The Island Where Time Stands Still (14 page)

Gregory smiled again, but this time with no trace of cynicism, as he said, ‘I am much touched by the faith you place in me not to run away; but for your own protection I think you ought to insist on an assurance from the Council that they will not hold you responsible should some unforeseen circumstance separate us while we are away, and make it impossible for you to bring me back with you. I must say, though, I still find it astonishing that you should have succeeded in winning the Council's consent to take me on this mission.'

‘My father tells me that when he put my proposals to them they at once saw the propriety of sending a lady to attend the Princess if she can be found, and agreed that no one could be more suitable than myself; but over the suggestion that you should accompany me there was much argument. It would, he thinks, have been turned down but for the strong support it received from Tsai-Ping.'

‘Really!' Gregory raised his eyebrows. ‘Of course, I am on excellent terms with his brother, but I know the Mandarin only slightly, and he seems a cold dried-up stick of a man. I had no idea that he had any special regard for me.'

‘I don't think he has. But he put it to the others that Orientals,
however wealthy, are always at a certain disadvantage when dealing with officials in white men's countries; and that as you are both intelligent and a person of some standing your help might prove very valuable during our inquiries.'

Thus it was that four days later Gregory sailed with A-lu-te, the jovial Kâo Hsüan and the taciturn Tsai-Ping in the converted destroyer for San Francisco. As Kâo was A-lu-te's uncle it had been decided that she need not be accompanied by a chaperon, but she took her personal maid to act as stewardess and the two men had their body servants with them.

Appearance had been sacrificed to comfort in the ship's conversion and a good job made of it. From her bridge aft she had been stripped of all gear to permit of the erection of a superstructure consisting of a double range of cabins, each facing a seven-foot-wide promenade deck that ran nearly the length of the ship. The boats were now stowed on the after end of the new upper deck formed by these cabins, and the remainder of it had been glassed in as a sun lounge with a service pantry; while below the main deck several of the original cabins had been gutted to form a large dining saloon.

On the first evening out Gregory found the dining saloon peopled by a considerably larger company than he had expected. The reason for this was that the ship's complement was sharply divided into two categories—those whose duties might necessitate their communicating with the outside world, all of whom were permitted to go ashore when the ship was in port, and those who were not. The latter were all simple seamen of the coolie caste, whereas the others—engineers, pursers and wireless operators, as well as the navigating officers—had all been selected from the Mandarin families; so as social equals they messed with the passengers.

The Captain's name was Ah-moi Sung. In everything connected with the ship his word was, of course, law; and in all other matters he ranked equal to Kâo Hsüan, as both were heirs to Mandarins and, in the normal course of
events, would inherit seats on the Council. He was a magnificent specimen of the Manchu aristocracy, being six feet four in height and broad in proportion, with handsome features and a friendly expression. Gregory had already met him several times and liked him for his cheerful open manner, but found his conversation limited, as his passion was the sea and he had few interests outside it; yet that, and the fact that he had been a sailor from the time he had been given his first fishing junk at the age of seventeen, made him an extremely capable commander.

Everyone in the saloon was aware that they were again bound for San Francisco and of the reason, so a subdued excitement prevailed. A score of theories were put forward to account for the disappearance of the Princess, but after a day or two the topic wore thin and the company settled down to contain its speculations in patience during the three thousand five hundred mile journey.

All the officers and others who messed in the saloon were, when off duty, equally free to use the two promenade decks and the upper deck sun lounge. In consequence, wherever A-lu-te sat as the only lady on board she found herself the centre of attraction. She was far from unsociable, and much too well-mannered to drive away the constantly renewed little circle of men which always surrounded her. But after two days, during which she had not had one moment to read, take a nap or carry on a private conversation, she began to find these long unvaried sessions of small-talk distinctly trying; so she asked the Captain if he could not provide her with some retreat to which when she felt inclined she could retire to enjoy the sun in privacy.

