Broken Meats: A Harry Stubbs Adventure

by Hambling, David

  “Animals are not permitted in the rooms,” the desk clerk said, seeing the cat in its wicker basket. The collar gave him a lofty air. He did not approve of either Mr Yang or me.

  “An exception may be made in this instance,” I said. “The room was booked by Mr Arthur Renville. Mr Yang is his honoured guest.”

  “I don’t know Arthur Renville from Adam,” said the clerk. “Animals are not permitted in the rooms.”

  “I had better speak to the manager then,” I said rather warmly. The manager would certainly know Arthur, and he would put the clerk right.

  “There is no need,” said Mr Yang.

  “Animals are not permitted,” repeated the clerk.

  Mr Yang looked coolly at him. The clerk turned his back, pretending to be reading entries in a ledger. Yang’s eyes were still fixed on him.

  “It’s no use your standing there,” the clerk said without looking round. “It’s in the hotel rules. You’ll have to find somewhere else or leave that thing outside.”

  The seconds passed like treacle dripping. I wanted to call for the manager, but Yang raised a hand to halt me, still looking at the back of the clerk’s head. I swear the cat was looking at the clerk, too. The man fingered his stiff collar unconsciously. I was about to repeat my request to talk to the manager when the clerk turned around.

  “Very well then, I suppose.” He opened the register without looking at Mr Yang. “Of course, there will be an additional charge for your… animal.”

  “Of course.” Mr Yang did not take the pen but left me to fill in the register. As I wrote out the details, his hand rested on the desk, and I noted one oddity about his manicure. The nails were perfect, except the nail on his little finger, which was long and curved as a talon, extending past the end of his ring finger.

  The bellboy had been riveted throughout the performance. He kept looking from Yang to me and back as he escorted us to a room and stood in the doorway.

  The Tulse Hill Hotel is your typical railway hotel, the same as the rest of them up and down the country. These places are occupied mainly by commercial travellers and incline towards the functional. Many of the rooms are little more than hutches for single men kept away from home by their business, an unhappy breed who sit on wooden chairs at the regulation writing desks, adding up their sales for the day or arranging their samples.

  This was one of the better rooms. It was a good size with a high ceiling and a sense of open space. There was a bay window, blue-and-white-striped wallpaper, and a thick carpet underfoot. The bed and the armchairs looked comfortable enough.

  “It’s a good room,” I assured Yang. He nodded slightly. I tossed the gawping bellboy a tanner, which he snatched with one hand, and sent him off before arranging Yang’s luggage.

  Yang remained in place, as motionless as he had been in the station. I wanted to suggest his calling for a cup of tea and relaxing for a bit but was uncertain how to comport myself. The cat, a big tabby, stirred in its basket and uttered a low sound.

  Yang looked at his wristwatch, a fine square Dunhill—or a Chinese copy of one. “It will be convenient for you to meet me in the lobby at nine o'clock tomorrow morning, Mr Stubbs.” His tone indicated that this was an order.

  “That will be quite convenient, sir.”

  “And Mr Stubbs, it is not customary for Europeans to call Chinese 'sir.’”

  “I never knew that. How should I address you properly?”

  He seemed puzzled at the question. “It does not matter,” he said after a minute. I could not tell whether he was appeased or offended. “Tomorrow at nine o'clock.”

  “Thank you.” I left him standing in the hotel room, immobile as a statue. Yang gave nothing away except what he wished. For the time being, I had seen enough.

  Chapter Three: A Tour of Norwood

  There was a fine motorcar outside the hotel the next morning, a black six-cylinder Daimler, fresh from the showroom, waxed and polished to a shine. I paused to admire it a moment before going inside and finding a new clerk at the desk.

  “Mr Stubbs, isn’t it? I believe we have a mutual acquaintance in Mr Renville.” His name was Walker, and he gave a wink to signify we were both on the same job of watching Yang. “There’s a gentleman from the motor-rental company waiting over there who needs you to sign some papers.”

