BAF 64 - Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, page 8
part #64 of Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series
“On the contrary,” came from every side, “your nimble-minded wit makes you so desirable a guest that we must really implore your company here with us instead. As for the assorting of the dishes and the quality of the food, we can assure your high excellence that you are pleasurably mistaken in thinking that yours are worse than ours. Do, therefore—” The remainder of the graceful compliment was lost in the agreeable rattle of chopsticks as all resumed their interrupted occupation precisely as before.
Now, although Wong Tsoi had evolved no definite plan, he had come to the “Abode of Harmony” in the full expectation of finding the unsightly produce merchant also there. Toward the outcome of that incident he had not neglected to bum a liberal supply of joss-sticks, so that, when his entirely expressionless gaze noted the gross outline of the objectionable Teen King seated at no great space away, he recognized that, so far as the Doubtful Forces were concerned, he was not ill-equipped for an encounter.
Teen King, for his part, fancied that the dignified inclination sent in his direction was perceptibly warmer than the other three. Wong Tsoi recognized as the loudest voice raised in complimentary greeting that of Teen King. The omens pointed to the mutual recriminations in the matter of a few kin of debatable birds’ nests being forgotten, but so far neither was committed beyond ohe side of his face.
When Teen ‘King rose to go, it was not inevitable that he should pass Wong Tsoi’s table, but with absent-minded detachment he took that course. Seeing this, the Mandarin’s preoccupied foot thoughtlessly moved a vacant seat so that it barred the way.
“Ten thousand sincere regrets that your honourable progress should be impeded in this manner,” exclaimed Wong Tsoi, drawing the chair aside with his own obliging hand. “Have you appeased your virtuous stomach?”
“Rather is it my own incommodious bulk that disturbs your well-intentioned chair,” replied Teen King deferentially. “Are they gratifying your enlightened palate?”
“Since an unlooked-for felicity has delayed you at this spot, will you not occupy the seat so auspiciously provided?” suggested the other. “After your laborious passage of this badly arranged room, doubtless a moment’s rest—” and he pushed his snuff-bottle of priceless jade across the table for Teen King’s use.
“Excellence,” began Teen King, after he had helped himself liberally from the snout of the recumbent pig that formed the bottle, “with the exception of ordinary business transactions, the one before you had led an integritous life. Why, then, should the path of his endeavour be edged with sharp afflictions?”
“It is truly said that a rogue may sit under a scaffolding all day, but if a righteous man ventures to pass beneath a ladder, something offensive is sure to fall upon his meritorious head,” remarked Wong Tsoi with ready sympathy. “Unload your overweighted mind, Teen King.”
“Your warm compassion melts the crust of my underbred reluctance,” confessed the merchant. “Furthermore, I desire to lean somewhat upon your official counsel.”
“Speak freely,” replied Wong Tsoi, with but one thought, “for in matters affecting the relationship of the inner circle—”
“That is a crow of quite another colour,” interrupted Teen King, his face not entirely gladdened by the plain allusion. “Upon questions of that sort, it is seldom necessary for a really humane and affectionate head to raise the shutter of his domestic interior.”
“Yet,” urged the exalted, “the one before you, as high official of the district, stands in the position of a benevolent father toward every family within his province.”
“Assuredly,” agreed Teen King, “but the truly considerate son hides a great deal of what might be unnecessarily distressing from a venerated parent’s eyes. In the direction to which you are obviously leading, excellence, be satisfied that by patience and the use of a stick no thicker than that which is legally permissible, the most opinionated of our lesser ones can ultimately be persuaded to bask in the light of reason.”
“This concerns Tsoo and the one called Fragrant Petal,” reflected Wong Tsoi in the pause that followed, “and it clearly indicates that I was right in my conjecture. But with what other adversity is the misshapen thing before me harassed?” Aloud, however, he said:
“With your usual crystalline logic, Teen King, you compress an entire social system to within the narrow limits of an acorn-shell. Yet you spoke—”
“It is of it that I would speak further,” replied the merchant, lowering his naturally repulsive voice and arranging his ill-balanced form so that they should not be overlooked. “Pass your esteemed judgment upon this obligation, highness.”
