The Shanghai Incident

by Bryan Methods

  “And I suppose we’ll be going with you now.”

  “Oh yes.” Mr. Jackdaw lifted his fingers in a kind of beckoning signal, in response to which four more men rode up behind him. Their own bicycles seemed almost absurdly small, because the men were so muscular. Though they were all Chinese, they wore Western-style shirts, the sleeves rolled up to reveal large, veiny forearms. “These are my friends, who will escort us to a nearby restaurant. Let’s go and have some xiao long bao.”

  VIII

  Under the Bridge and Over

  Jackdaw took us to a richly decorated restaurant in the basement of a large building in a Western style, designed as if a European town hall had been scooped up by some great cosmic hand and placed down here amidst the elegant pagodas and gilded temples. I felt a strange sense of kinship with that building, as if I had been placed here by that same hand.

  Though there were no windows in the restaurant, the place was bright with electric lights, a feast for the eyes. Large wooden screens divided huge tables from one another, and large works of art decorated every wall. Most were wooden carvings of village scenes and mountains, but no more than four or five inches thick, so the pieces had the qualities of both sculpture and painting. A huge, golden Chinese character hung behind the largest table, encircled by carved dragons with half-lizard, half-lion faces. This was the table Mr. Jackdaw led us to, as the owners of the restaurant greeted him like an old friend. He took his place under the Chinese character and then smiled at us warmly, showing us a strange set of teeth, white and straight but with tiny gaps between all of them.

  “Have you ever tried a xiao long bao?” he began. “I prefer the char siu bao in Hong Kong, but these are the local specialty and really very good. I hope you’re more open-minded than my colleagues. If I hear ‘foreign muck’ one more time, it will lead to fisticuffs.”

  He regarded Mr. Scant first, and then me.

  “I’ve never tried one,” I said.

  “You’re in for a treat.” He turned Victor and repeated the question in French.

  Victor pursed his lips and said, “Mais Julien, où est-il?”

  Mr. Jackdaw said that he was very sorry but he didn’t know where Julien could be found, or something along those lines. Then he looked back to me and Mr. Scant. “I’m sure you were surprised to see me. Putting aside that twin nonsense, you’re wondering why I would have been sent to the other side of the world. Just to show you a friendly face? To give the impression the Yard is much more capable than you thought? Because it’s amusing to watch you try to guess the motivation? Isn’t it maddening?”

  “Not really,” said Mr. Scant. “It’s obvious you’re not going to give us an answer, and if you did, we would have no reason to believe it.”

  Mr. Jackdaw laughed. “Maybe you’re right, and maybe you’re wrong. How will you know if you don’t ask? Ah, here come the bao. The service is so fast here.”

  The staff brought over several large round baskets made of some kind of wood, with lids that made them look like cooking pots. An inviting steam and still more inviting smell drifted out of the baskets as they were placed in the center of the table. Then the lids were removed, revealing a number of small dumplings with the look of sugar icing to them, closed at the top with a little swirl. A pretty girl in a shimmering dress distributed bowls, chopsticks, and large white spoons to each of us.

  “Now, the trick is to take them carefully, so as not to break them, and sit them on your spoon like so,” Mr. Jackdaw said, reaching over with chopsticks and delicately plucking out one of the dumplings. “It’s hot, so let’s give it some time. Please!”

  I glanced at Mr. Scant, who hadn’t moved, then back at Mr. Jackdaw. “I don’t know how to use chopsticks,” I said.

  “Oh dear,” said Mr. Jackdaw. “Wei, Tang, Lu, please be good chaps and help our guests.”

  Three of the big Chinese bodyguards pushed back their chairs, took our chopsticks, and reached out to the baskets in perfect unison. Each man plucked out a little dumpling, then gestured for us to pick up our spoons, leaning around us in a somewhat menacing way. Mr. Scant lifted his spoon, so I did too, and then Victor copied me, looking up at the bodyguard nearest to him apprehensively.

  Once the men had placed dumplings on our spoons, Mr. Jackdaw said, “Splendid. Now we give it a few moments to cool down. And then comes the best part. You take a small bite from the bottom and drink the soup inside. Then, with that flavor rich in your mouth, you eat the rest. Like so.”

