I go to the O and O office feeling very much elated over my good fortune, with never a doubt but that it will continue.
“Will you tell me the date of the first sailing for Japan?” I ask a man in the office.
“In one moment,” he says, and going into an inner office he brings out a man who looks at me inquiringly.
When I repeat my question, he asks, “What is your name?”
“Nellie Bly,” I reply in some surprise.
“Come in, come in,” he says nervously.
I follow him into an office. After I am seated, he says, “You are going to be beaten.”
“What? I think not. I have made up my delay.”
Despite my optimism, I am surprised by his statement, wondering if the Pacific has dried up since my departure from New York, or if all the ships on that line have been destroyed.
“You are going to lose it,” he says with an air of conviction.
“Lose it? I don’t understand. What do you mean?” I demand, beginning to think he is mad.
“Aren’t you having a race around the world?” he asks, as if he believes I am not Nellie Bly.
“Yes, quite right. I am running a race with Time.”
“Time? I don’t think that’s her name.”
“Her! Her!” I repeat, thinking, Poor fellow, he is quite unbalanced.
“Yes, the other woman; she is going to win. She left here three days ago.”
I stare at him stupidly. “The other woman?”
“Did you not know? The day you left New York another woman started out to beat your time, and she’s going to do it. She left here three days ago. You probably met somewhere near the Straits of Malacca. She says she has the authority to pay any amount to get ships to leave in advance of their time. Her editor offered a thousand dollars to the O and O if they would have the Oceanic leave San Francisco two days ahead of time.
“They wouldn’t do it, but they did do their best to get her here in time to catch the English mail for Ceylon. If they had not arrived here early, she would have missed that boat and been delayed ten days. But she caught the boat and left three days ago, while you’ll be delayed here five days.”
“That is rather hard, isn’t it?” I say quietly, forcing a smile that is on the lips, but it comes from nowhere near the heart.
“I’m astonished you did not know anything about it. She led us to suppose that it was an arranged race.”
“I don’t believe my editor would arrange a race without advising me,” I say stoutly. “Have you no cables or messages for me from New York?”
“Nothing,” he replies.
“Probably they don’t know about her.”
“Yes, they do. She had worked for the same newspaper you do until the day she started.”*
“I don’t understand it,” I say quietly, too proud to show my ignorance on a subject of vital importance to my well-doing. “You say I can’t leave here for five days?”
“That’s correct, and I don’t think you can get to New York in eighty days. She intends to do it in seventy. She has letters to steamship officials at every point requesting them to do all they can to get her on. Have you any letters?”
“Only one, from the agent of the P and O requesting that the captains of their boats be good to me because I am travelling alone. That is all,” I say with a little smile.
“Well, it’s too bad because I think you have lost it. There is no chance for you. You will lose five days here and five in Yokohama, and you are sure to have a slow trip across the Pacific in this season.”
“I promised my editor that I would go around the world in seventy-five days, and if I accomplish that I shall be satisfied,” I stiffly explain. “I am not racing with anyone. If someone else wants to do the trip in less time, that’s their concern. I promised to do the trip in seventy-five days, and I will do it.”
* * *
I LEAVE THE STEAMSHIP COMPANY OFFICE with thoughts chasing their tails in my head. My statement that I am not in a race is, of course, an attempt to hide my horror that I might actually be beaten by someone who has stolen my idea and is able to make better connections than me because of the weather.
Put the fear away in a dark cabinet, I tell myself. I will surely lose if I go about dreading failure rather than anticipating success.
I’m in a rickshaw en route to my hotel when I see a familiar figure in another one, turning into a street ahead. Lady Warton.
I find it odd that the woman is alone. I’m also without a companion, but that is my way and lot in life. Her ladyship, however, is of a social milieu that would frown upon her presence on the chaotic streets of Hong Kong without an escort. She’s also more reclusive and conservative in her social affairs than I imagine most women of her position.
More out of curiosity than anything else, I signal my driver to turn at the same corner. The first thing that comes to my reporter’s mind is that the woman is on a romantic rendezvous … with someone besides her husband, of course.
As we come around the corner I spot her stepping from the cart in front of a restaurant.
Two men are standing by to greet her.
I’m so startled I forget to tell the rickshaw driver to turn back around and end up going by them. I turn my head in the opposite direction as I’m carried past the group as they head into the restaurant.
My heart is pounding and my mind is swirling.
Frederick Selous is one of the men who greets Lady Warton.
The other is the drunken sailor who was so offensive in the Colombo marketplace.
45
I continue on to my hotel, where a room has been secured for me by the purser of the Oriental. The purser also had the monkey sent over to the steamship Oceanic, with my instructions that it be cared for by my cabin steward until we sail.
When I’m crossing the lobby to go to my room a woman approaches me.
“Miss Nellie Bly?”
“Yes.”
“I’m John Cleveland’s wife”
“Amelia?”
“Yes, Amelia Cleveland.”
I suffer a rare infliction of speechlessness and simply stare at her. She’s a bit older than me, about thirty perhaps. An attractive, conservatively groomed woman with heavily rimmed eyeglasses, and very blond hair pulled back in a bun and mostly hidden under her hat, she’s wearing widow’s black and speaks with a British accent.