Wong Tsoi took the folded parchment that was offered him and submitted it to the test of a close scrutiny, even to the length of using an enlarging-glass to supplement his eyes.
“There is no ambiguity at any point of this, Teen King,” he said, courteously veiling his regret that it was not some tiding of disaster. “Herein you authorize your secondary to recompense ten taels of silver and a like amount of store to the one presenting this, he having already rendered its equivalent to you.”
“Do you find no questionable line about the thumb-sign?” almost implored the merchant.
“I am as familiar with the signet of your pliant thumb as with the details of your prepossessing face,” freely replied Wong Tsoi. “Should I fail to recognize you when we encounter in the Ways, or would I greet another by your ever-welcome name? Thus and thus. In every thread and indent is this your accepted impress.”
“Yet,” protested Teen King, so overwrought because he dare not shout aloud his frenzy or kick any of the lavish arrangements of the room that his always unbecoming neck increased to several times its wonted thickness, “yet, high puissance, it is not the impression of my own authentic thumb, nor had I ever seen the thrice accursed draft until the mentally weak-kneed Chin discharged the obligation. What an infamy is here residing within Hoo-yang!”
At this disclosure, Wong Tsoi achieved a sympathetic noise among his teeth, but he bent his face above the writing so that Teen King should not misread the signs of his compassion.
“This is an unheard-of thing to come about,” he remarked impartially. “Hitherto it has been assumed that by a benevolent dispensation for the safeguarding of commercial intercourse, no two thumbs would be created of identical design. It now becomes evident that something essential has been overlooked. Is there any more of this, as it were, questionable paper upon the market, merchant?”
“It is that qualmous thought that is eroding the walls of my tranquillity,” confessed the effete Teen King. “Three misprocured drafts have I so far honoured, and I tremble at the possiblity of what may yet appear.”
“But,” objected the Mandarin, “if you are the victim of a well-laid plot, why should you not proclaim the falsity, repudiate the impression of this alien thumb, and warn the merchants of our city to be alert?”
“Therein you speak as an official and not as a man of commerce,” replied Teen King with feeling. “Were I to do as you advise, I might as well throw open the doors of all my marts for the four winds to blow in and out. My thumb-sign is the evidence of an inviolable word. To proclaim openly that it is henceforth more than doubtful would be to put the profitable house of Teen into the ’formerly existed’ class.”
“What then do you contemplate? To submit to this iniquity forever?”
“That is the purpose of my confidence in you,” replied Teen King. “As the ruler of the city, you will assuredly put forth your straightforward hand and the sacrilegious dog will cease to prosper.”
Wong Tsoi thought for a few moments under the pretext of having inhaled a superfluity of snuff. Then his face resumed its usual expression of inscrutable profundity, and he turned toward Teen King with a gesture of open-minded assent.
“Agreeably so,” he replied pleasantly. “Deliver the abandoned leper into my keeping, and your unblemishable name will be free from the shadow of this taint forever.”
“Therein lies the key of this one’s hardship,” exclaimed Teen King with some annoyance, for he began to describe Wong Tsoi to himself as a person of very stunted outlook. “Could I but discover and take the offender myself, one of my refining vats would very quickly adjust the difference between us. As it is, I rely on your authority to transact justice.”
“The one before you is a high official,” returned Wong
Tsoi with appreciable coldness. “Were he a dog, doubtless he could follow a trail from this paper in his hand to the lair of the aggressor. Or were he a demon in some barbarian fable he might, perchance, regard a little dust beneath an enlarging-glass and then, stretching out his hand into the void, withdraw it with the miscreant attached.”
“Nevertheless,” persisted the merchant stubbornly, “it behoves you for your own well-being not to suffer the rice to grow around your tardy ankles in the matter.”