  During the whole process, his eyes flicked between me, Mr. Scant, and Victor. Not without some trepidation, imagining some lethal poison or, worse, the flavor of Brussels sprouts, I nibbled at my own dumpling. Soup immediately began to pour out, so I drank that first, then ate the rest. A rich flavor, not so different from a stew or particularly flavorsome broth, filled my mouth. The little treat was very agreeable.

  Mr. Scant of course remained inscrutable while he ate, but Victor was nodding appreciatively. Mr. Jackdaw beamed at us, his thin face and straight teeth almost uncomfortably bright.

  “There, wasn’t that delicious?”

  A long silence followed, which I felt I had better fill. “Yes, delicious,” I conceded somewhat lamely.

  Mr. Jackdaw went on grinning, then gave a little sideways gesture with his head. The men behind us returned to their seats, helping themselves to dumplings of their own. Victor said in French that he needed the toilet, so Mr. Jackdaw motioned to the big man next to him, the one who had not stood behind any of us, and the man nodded, then gestured for the little boy to get up. Victor looked to me in a panic.

  “I’ll go too,” I said. I didn’t really need to use the toilet myself, but I wasn’t about to let these men take Victor out of my sight, even if they were supposed to be allies of Scotland Yard.

  “Come back before the bao get cold, what?” Mr. Jackdaw said languidly.

  The man escorting us toward a nearby door was shorter than Mr. Scant but very broad in the shoulders, with a beard that looked sharp at the edges and a shaven head with no queue. As we filed out, I looked back to Mr. Scant and heard him say, “Can we proceed directly to the part at which you tell us what you want from us?”

  The water closet was grander than any I had seen, even in fine London hotels, and as richly decorated as the restaurant. We stepped toward one cubicle, and I balked at what looked like a hole in the ground, but Victor didn’t seem perturbed in the least as he went inside. I went in the next cubicle and found, to my relief, that things looked much as I would have expected back in England, half a world away.

  When we returned to the table, I was heartened to see Mr. Scant hadn’t picked a fight with the other men.

  “. . . doing your work for you,” Mr. Scant was saying.

  “That’s precisely my meaning—you are in a unique position,” Mr. Jackdaw said. “I work for Scotland Yard. This is not a well-kept secret. If things go awry, I can be directly linked to Her Majesty. Which, rather fortuitously, you cannot be.”

  “You can’t expect me to believe you don’t have another plan,” Mr. Scant said. “What if we had never come?”

  “Of course there are other plans,” Mr. Jackdaw replied. “They’re simply not as feasible or efficient as this plan.”

  “What’s happening?” I asked as I took my seat.

  “I was just putting forward a proposition,” said Mr. Jackdaw. “We think it is very agreeable. We will give you all the information on Miss Gaunt that we have—if you do something for us.”

  “Wait,” I said. “If you have information on her, that means she’s here, right? She must be in Shanghai.”

  Mr. Jackdaw’s smile did not waver. “Perhaps. That’s the kind of information you’ll earn if you do as we ask, what?”

  “But you wouldn’t make us do something for you in Shanghai and then inform us that she’s back in Europe, would you? So we must be on the right track.” I grinned at Mr. Scant, feeling pleased with myself. “Isn’t that right?”

  Mr
. Scant, staring down Mr. Jackdaw, didn’t return my look. “Why should we trust you?”

  “You trusted me in Paris, did you not?” Mr. Jackdaw asked. “Indeed, Paris is the reason we now trust you. We always keep our word in the Yard, and we’re strong believers in healthy quid pro quo.”

  “What does he want us to do?” I asked Mr. Scant.

  “Go and meet some criminals,” said Mr. Scant. “And then do his spying work for him.”

  Mr. Jackdaw gave a raucous laugh, fully showing off those tombstone teeth of his, which all of a sudden seemed too big for his pointed face. “You certainly have a gift for turns of phrase, Scant. And a suspicious mind—that would be useful at the Yard. We’re always in need of good men.”

  “You won’t find one at this table.”

  “Now, now. The men back in England investigating the Ruminating Claw could always find new evidence, remember that. Evidence tying him to Diplexito Engineering, for example.”