He at once obliged her by having awnings rigged up partially to screen-off the small semi-circular deck at the stern of the yacht, and with a divan, bamboo chairs and an array of large pot plants converted it into a pleasant little lounge. From then on she continued to use the public decks for some part of each day, but spent most of the time in her sanctum, inviting there those whom she chose to keep her company.

Her uncle having her good name in mind, at first stipulated
that she should never entertain there less than two men at any time; but she insisted that Gregory must be counted an exception to this ruling. She urged that although a social equal he was technically her slave; and she wished to continue the routine they had observed at home, whereby he tutored her on many subjects concerning the outside world, and she gave him lessons in Chinese, to which it would be most boring for any third person to have to sit and listen.

After some discussion a compromise was reached, and it was agreed that A-lu-te's maid, or alternatively Kâo's man servant, should always sit at such times just outside the gap between the screens which formed the entrance to the little lounge, as the presence of one of them there would not be obtrusive but would satisfy convention.

On most occasions the maid, a modest young girl named Su-sen, performed this duty with admirable discretion; but at times her other duties necessitated her being relieved by Kâo's man, P'ei, whom they thought an objectionable person. He was a middle-aged man with a lean and hungry look, which was not improved by a slight squint. Although there was nothing they could actually object to in his behaviour, he had a surly manner, and they soon realised that he considered the job he had been given a justification for spying upon them whenever he got the chance. As making love played no part in their curriculum they did not particularly mind, but all the same they found it vaguely annoying.

During the voyage they saw little of the Mandarin Tsai-Ping, except at meals, as he was a serious student of astronomy and spent most of his time either making abstruse calculations in his cabin, or at night watching the stars through a telescope. But the jovial Kâo had the right of entry to A-lu-te's lounge at any hour and often used it, whilst on most evenings Captain Ah-moi or some of his officers came there at her invitation; so the time passed very pleasantly.

Except for two days during which they ran through the aftermath of a storm, the ocean was calm and the weather sunny. It was late in the afternoon of July the 1st when they sighted land, and by the evening they had passed between the
two peninsulas—a bare nine furlongs apart—that form the Golden Gate into San Francisco's vast bay, which encloses five hundred and forty square miles of land-locked water. Directly ahead lay the great rock that forms Alcatraz Island, surmounted by its tall lighthouse and the grim prison in which the now almost legendary ex-King of the Chicago underworld, Al Capone, had long lain confined. Veering to starboard, they rounded the southern promontory and were directed to an anchorage opposite San Francisco City, which lay facing east upon its landward side.

On coming abreast of Fort Point they had run up the Portuguese flag, and in due course customs and immigration officials came aboard to examine their papers. Under their secret treaty with Portugal, the inhabitants of Leper Settlement Number Six had acquired the right to issue a limited number of passports each year, and these had the appearance of having emanated from a Portuguese Consular office on the island; so no difficulty was made about furnishing those of them who had passports with landing permits. It had been intended to provide Gregory with one of these passports but when the matter arose it transpired that before Sir Pellinore's yacht sank he had had the presence of mind to go to his cabin and slip his own into his breast pocket. Although stained from long immersion in the sea, it was still perfectly legible; so he was able to claim the status of a British subject.

While the formalities between the Captain and the Port Authorities were proceeding, A-lu-te could hardly contain her excitement. Leaning over the stern rail with Gregory she gazed wide-eyed at innumerable buildings of the city, which with its suburbs seemed to spread endlessly through several valleys and over half a dozen hills. In spite of her reading she was a little awed by the thought that in it there lived at least two hundred times more people than populated the whole island in which she had been brought up; and, after the quiet to which she was accustomed, she found the intense activity of the harbour with its hooting tugs, great churning ferries and roaring motor boats quite bewildering.