“Teen King undoubtedly has something in his sleeve, or he would not (press me to this limit,” pondered Wong Tsoi. “Perhaps it would be as well to tempt the distressing mountebank into disclosing himself more fully. An apt saying should serve here.” Accordingly he added: “Anything to do with your graceful personality admittedly has weight, Teen King, but in questions of authority mere bulk is not everything. It might be prudent to take to heart the adage, ‘A toad has to pass a very severe examination before he can become a dragon.’”
At this allusion, Teen King changed colour several times and for a moment it seemed inevitable that the chair in which he sat must fail incapably under the weight of his displeasure. Seeing this, the one concerned rose abruptly to his feet.
“It is also written, ‘A pointed tongue, however keen a sword, makes an insufficient shield,’ and you, O contemptible Wong Tsoi, will soon be putting the analogy to a desperate trial,” he replied with vigour. “Learn now how that incorruptible official, Kao-tsz of the Board of Censors, has been deputed to visit Hoo-yang before the next full moon. As he is somewhat heavily in this person’s debt, the nature of his report, should you maintain your headstrong front, need not tax your imagination. It is one thing to be technically degraded seven times, Mandarin; it is quite another to be actually shortened at both ends, even once.”
With this illiberal forecast, the outrageous Teen King shook hands with himself in a disagreeable manner and withdrew his contaminating presence.
“A person of true refinement would have expressed much of that very differently, but nothing will ever make up for the lack of a classical education,” reflected Wong Tsoi when he was again alone. “However,” he added self-capably, “though it will obviously become necessary to do something to counteract his malicious influence, there is no reason why the incident should be allowed to mar an otherwise well-arranged repast. This business clearly concerns Ho Hung, and he will doubtless be at home throughout the night.” Ho Hung now steps into the narration, and in order to explain the unfolding of events, it is as well to describe his outline. He was of middle stature and not ill-cast, but with the essentials of an appearance spoiled somewhat by his face. His ears were loose and ragged, his teeth as large as those of a moderate horse but of several different colours, while his nose resembled a toucan’s beak. One of his eyes was elsewhere; the other had a deceptive bend which enabled Ho Hung frequently to observe persons closely without their appreciation of the fact. At this period he was the admitted head and chief of all the thieves and assassins in Hoo-yang, but formerly he had conducted lotteries.
When Wong Tsoi, late that same night, knocked in a special way upon a certain door in the least reputed quarter of the city, it was opened by Ho Hung himself. When he recognized the one who stood outside, the natural repugnance of his features changed to a look of welcome not unmixed with an arising lack of gravity.
“You do well to greet me cordially, Ho Hung,” remarked the official as he glanced cautiously about before he entered, “for if I should be recognized in this doubtful situation, it would certainly cost me my button.”
“As to that, Mandarin,” replied Ho Hung with simple familiarity, “should you ever be put to it, there are half-a-dozen openings I could tell you of, in which dignity combines with ease, and in any capacity you would very soon excel us all. But will you not honour this one’s bankrupt home by entering, and there—if you can but put up with its long-standing deficiency—partake of tea?”
“ ’For wine the top of the bottle; for tea the bottom of the pot,’” quoted Wong Tsoi pleasantly as he stepped within. “May worthiness never forsake your roof-tree, valiant Hung.”
“May winning numbers come to you in dreams,” responded Ho Hung heartily, standing aside in hospitable respect.
As they sat together and drank, Ho Hung broached the subject that had shaken his dignity on the Mandarin’s arrival.
“Some word of the inept misadventure that involved your conscientious secretary last night has already reached my threadbare ears,” he remarked discreetly, affecting to turn aside to catch a passing winged insect as he spoke. “Doubtless it is upon that quest that you are here at all?”
“Up to a certain point the deduction is exact,” replied Wong Tsoi, sprinkling a little snuff into Ho Hung’s tea to mark his appreciation of that one’s tact. “But, as the saying is, ‘Although the T’ang road is long, it does not lead everywhere.’ What is this that is being told of one whose thumb simulates the natural signature of Teen King, the produce merchant?”