  Mr. Scant’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps it would be better if only the boys and I left this place with our tongues.”

  “I’m used to threats,” Mr. Jackdaw said. “Something I’m not used to is having to negotiate.” He sat back and drank Chinese tea from his undersized cup. “You and I both know that if you say ‘No,’ your investigation ends there. You have no more leads, and we both know you’re no Sherlock Holmes. You can walk away, but then you might as well go back to that funny little Beards and Binns dirigible of yours and begin the long journey home.”

  Mr. Scant pressed his lips together, saying nothing in response.

  “Is it dangerous?” I asked.

  “Potentially,” said Mr. Jackdaw. “But I’m not asking just anyone.”

  “You will give us a place to stay and food to eat?” said Mr. Scant.

  “You shall have precisely the food and lodgings I have. Very agreeable, I assure you.”

  “I don’t feel we have much choice,” said Mr. Scant. “I’ll do it.”

  Mr. Jackdaw gave me a bad feeling. He had seemed very charming when we first met him in France, but he had a head that appeared to have too much skin on it, too much confidence, and a smile that never reached his eyes. He looked as though he was wearing someone else’s face and putting on a slightly exaggerated act to match their personality.

  He and his men took us to the Bund, which is where I realized that Shanghai was a city just as modern and busy as London or Paris. The Bund was a wide road on the side of a river that was broader than any I had ever seen before. There were no pagodas or temples to be seen but rather large modern buildings and a big iron bridge. I had the uncanny feeling of having returned to Europe somehow, and on the streets, a number of Europeans tipped their hats to us as we passed. Mr. Jackdaw greeted many of them as though they were close friends, though I was unsure if it was all an act.

  We were led into a newly built clubhouse with lodgings, rather like a particularly grand London gentlemen’s club, and shown to our accomodations. There was a convenient partitioned room available, so that Mr. Scant could sleep in one bed, I could sleep in another, and a suitable cot could be brought in for Victor. With grudging thanks to Mr. Jackdaw, we put what belongings we had carried with us into the room, and I decided to take off my jacket. I dropped it on the bed, along with Mr. Jackdaw’s chocolate eggs, and noticed Victor was doing the same. Mr. Scant showed no sign of discomfort in his long jacket, though Shanghai’s weather was much warmer than London’s.

  Later that evening, Mr. Jackdaw held a “briefing” in the bar of the clubhouse, a bar he boasted was the longest in the world. He spoke so proudly that I wondered if he thought he had carved it himself. He sat with us at a table across from the great mahogany expanse, cradling a gin and tonic that I was sure he had ordered only for the look of the thing, while an old Chinese man quietly swept the floor just beyond the bar’s single bend.

  “You’re to meet one Mr. Yau,” Mr. Jackdaw told Mr. Scant. “He speaks perfect English, of course. Studied in Hong Kong—a lot of these secret society troublemaker types did. You’ve had experience with secret societies, I know—a lot of talk about magic and overthrowing their governments. The ones here are rather more likely to do the latter than our homegrown specimens. In fact, there was an attempt at a revolutionary uprising outside Hong Kong just a month or two back. Beastly business.”

  “Are the people that unhappy?” I asked.

  “You remember your teacher’s lecture, don’t you?” said Mr. Jackdaw, with a smirk at Mr. Scant. “This whole country’s a kettle left on the fire too long. It’s already boiling over, and that just makes the fire jump up underneath it all the more, what? And into the middle of it all you come a-wading. A curious happenstance.”

  “There is nothing curious about it,” Mr. Scant said in a dull tone. “You know why we’re here. I have no doubt this unrest is what pulled my niece to this country, in whatever capacity she is operating. We have simply followed her.”

  “Hmm!” Mr. Jackdaw grinned again. “You’ve had a long history of being drawn to dangerous places by happenstance, haven’t you? But now that you’re here, let’s be kind to one other, what? I think that’s in everybody’s best interests.”

  “So what am I hoping to achieve for you?” asked Mr. Scant.

  “Mr. Yau works for the Star and Stone Association, a nationwide crime syndicate. They are procuring weapons manufactured in Europe, and your job is to pose as the contact from the manufacturers, then find out what they intend to do with the arms once they have them. There is a festival later this week, one the Xuantong Emperor himself is scheduled to attend, so we need to know what to expect.”