“I understand you observed the terrible incident.” She dabs the corner of her eye with a lace handkerchief.
“Yes, yes, I did. It was … a tragedy.”
Getting my wits together, I direct her to a couch so we may sit sidesaddle facing each other.
“What a surprise,” I tell her. “I didn’t realize you were in Hong Kong. I was prepared to track you down to the ends of the Earth once I returned home.” I shake my head, still bewildered by her sudden appearance.
“John planned to meet me here. His cutlery company was posting him here after he finished visiting accounts in Egypt. It must have been nightmarish for you to see him cut down before your eyes.”
I can only nod. How do I tell her about the lifeblood gushing from his wound, the anguish on his face?
“He spoke your name to me. His last thought was of you.”
“Oh … oh my.” She stares down at her lap and appears ready to collapse in grief.
“I’ll get you a glass of water.”
She grabs my arm as I rise.
“Did he give you anything for me?”
“Oh Lord, I forgot! Of course he did. I’ll get it.”
I hurry away toward the stairway up to my room, leaving her on the couch. I can handle most things in life but I am not good with grief. I flee rather than confront it. My mother says it’s because I grieved so when my father was taken from us when I was six. Disappearing to my room to get the key out of my shoe will give me an opportunity to regain my composure.
I’m stopped short of the stairway by a clerk who hands me an envelope that bears the ins
ignia of the cable office. I open it and read the response from the London correspondent as I go up the stairs.
JC 34 YR OLD BACH—WORKED CUTLERY CO 8 YRS—
DIED CONSUMP 2 YR LONDON—WENT GRAVESITE
I freeze in place halfway up the stairway and stare at the message. John Cleveland had indeed been a cutlery salesman, for eight years. But he died of natural causes two years ago at the age of thirty-four. The correspondent had visited the gravesite to make sure he really was dead and buried.
Most important, the man had been a bachelor.
Spinning around, I stare at the woman who had gotten up and is now standing by the couch. Whatever she sees in my face causes her to panic. She turns and runs for the entry.
I start after her and become entangled with a man and woman coming up the stairs. Brushing by them, their “How rude!” remark follows me as I race for the entrance.
Once I am outside, I look right and left, starting this way and that way, but she is gone, swallowed by the crowds of people on the sidewalks and an army of sedan chairs and rickshaws flowing in both directions on the street.
Reluctant to give up the chase, but knowing it’s hopeless, I slowly go back inside.
As I head for my room, a thought strikes me, and I am able to confirm it as soon as I get there and check the exact positions of my personal effects: My room had been searched.
Having so few possessions on the trip, it’s easy for me to check and see that nothing is missing, not even my jewelry, which makes it a certainty that the intruder was not a sneak thief.
At the window I stare down at what appears to be organized chaos on the street below. Hong Kong is a city that never sleeps, and I shall get little of it myself this night as my mind wrestles with the singular events of the day.
No matter what I do, the marketplace incident thousands of miles behind me seems to dog my heels like a witch’s curse.
Lady Warton has apparently joined whatever scheme Frederick, Sarah, the sailor, and Lord knows who else has cooked up.
My room has been searched, and now a woman has pretended to be the widow Cleveland.
However I toss the pieces, they don’t fall into a revealing pattern like Chinese tea leaves, though I do get one revelation: I’m glad I took Frederick up on his invitation to spend time together. While he is keeping an eye on me, I can keep an eye on him.
46
A chit slipped under my door the next morning from Frederick informs me that he will be delighted to see me—in an hour.
I groan aloud and stumble back to bed and under the covers to deal with the situation. I have many questions to ask the great hunter, but from my experience with him I know that a frontal attack will not work. I shall have to be more subtle than in the past.
Mr. Selous has declared war on me.
I shall respond in kind, but rather than engage in verbal fisticuffs, I must be clever and subtle, neither of which are my strong points. I must show restraint and learn something from him rather than showing what a weak hand I have been dealt.
I have to learn how to duck.
I’m still completely perplexed about the incident with the woman last night who claimed to be Amelia Cleveland and her desire to obtain what John Cleveland had given me.
Had she known it is a key, I’m sure she would have asked for it.
What the key is for, who the woman is, and which of my shipmates are in league with her, are all a puzzlement to me.
Neither moping nor hiding my head under the blankets will prove fruitful, so I get up to prepare my body and mind for my meeting with Frederick.
* * *
WHEN I COME DOWN FROM MY ROOM and into the lobby, I give Frederick a pleasant smile. As a proper young lady, all books on etiquette decree that I am to shine in conversation—though not so brightly as to eclipse my male companion—and listen intently with eyes open a little wider than normal as he relates his triumphs of manhood.
In other words, I will know my place in the presence of a man this morning.
He gives me a gentlemanly bow. “And how are you today, Nellie?”
“In a hurry. There are many things to see in Hong Kong and I intend to see them all. Let’s get going.”
I fly by him, biting my tongue to keep from lashing out at him about his rendezvous with Lady Bitch.
Outside the entrance I let out a big sigh and pause to let him catch up. So much for Miss Manners. This will not do.