At this inquiry Ho Hung became so excessively disturbed in gravity that he could only with difficulty retain his seat, while his endeavour to imply the reason of his mirth by rapidly opening and closing his missing eye began to have a disquieting effect upon Wong Tsoi’s imagination.
“Thang-I the rogue’s name is, and he has but lately come among us from the Waste Lands to the south,” replied Ho Hung when he could speak with ease. “The witling has no ready parts beyond this facile thumb, he being of the mulish sort. But Tong, the fabricator of salt-due seals, who chanced upon his gift, has put the business through. Tong it is who does all Teen King’s resealing when he mixes—your nobility will understand—so that he was well familiar with that aggressive merchant’s thumb-sign.”
’This is likely enough,” replied Wong Tsoi, “but wherein lurks the essence of the jest?”
“It is not to be expected that a high official will have so gross an appetite for gravity removal as a mere sleeve-snatcher,” pleaded Ho Hung. ’The obese Teen King has ever been wont to press down an acrimonious thumb upon the feeble in Hoo-yang so that now the way that it has been turned against him has passed into a variety of questionable sayings. Indeed, it is become the matter of a most objectionable song that is being taken up by the river boatmen to the rhythm of their task.”
“Even the humblest of the muses is to be encouraged,” tolerantly observed Wong Tsoi. “Should a superfluous copy of that ballad come your way—”
“It shall reach your discriminating hand without delay,” promised the other, marking a sign upon his tablets.
“There still remains the question of justice,” continued the high official. “For the harmonious relation of our several interests, it is vital that the overstepping of certain limits should not be unredressed.”
“That is admitted,” agreed Ho Hung, with a dutiful obeisance. “Your hand is that of a benevolent corrector, eminence, and this one will not, for his part, fail.”
“In assaulting, as you have so correctly been informed, the person of the one who takes down my spoken word, two unmentionable outcasts have been guilty of an attack—by deputy—on me, thereby—obliquely—against the State, and thus—by analogy—have finally as it were submitted the venerated person of the Sublime Emperor himself to the extreme indignity of being projected into the tempestuous waters of an unclean stream. For this iniquity two malefactors must suffer the fullest penalty in order to appease the justly outraged feelings of a loyal people.”
“Authority must be maintained,” replied the congenial Ho, “or whereon do we stand? The very foundation of the Joined-together Band of Superfluity Adjusters and Excrescence Removers of Hoo-yang, with this one at its head, is menaced.”
“We have always so far been able to arrange these necessary formalities in mutual concord,” remarked Wong Tsoi. So amiable at these recollections became the condescension of this truly broad-minded being that, after wiping the traces of tea from off his lips, he did not disdain to press the same cloth upon Ho Hung. “Nor,” he continued, “is there any reason why we should not now. As regards this slow-witted Thang-I: has the lowly clown friends of any standing?”
“He is a stranger among us here, and therefore not of our fraternity,” was the reply. “Had his case not been thus and thus, he would have been driven forth ere this. Disclose your mind, exalted.”
“To earmark Thang-I for this needful expiation would effect a double turn. Have I your acquiescent word?”
’The dog has served an end, but the jest has all but run its course,” considered Ho Hung. “There is none to raise a voice against what you propose—save, perhaps, Tong, and he is of slight account.”
“Tong—would he so do? Then nothing could be better regulated. Two culprits are required: that being the case, why should not Tong be coupled with Thang-I and so still every murmur?”
“Eminence,” interposed Ho Hung, “even a goat and an ox must keep in step if they would plough together, and, as you have said, in matters of this sort we stand on a common footing. Let Thang-I fall to your deciding voice; for this one’s share Teh-tang will serve.”
Wong Tsoi accorded a motion of dignified assent, for he had no concern in Tong, the seal counterfeiter, either one way or the other.
“But Teh-tang?” he asked with polite interest. “Is not one of that name the prop of your right hand?”
