The Ruby in the Smoke (22 page)

Mrs. Holland faced her again.

"All right," she said. "You got it right. They came back and found the maharajah dead, and Lockhart knocked

Marchbanks down for a coward. Then he heard the child crying. You, that was. Marchbank's wife had died—sickly thing. Lockhart says, is this pore child going to grow up with a coward for a father? A coward and an opium-smoker? Take the ruby, he says. Take it and be damned, but give me the child . . ."

She stopped. Sally heard the heavy tread of the policeman returning. Neither of the women moved; the ruby lay on the parapet, in plain view. The policeman stopped.

"All right, ladies?"

"Yes, thank you," said Sally.

"Nasty night to be out. We're going to have more rain, I shouldn't wonder."

"Wouldn't be surprised," said Mrs. Holland.

"I should get off indoors if I was you. I wouldn't be out meself if I didn't have to be, eh? Well, back to the beat."

He touched his helmet and walked on.

"Go on," said Sally.

"So Marchbanks snatches the child—that's you—from the cradle and gives it to Lx)ckhart. It was the opium and the debts working in his mind. And he pockets the ruby, and—^that's all."

"No, it isn't. What did Captain Lockhart's wife say?"

"Wife? He never had a wife. He was a bachelor."

And that was Sally's mother gone. Wiped away at a stroke: and it was almost the worst blow of all to know that that wonderful, vital woman had never even existed.

Sally said shakily, "But I've got a scar on my arm. A bullet—"

"That was no bullet; that was a knife. The same knife as killed the maharajah, rot his soul. They was going to kill you, only they was disturbed."

Sally felt faint. "Well, go on," she said. "What about you.^ How do you come into it? Don't forget, I know some of it, and if you don't tell the truth—"

She took hold of the corner of the handkerchief. It was a lie: she had no idea of how Mrs. Holland was involved, but from the old woman's gasp as Sally reached for the ruby, Sally knew she would get the truth.

"It was me husband," she said hoarsely. "Horatio. He was a soldier in the regiment, and he got wind of it."

"How?" said Sally, and pushed the stone closer to the edge.

"He was down there," said Mrs. Holland swiftly, her hands twisting around each other in her anxiety. "He saw it and heard it. And later on, back home—"

"So you blackmailed him. Major Marchbanks, my real father. You robbed him of everything. Didn't you?"

"He was ashamed. Bitter ashamed. Course he didn't want no one to hear about what he done. Sell his own child for a jewel? Dreadful."

"But why do you say the ruby is yours? If the mahara-jah gave it to Captain Lx>ckhart, and he gave it to Major Marchbanks, what right have you got to it?"

"I got the best right of any of you. He promised it to me hisself twenty years before, the lying bastard. He promised it."

"Who? My father?"

"No—the maharajah!"

"What? Why? Whatever for?"

"He was in love with me."

Sally laughed. The idea was preposterous; the old woman was making it up.

But Mrs. Holland shook her fist in fury, and hissed,

"It's true! So help me God I made a bargain with you, missy, the truth for the ruby, and this is God's own truth. You look at me now and you think I'm old and ugly, but twenty years before the mutiny—before I married—I were the loveliest lass in the whole o' northern India. Pretty Molly Beckwith, they used to call me. My father were the company farrier in Agrapur—only a humble civilian, but they all came to pay their respects, the officers, and make eyes at me—and not only the officers, neither. The maharajah hisself fell for me, damn him. You know what he wanted. . . . He were crazy with love for me, and I'd toss me head at him—a head full o' dark curls. . . . You think you're pretty; you're a washed-out mournful thing beside the girl I was. You're nothing, you are. You'd never compare. Well, the maharajah promised me the ruby. So I gave in. And then he laughed and threw me out of the palace; and I never saw the ruby again till that night in the Residency cellars—"

'*It was you who saw everything, then! Not your husband!"

"What's it matter now? Yes, I saw it all. More than that: I let in the men who killed him. And I laughed as he died . . ."

She smiled at the memory. Sally could see nothing of the beauty she claimed to have had. There was nothing left at all—nothing but age and cruelty. And yet Sally believed her, and almost felt sorry—until she remembered Major Marchbanks, and his strange timid gentleness the day they had met, the way he had looked at the girl he knew was his daughter. . . . No, she did not feel sorry.

