to make his
wife was of the kind who moved in the circles from which he was debarred.

Now, a new thought stirred in his mind. To ask any English or American girl, or a foreigner who would at times wish to go to London, and so risk sharing the shame to which he was liable to be exposed, was out of the question. But that would not apply to an Eurasian with whom he could make a home in Hong Kong. They need never go to England or mix with the Government House set. He was so utterly weary of drifting from place to place, living in hotels and on liners, or taking furnished flats. How wonderful it would be to settle down at last with a home of his own and a wife who was intelligent, amusing and unbelievably beautiful.

Before he left the restaurant he had made up his mind to marry Merri Sang.

At the moment when Julian Day's mind was illuminated by the thought that if only he could persuade Merri Sang to marry him his long lonely years of restlessness, roaming the world would be forever behind him, and that his life would begin anew following a pattern of tranquil blizs, some fourteen hundred miles away in Japan Mr. Inosuke Hayashi was conferring with one Udo Nagi, his right-hand man for conducting his nefarious enterprises.

It was December when Hayashi had been interviewed by Police Chief for External Affairs Okabe, in Tokyo. Okabe had been only too glad to see him depart, carrying his son's head in its box; for from the head there emanated a most unpleasant smell, even when the box had been rewrapped in good thick brown paper.

Snow had been falling outside and it was bitterly cold. Not knowing the reason for which he had been asked to come to Tokyo, Hayashi had planned to spend the night in a comfortable suite at the Imperial Hotel. But now, his agile mind seething with rage and venom, he decided to go straight home; so that he might the sooner set to work the network of agents that he controlled in the Far East on the job of enabling him to exact vengeance on his son's murderer.

At the hotel he enquired about trains and collected his suitcase, then went to the station. Such is the efficiency of the Japanese railways that, having shown his ticket to a
porter who told him where he should stand on the platform, when the train came in the coach in which he had reserved a seat drew up immediately in front of him.

It was a very long coach with a walkway down the centre and on either side pairs of seats similar to those in air-liners, so that each occupant could adjust his and lie back to sleep if he wished. But Hayashi's agitated brain was in no state for sleep. Like the other passengers, he took off his shoes and sat with his small feet on the foot-rest.

The train remained two minutes exactly, neither more nor less, in the station then it shushed out, soon to attain a speed of a hundred miles an hour as it hurtled through the vast areas of shanties that house the greater part of Tokyo's
ten
million population and make it the largest, ugliest and most depressing city in the world.