I have to change my attitude or I shall not be able to flush out my game.
“Please forgive me, Frederick. I received some bizarre news at the steamship line company yesterday and it has me quite befuddled.”
After quickly telling him that I have found myself in a competition not of my making, I ask what we will see first.
“We are going to scale the highest mountain on Hong Kong Island.”
* * *
VICTORIA PEAK, ABOUT EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FEET HIGH, and named in honor of the Queen, is fortunately “scaled” first by taking an elevated tramway that takes one to Victoria Gap, two-thirds of the way up.
Opened two years ago, the fare is thirty cents going up and fifteen cents coming down. Before the tram was completed, people were carried up in sedan chairs.
Frederick explains in the tram that during the summer months Hong Kong is so hot that those who are in a position to do so seek the mountaintop, where a breeze lives all the year round.
At the Gap we secure sedan chairs, and it requires three men to a chair ascending the peak, just as it did over the rough terrain from the pier. At the Umbrella Seat, which is merely a bench with a peaked roof, everybody stops long enough to allow the carriers to rest, before we continue on our way, passing sightseers and nurses with children.
After a while the carriers stop again, and we travel on foot to the signal station.
My mood is greatly refreshed looking out because the view is superb.
The bay, in a breastwork of mountains, lies calm and serene, dotted with hundreds of ships that seem like tiny toys. The palatial white houses come halfway up the mountain side, beginning at the edge of the glassy bay. Every house we see has a tennis court blasted out of the mountainside.
They say that the view from the peak at night is unsurpassed, that one seems to be suspended between two heavens because thousands of boats and sampans carry a light after dark, which along with the lights on the roads and in the houses, creates the impression of a sky more filled with stars than the one above.
“This is heaven,” I tell Frederick. I mean it and am pleased that I have kept my tongue on a leash.
“Quite. Now if you are game for an overnight boat ride, we will descend to Dante’s Inferno—that prison in Canton you want to see.”
* * *
“UNLIKE THE COLONY, CANTON IS A REAL Simon-pure Chinese city,” Captain Grogan tells us after we board the coastal ship Powan.
The captain, who has lived for years in China, is a very bashful man, and a most kindly, pleasant one.
Soon after the Powan casts off from Hong Kong, night descends and I slip away alone and go on deck where everything is buried in darkness.
Softly and steadily the boat glides along, the only sound—and the most refreshing and restful sound in the world—is the lapping of the water. To sit on a quiet deck, to have a star-lit sky the only light above or about, to hear the water kissing the prow of the ship, is, to me, paradise.
They can talk of the companionship of men, the splendor of the sun, the softness of moonlight, the beauty of music, but give me a willow chair on a quiet deck, where the world with its worries and noise and prejudices are lost in the distance, and the glare of the sun and the cold light of the moon are blotted out by the dense blackness of night and I am in heaven.
My reverie is interrupted by my own good sense of reality. It seems there is always a snake to spoil paradise and news that I am in a race not of my making has tainted some of my pleasant feelings about the race. No matter haw dark things had gotten since the m
arketplace at Port Said, the race has always been nothing but pure pleasure. Now I have to worry not only about beating a fictitious character but a fellow reporter, all the while wrestling with the intrigues and machinations about the key that seem to be all around me.
Frederick has not given me the slightest clue as to what schemes he may be involved in. Had I not recognized the cur of a sailor with Frederick, I would have imagined the meeting with him and Lady Warton as a romantic one.
Not wishing to work my brain or keep my tongue quiet any longer, I send a message to Frederick that I have retired, and go to my cabin.
Before daybreak we anchor at Canton.
47
While we are having breakfast, the guide whom the captain has secured for us comes aboard and quietly supervises the luncheon we are to take with us.
The first thing he says to us is “A Merry Christmas!” and as it has even slipped our minds, we appreciate the polite thoughtfulness of the Chinese guide, Ah Cum.*
Ah Cum tells us that he has been educated in an American mission located in Canton, but he assures me, with great earnestness, that English is all he learned. He would have none of the Christian religion.
The captain says that besides being paid as a guide, Ah Cum collects a percentage from merchants for all the goods bought by tourists. Of course, the tourists pay higher prices than they would otherwise, and Ah Cum sees they visit no shops where he is not paid his fee.
“A very clever fellow,” Frederick grumbles.
Ah Cum is dressed rather colorfully, with beaded black shoes with white soles on his feet, and navy-blue trousers, or tights—more properly speaking—tied around his ankles and fitted very tightly over most of his legs.
Over this he wears a blue, stiffly starched shirt-shaped garment, which reaches his heels, and atop that he has a short padded and quilted silk jacket, somewhat similar to a smoking jacket.
His long, coal-black queue, finished with a tassel of black silk, comes all the way down his backside to touch his heels. On the spot where the hair braid begins rests a round black turban.
Ah Cum has sedan chairs ready for us as we step off the gangplank. His own chair is a neat arrangement in black: black silk hangings, tassels, and fringe, and black wood-poles finished with brass knobs. Once in it, he closes it, and is hidden from the gaze of the public.
The Illusion of Murder Page 21