  “When is this meeting scheduled?” Mr. Scant asked.

  Mr. Jackdaw smiled. “You arrived at the perfect time. It’s tomorrow morning.”

  And so we returned, feeling a little dazed, to the rooms Mr. Jackdaw had arranged for us. Of course, Victor wanted to know what we were doing to find his brother, and whatever assurances Mr. Scant gave him, the rest of that evening was spent watching him closely to make sure he didn’t go out into the streets of Shanghai looking for Julien.

  The next morning, Mr. Jackdaw used the telephones in our rooms to wake us. After we were washed and dressed, he met us in the entrance lobby with his usual charming yet insincere grin. “Are we ready for the day’s adventure?” he said, but we had no answer for him.

  “I want to go with Mr. Scant,” I said.

  “Out of the question, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Jackdaw. “They are expecting one older gentleman, and one older gentleman only.”

  He led us to the large iron bridge nearby and then gestured to a little service door on the far bank. “That’s the place.”

  Mr. Scant handed me his claw for safekeeping as we crossed the bridge. Mr. Jackdaw, Victor, and I stopped halfway to watch him use the secret knock Mr. Jackdaw had shown him on the bridge’s service door. Mr. Scant had to speak a password before the door opened, and then he was swallowed by darkness. Victor and I were left on the bridge with Mr. Jackdaw, who smiled at us again.

  “This heat is beastly,” he said, “and your valet is going to be some time. They like to put on a show of their power, these hongmen. Let’s go and find some English tea.”

  As we walked, Mr. Jackdaw explained that hongmen were members of a secret society who had proven their worth to their fellows. Victor, uninterested in this English chatter, went to ask him again about his brother Julien, and not only did Mr. Jackdaw give reassurances that seemed to lift the boy’s spirits, he offered his hand. Mr. Jackdaw walked with the boy like a father with his son, which only made me narrow my eyes in suspicion. The man gave me the feeling of being doused in some unpleasant oil and ending up coated so thoroughly I had no way to wipe myself clean. I loosened my collar.

  Mr. Jackdaw had made it sound as though we would search for a teahouse, but in fact he led us to a nearby hotel—less grand than the clubhouse where we had our lodgings, but nonetheless very luxurious. On an upper floor was an opulent d
ining room, entirely bereft of anything Chinese. Sitting there, we could have been sitting in Claridge’s or the Ritz. Taking a place at the central table under a frozen firework of pretty yellow flowers, Mr. Jackdaw ordered afternoon tea.

  “It’s like we’re not in China at all anymore,” I said to Mr. Jackdaw.

  “I know, isn’t it marvelous?”

  I frowned. “I thought you liked the local food.”

  “I do. But more than that, what I like is the culture that exists at this exact moment. I admire it for its fragility, like, ah . . . like the moment the mayfly spreads its wings to the only sunset it will ever see.” He chuckled to himself. “A snowflake that melts on the fingertip. Just now, Shanghai is a beautiful collision of two cultures, each one thinking it is superior to the other. Here in the Bund, along its great river, the Europeans want to rebuild Europe, and the Americans are only too happy to help. Meanwhile, walk for ten minutes that-a-way and you’ll come to the Old City, or ‘Chinatown,’ as these Europeans have the presumptuousness to call it. Ah, thank you.”

  The waiter, young and fair-haired and well-turned-out, had arrived with a tray. He laid out a pretty tea service patterned in pink and gold, and a three-tiered tea stack replete with neatly cut sandwiches, dainty tarts, and colorful French macaroons. Victor’s hands went straight for a vanilla macaroon, but Mr. Jackdaw swatted it away, and then pointed at the sandwiches. Victor seemed amused rather than upset and took a cucumber sandwich instead.

  “When you go to the Old City, the true city,” Mr. Jackdaw continued, “out of this pretty shell, you’ll see real life and a real culture. Beggars, cripples, and worse than all besides, Marxists. The Europeans all sneer at the poor here and look at them like animals, forgetting the destitute in every city and town in their own countries. So here there are two separate worlds. Are you following me?”

  “I think so,” I said.