  The rental agent asked if Mr Yang would be requiring a chauffeur. I don’t drive myself, but I could think of a dozen of Arthur’s circle who would take on the job, so I sent the agent on his way.

  Yang appeared at nine o’clock on the dot, dressed in an off-white suit no less smart than his previous outfit. I mentioned the matter of the chauffeur.

  “We do not need a driver. I will drive; you will provide navigation.” Yang passed me an odd piece of thick brown paper, about three inches square. There was an address in block letters on one side and Chinese writing on the other. “You know this place?”

  “Certainly. It’s over the other side of Dulwich.”

  We sat in the car, which smelled of fresh leather and oiled wood, while Yang familiarised himself with the controls. He lightly touched the handles and levers in turn and stroked the steering wheel. I did not dare to offer help, and when Yang pushed the starter button, the powerful engine roared to life.

  “It’s a good car,” I said.

  “I drive a Daimler in Shanghai,” said Yang, flicking the indicator. “Now, what direction?”

  Yang drove well, coping with the busy traffic without difficulty. I had imagined Shanghai as a place of rickshaws and oxcarts and carriages but began to think that I may have been mistaken. I resolved to ask Reg about it.

  I found the address easily enough even though it was out of the way. The road was a rutted lane, and the house stood by itself, almost concealed in the trees and surrounded by an overgrown garden. It was a ramshackle construction, built in several stages over a long period. It looked at least half-derelict. The roof slates were askew, but the windows were intact. A thin stream of smoke rose from the chimney.

  Yang indicated for me to remain in the car. He crossed the road and knocked on the door. We waited for a good three minutes. I saw a face at an upstairs window. It appeared so briefly that I couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman. Nobody answered the door. At length, Yang came back across the muddy road and, taking out a silver fountain pen and business card, used the bonnet of the car for a writing table. He was close enough for me to see that he did not write but just drew a simple, looping design. Then he posted it in the letterbox.

  As he stepped back into the car, I noted that, except for the soles of his shoes, there was not one speck of mud on him. He walked with the grace of a cat, treading lightly. Heel and toe touched at the same moment, as though Yang had been trained to walk silently and did it without thinking.

  “We will return here later.” Yang passed me another slip with an address on it. “Here is the next address.”

  “Certainly, but this lane’s a dead end. You’ll have to drive in reverse the way we came.”

  Instead, Yang turned the wheel sharply, going forward and then back, changing the heavy gears with little effort. In a few seconds, he'd turned the big Daimler around in less space than I would have thought possible. Yang was not a man whom you could tell what to do.

  “Which direction next?” he asked as he started back down the lane.

  The second address was a very different affair. This was a comfortable suburban villa near Crown Point, set on a street with a dozen other buildings like it. There was nothing to distinguish the house except for a discreet wooden notice board next to the garden gate.

  “’Upper Norwood Theosophist Circle, ’” I read.

  “That is correct. Please remain here.”

  I watched again as Yang went and knocked on the door. This time, a maid answered his knock. A minute later, a grey-haired man came to the door, and he and Yang conversed for a few minutes. I strained to read any of the messages posted on the board and wondered what a Theosoph
ist Circle was.

  “We will return here in a few days,” Yang announced as he opened the car door. “I have been invited to attend a séance.”

  “What, calling up spirits and table rapping and all that?”

  “I believe so.”

  “I understand you’re here on a religious mission,” I offered. Reg would be pleased, I thought. It was not a direct question but close enough to the point.

  “Indeed,” said Yang. “My purpose is not unconnected with the Theosophist Circle.”

  “I’d love to see one of those séances for myself,” I said without really thinking. “You see them on the stage and in the pictures, but a real séance must be something else.”

  Yang hesitated for the smallest fraction of a second. And yet, in hindsight, I believe that in that moment he conceived an entirely new plan of action, one that included me as an accomplice. He had weighed me up, judging my strengths and weaknesses, what sort of tool I would make, and how I could be used. And he put his plan into effect.