So she took the ruby in her hand.

"And is that all the truth.^"

"All that matters. Come on—it's mine. Mine before you, before your father, before Lockhart. I was bought with that stone—same as you. The pair of us, each bought for a ruby. . . . Now give it to me."

"I don't want it," said Sally. "It's brought nothing but death and unhappiness. My father meant me to have it and not you, but I don't want it. I give up all my claim to it. And if you want it"—she held it up—"you can go and get it."

And she threw it over the parapet.

Mrs. Holland stood perfectly still.

They both heard the faint splash far below as the stone hit the water; and then Mrs. Holland went mad.

First, she laughed and tossed her head like a young girl, and patted it with satisfaction as if there were not a filthy old bonnet there but a mass of dark, glossy curls.

Then she said, "My beauty. My pretty Molly. You shall have a ruby for your lovely arms, for your blue eyes, for your red lips ..."

Then her teeth fell out. She took no notice, but her speech became incoherent, and her bonnet fell crookedly, obscuring half her face. She thrust Sally aside and scrambled up onto the parapet. She tottered wildly for a moment; Sally, horrified, put out a hand, but felt only the empty air as the old woman plunged.

She fell without a cry. Sally put her hands over her ears; she felt rather than heard the impact of Mrs. Holland's body hitting the water.

Sally sank to her knees and cried.

And at the northern end of the bridge, the driver of the cab flicked his whip gently and shook the reins, and the cab began to move.

It came at a walk along the roadway and stopped beside her. She was still sobbing; she looked up through a mist of tears. The driver's face was hidden, the occupant—if there was one—invisible.

The door opened. A hand rested on it—a large sunburned hand, with fair hair on the back and knuckles. A voice she had never heard before said: "Please get into the cab. Miss Lockhart. We have something to discuss."

She stood up, speechless. She still shook from time to time with sobs, but that was automatic: she was now devastated with astonishment.

"Who are you?" she managed to say.

"I have many names. I recently visited Oxford under the name of Eliot. The other day I had an appointment with Mr. Selby, and the name I used then was Todd. In the East I am sometimes known as Ah Ling; but my real name is Hendrik Van Eeden. Into the cab, Miss Lx)ckhart."

Sally was in a state beyond surprise, beyond resistance. Like a helpless child she climbed into the cab. Van Eeden shut the door, and they moved away.

The East India Docks

Sally held her bag tightly on her lap. inside it, loaded, was the gun she had bought for the enemy she could not see. And here he was . . . She felt the cab turn right as it left the bridge and moved down Lower Thames Street toward the Tower. She sat trembling in a corner, hardly able to breathe for fear.

The man said nothing and did not move. She could feel his eyes on her, and her skin crawled. The cab turned left and began to move through a maze of smaller streets which were less well lit.

"Where are we going?" she said shakily.

"To the East India Docks," he said. "And then you may come farther, or you may stay."

His voice was soft and cracked. He spoke without trace of any accent, but he shaped each word carefully, as if he were remembering how to say it.

"I don't understand," she said.

He smiled.

She could see his face dimly in the inconstant light from the gas lamps they passed. It was broad and genial; but his eyes, glistening darkly, traversed her slowly from

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head to toe. She felt as if he were touching her, and shrank away into the corner and shut her eyes.

The cab turned right, into the Commercial Road. He lit a cheroot and filled the cab with smoke; it made her feel sick and dizzy.

"Please," she said, "may I open a window?"

"I beg your pardon," he said. "How thoughtless of me."

He unfastened the window on his side and threw out the cheroot. Sally slipped her hand into the bag as he did so, but he turned back before she had found the gun. Neither of them spoke. The only sound was the trundling of the wheels on the road and the clop of the horse's hooves.

Several minutes passed. She looked out of the window. They were passing the Limehouse Basin of the Regent's Canal, and she saw the masts of ships and the gleam of a night watchman's fire. And then they were past and turning into the East India Dock Road. Somewhere in the night not far from here was Madame Chang. . . . Would she help, if Sally could get to her? But she would never remember the way.