Gregory, having spent a day there in the early nineteen-thirties,
was able to point out to her some of the most interesting features of the panorama—Telegraph Hill, below which, close to the waterfront, nestled San Francisco's Chinatown; the City Hall, made a focal point by its great dome which was higher than that of the Capitol in Washington; Nob Hill, on which stood the mansions of many Californian millionaires; the Twin Peaks, and to the south of them Mount Davidson which towered up nearly a thousand feet above sea level. Then, still further south, the wooded hills of San Mateo county, and to the west Goat Island—the principal home base in the Pacific of the United States Navy—and again, beyond it on the opposite shore, Oakland and its adjacent towns which together now covered almost as great an area as San Francisco itself.

As they surveyed the bay, the sun sank behind the hills of the city, and by the time the port officials were through, the scene had become a fairyland of a myriad twinkling lights beneath a sky still tinged with the purple afterglow of sunset. A-lu-te was madly keen to be taken ashore that evening, but her Uncle Kâo immediately opposed the idea and clinched the matter by reminding her that they were expecting their countryman Wu-ming Loo to join them; and that their absence on his arrival would be regarded by him as a grave breach of manners.

Mr. Wu-ming Loo, as Gregory was already aware, was Tsai-Ping's nephew by marriage and had succeeded Kâo Hsüan a little over a year before as Export Manager for the island's products. En-voyage a radio-telegram had been sent to him in New York to meet them on their arrival in San Francisco. Kâo had half-heartedly opposed the idea, on the grounds that Wu-ming could do nothing they could not do themselves, so it would be a waste of his valuable time to divert him from his proper business; but Tsai-Ping had overruled his colleague, declaring that the search for the lost Princess should take priority over all else, and that as his nephew had a more up-to-date knowledge of conditions in the United States than either of them his co-operation might prove of value.

When Wu-ming Loo came aboard from the water-taxi, Gregory saw at a glance that he was an extremely presentable man of about thirty-five. His dinner-jacket might have been built for him in Savile Row and he spoke English with the accent of a Bostonian who had been educated at Harvard. He was above medium height, of athletic build and had curiously wide-set eyes, but otherwise pleasing features.

Although he had lived abroad for some years, understudying Kâo in preparation to succeed him, he already knew all the members of the party except Gregory, and having swiftly assessed the degree of regard in which the Englishman was held among them he at once assumed an air of smooth cordiality towards him.

Wu-ming knew nothing of the Council's decision to offer the Princess Josephine the vacant throne, or of her disappearance following her mother's tragic death. He had met them only once, at a christening party given by a mutual acquaintance in San Francisco, so when told the purpose of the mission he could contribute no information of the circumstances in which they had lived; but he willingly offered his utmost assistance in the search for the Princess, and proposed that he should place himself and his car at their disposal the following day.

At nine o'clock next morning, Kâo, Tsai-Ping, A-lu-te and Gregory went ashore in the ship's launch—which, when she was in a foreign port, was always manned by young Cadets who were all members of the Seven Families—and Wu-ming duly picked them up in a Cadillac near the dock gates. It had been decided that the investigation should start at the Août's home, which had been not in Chinatown but in a block of flats overlooking Golden Gate Park and just off Stanyan Street; so, Wu-ming drove them there.

The apartment proved to be one of the less expensive ones in the block, as it was at the back looking out on to a coke yard and consisted only of a narrow hall, one living-room, two bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen. Before sailing for home after his previous visit, Kâo had signed a banker's order for the rent to be paid until further notice, so unless
the Princess had returned in the meantime they expected to find it just as he had left it.

The hall-porter of the block told them that Miss Août had not returned, and that no communication had been received either from or about her. He then produced the keys and took them up to the abandoned flat. As Kâo has visited Madame Août before the tragedy and later made himself responsible for the rent, the porter raised no objection to their request that they should be allowed to search it thoroughly; stipulating only that they should remove nothing from it. He also gave them the address of the daily help who had done the rough work of the flat. It was then decided that Wu-ming should go there and, if he could find her, bring her back with him; as it was hoped that in a second questioning something might emerge which Kâo had failed to extract from her during his first inquiry.