  “You will attend, also. It will be more convenient for you not to be associated with me at this point, you understand.”

  I did not understand at all, but I pretended that I did. “Certainly. I suppose you have attended many of these occasions in Shanghai?”

  “Never,” he said. “I will now inspect this area on foot. Direct me to a parking space for the Daimler.”

  I guided him to the dairy yard, which had plenty of room outside. With no deliveries due until the next morning, they would not mind us parking there. I had Yang wait a minute while I collared a small boy to act as a guardian. It would not do for such a fine vehicle to be molested.

  Yang set off in a circuit with the Theosophist house roughly in the middle. It was a reconnaissance, but of what sort I found it hard to say. He seemed to give equal weight to everything; the buildings, the trees, the clouds all seemed to attract his attention in turn. I tried to see the place as he was seeing it, but there was nothing worthy of attention as far as I could tell. Except for the two of us, of course—the small Chinese gentleman in white with his oversized English guide in black.

  We attracted curious looks from passers-by. If Yang had been dressed more quietly, he would not have attracted attention, but his fancy suit, multiplied by his being Chinese, set minds to working and tongues wagging. Fortunately, we did not encounter any groups of schoolboys, who would not have let such a peculiar pair pass without loud comment and perhaps some experimenting on the effect of throwing mud at that immaculate suit.

  We stopped by the Great Pond on Beulah Hill while Yang took a cigarette from a slim silver case and fitted it to an amber holder. Instead of matches, he had a silver lighter with the same Oriental pattern as the case, and lit up with a single flick.

  “A pond at the top of a hill is unusual,” said Yang.

  “I believe the cattlemen used to water their herds here when they brought them to market.” This information came from my father, learned from his father who remembered when cattle were driven into Norwood from the fields of Surrey.

  “How does the pond remain full? No streams feed it here on the hill.”

  “Perhaps there’s a spring. There’s lots of underground water… the old Beulah Spa is just up the road there.”

  Yang shook his head fractionally but said nothing. He took out an old copper coin with a square hole punched through it, held in his palm a second, and then tossed the coin, spinning, into the water. Yang watched the ripples as if reading words on the water, and only when they had faded to nothing did he set off again.

  We stopped again outside the gates of the vast, brick-built blocks of the Home and Hospital for Incurables. Yang looked the structure up and down as though he was thinking of buying it. I told him how it was a hospital for people with a chronic sickness such as consumption and palsy or for unfortunates who had been born deformed and the like. And because it said 1894 on the wall, I could tell him when it was built.

  “Why is it here?”

  “Well.” I scratched my chin. “I suppose it’s because it’s such a healthy locality. Up here on the hill, out of the smoke of the city and all that. No pea soupers here.”

  “Indeed.” Yang stood politely aside as two nurses pushed patients in wheelchairs past us. One of the patients stared at him rather rudely from his chair but looked away as soon as Yang returned his gaze. “Many people have died here,” Yang observed. I shrugged. We moved on.

  We stopped again at the bottom of Crown Dale, where Yang cocked his head and seemed to listen. Big crows were hopping around in the park opposite, and I wondered if he was eavesdropping on them, but he moved on without comment.

  Nothing seemed to quite please him. It was as though England was lacking some important quality that he'd expected to find.

  Close to the summit of Central Hill, Yang took out a paper packet and extracted a pinch of white powder, which he tossed into the air. A delivery boy pushing his bicycle up the hill stopped to look while Yang repeated the gesture before replacing the packet in an inner pocket.

  Yang was obviously amused by my perplexity, which seemed to cheer him no end. “In English, you call it geomancy.”

  I didn’t call anything “geomancy” and doubted that was even an English word.

  “We study the movement of wind and water and the more subtle currents that affect human life.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said.

  Yang smoothed his goatee with one hand. “It is a superstition. We Chinese are a very superstitious people, after all.”