Her hand crept, little by little, farther into the bag and closer to the gun. And her heart sank, for it had been raining hard during her walk to London Bridge, and the bag was soaked. Please let the powder be dry. . . .

Ten more minutes passed in silence, and the cab turned into a narrow street bounded by a factory on one side and a high wall on the other. The only light came from a single gaslight at the corner of the street. The cab pulled up to the pavement and stopped, and Van Eeden leaned out of the window and gave some money to the driver. Without a word, the driver got down and unharnessed the

horse. Sally felt the cab rock as he climbed down, and heard the jingle of the harness, and felt the little jolt as the shafts were laid on the ground; and then she heard the faint clop of the horse's hooves as the driver led it away and around the comer. And then there was silence again.

Sally had found the pistol. It was pointing the wrong way; under cover of shifting her position, she turned the bag around and gripped the handle. Everything felt so damp . . .

"We have a little more than half an hour," said Van Eeden. "There is a ship beyond that wall which is going to sail with the tide. I am going with it. You may come, alive, or you may stay here, dead."

"I don't understand."

He smiled.

"I was going to kill you straight away, of course. But I have been watching you, and I think it would be a waste. You are brave and resourceful. You would be useful to me. Also, you are beautiful. Not as beautiful as a Chinese woman, of course, but sufficiently good-looking to give me pleasure. I am offering you your life. Miss Lockhart. Think about it."

She felt sick.

"But why did you kill my father.^" she asked, playing for time.

"Because he interfered in the affairs of my society."

"The Seven Blessings?"

"Precisely."

"But how can you belong to a Chinese secret society? Aren't you Dutch?"

"Oh, partly. It is my fate to look more like my father than my mother, but my ancestry is not in question. My

mother, you see, was the daughter of Ling Chi, who earned his living in a traditional and praiseworthy way— you would call it piracy. What is more natural than that I should seek to follow the example of my illustrious grandfather? I had the benefits of a European education, so I was able to obtain a post as agent to a well-known firm dealing with the shipping trade, and then to set up an arrangement beneficial to both parties."

"Both parties?"

"The firm of Lockhart and Selby, and the Seven Blessings Society. It was opium which provided the link. Your father refused to deal in it—a shortsighted and pointless policy, in my view, and one which led to his death. No, I was pleased with the arrangement I created, and annoyed when he threatened to ruin it."

"What was this arrangement?" said Sally. Her thumb was on the hammer; would the warmth of her hand dry the powder? And would the barrel hold, even if it did fire?

"The finest opium," Van Eeden went on, "comes from India, grown under British government supervision, and there is an ofl^cial stamp, you know, a sort of mold, to form the stuff into little official cakes with Her Majesty's blessing and approval. Very civilized. It commands a ready sale and a high price. Unfortunately, your father would not deal in it, so Lx^ckhart and Selby were not in a position to benefit from it.

"So in my capacity as Ah Ling, I made a practice of intercepting vessels carrying opium from India. It is the work of a morning to persuade the crew to cooperate; the work of an afternoon to transfer the cargo to my junk; the work of an agreeable evening to sink their ship and sail away."

"And then Lockhart and Selby take the stolen opium and sell it, I suppose?" said Sally. "Very clever. A credit to you."

"Far too obvious. It would be spotted at once. No, here conies the beauty of the scheme. By a lucky chance, my society came into the possession of one of those very valuable British government stamps. So with the help of the stamp and a factory in Penang, together with some low-grade opium from the hills, one shipload becomes three or four, all stamped and certified and shipped by that most respectable firm, Lockhart and Selby."

"You adulterate it. ... And what happens to those who smoke the opium?"

"They die. In the case of those who smoke our altered opium, they die more quickly, which is a blessing for them. It was most unwise of your father to intervene; it gave me a lot of trouble. I was in Penang in the character of Hendrik Van Eeden; I had to become Ah Ling and arrive at Singapore before your father left. . . . Devilish difficult. But the gods have been kind. It is nearly over."

He took a watch from his waistcoat pocket.

"Admirable time," he said. "Well, Miss Lockhart, have you decided? Do you come, or do you stay?"