  “I would never suggest such a thing. As for subtle currents—well, I saw how you stared down that hotel clerk.”

  “Ah, you think I have hypnotic skills?” He sounded amused. “All petty officials like to show their power. I did not contest with the clerk. I gave him the freedom to show he could use his power by denying me the room. Then, I allowed him to consider the consequences of his actions. Like all petty officials, he preferred to concede rather than be overruled by his superior later.”

  I recalled what Reg had said about the importance of not losing face. Perhaps it was not an exclusively Chinese concern.

  “We say ‘To control a horse, you put it in a large field,’” said Yang.

  “Is that a saying of Confucius?”

  Yang laughed, a double bark. “Ha! Ha! It is a saying of the sage Lao-Tzu.”

  I was pleased that he was finally talking but stumped on how to carry on the conversation. I ploughed on with the first thing that occurred to me. “I don’t know much about Chinese philosophy. But you know what does interest me? The Fists of Harmony, the Boxers. They can break a brick with one punch, using mental energy. My friend saw one of them at a Chinese Circus. Bang, bang, bang, bricks broken right in half, one after the other. I’d like to know how they do that.”

  Yang walked on several paces in silence. “The Boxers,” he said at last. “The Boxers thought their magic would protect them against the Westerners’ bullets. It failed. They thoughts spirits would aid them. They did not. China is still paying reparations for the Boxer Rebellion after thirty years. Four hundred million pieces of silver.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  Yang’s raised hand silenced me, the curved fingernail before my face. “It is more profitable to study guns than magic Fists of Righteous Harmony.”

  “I’m a boxer myself,” I said, trying to explain. “I mean, a pugilist, you know.” I mimed a boxing stance. “That’s the only reason I’m interested.”

  “Indeed,” he said.

  It seemed I had touched a raw nerve. To get away from the subject and to fill the silence, again I seized on the first thing that came into my mind. “Sometimes bullets don’t work, as a matter of fact.” I told him the story about the shooting outside the pub and how Collins had emptied his pistol without any effect. It was the most exciting thing that had happened recently, and people were still talking about it. “Have you ever heard anything like it?”

  “Hah. An English ghost s
tory” was all Yang would say.

  We walked on until the towers of the Crystal Palace came in sight, followed by the majestic building itself. That did impress him and rightly so; there was nothing like it in the world. But he seemed to appreciate the siting more than the majestic structure itself.

  We talked little during the rest of the perambulation. We stopped at the bottom of Gypsy Hill, and he asked about the grassy space. From somewhere in my memory, I dredged up that it had been a plague pit, which seemed to satisfy him.

  Writing it down now, I see how few words Yang actually spoke. Yet I felt that I was starting to understand him a little.

  It was difficult to explain this to Arthur as he cross-questioned me in the Hollybush Public House that evening. It was late, but Arthur’s working day had only just begun, and we were interrupted by a steady stream of messengers and telephone calls, relayed from the bar. There was a consignment to be disposed of, and it had to be done quickly.

  Arthur was at least satisfied that I was doing my job and had established some rapport with Yang. Reg was on hand to provide advice on Chinese matters, but Arthur was more concerned with the English people whom Yang had contacted.

  “Spiritualists,” said Arthur. “That’s a rum business. Plenty of room for trickery and relieving folk of their money. Or he may only be going there to put you off the scent. If he invited you to join in, it can’t be secret.”

  “What about that house the other side of Dulwich though?”

  “Oh, that’s old Willie Whatley’s house,” said Arthur as though it was common knowledge. “They’re an odd breed, the Whatleys—part Gypsy. His father was a fortune-teller, years ago, and a horse doctor, quite well-known. There’s only Whatley and his daughter left. He still sells a few charms to old women.”

  “What does Yang want with them?”

  “We’ll find out. We’ve got pretty close tabs on Mr Yang. I can tell you every piece of post he’s received, the visitors he’s had at the hotel, what he’s been eating.”