The Island Where Time Stands Still

by Dennis Wheatley

  Closing the diary, Gregory went on, ‘So you see, Excellencies, the position in which Kâo Hsüan was placed. Had it not been for Lin Wân’s intervention, we can hardly doubt what would have happened. Your ambitious President would, in due course, have received Madame Août and her daughter on the yacht, and he would have seen to it that Josephine met with a fatal accident during the voyage. Then, freed for good from her as a menace to his plans, he would have been able to proceed with them at his leisure. Even as things were, we may fairly assume that he intended to do so during the six months’ grace Lin Wân had given him. But the Council decreed otherwise. They sent him back to search for the Princess.

  ‘We now come to his second stay in San Francisco. Knowing the Princess to be by that time in China, and that Quong-Yü would not voluntarily reveal the criminal activities that took place six weeks before, he no doubt felt confident that the mission would have to return to the Island and confess failure. That would have been the case, had not Tsai-Ping asked me to go to Washington. The co-operation of the F.B.I. led us to Quong-Yü, but it became swiftly apparent to our conspirator that I was the only person who could exert pressure enough on the Tong boss to make him talk. Given those circumstances, I consider it a fair assumption that they got together and planned to kill me on the way to the Tong headquarters. I escaped death only by a miracle; and instead of myself, it was the unfortunate Tsai-Ping on whose head Quong-Yü’s hatchet-men let fall the banana crates.

  ‘We may well suppose that Kâo Hsüan was pleased to see that capable and conscientious Mandarin safely removed from his path; and in the larger picture things did not seem to be going badly for him. Quong-Yü’s disclosure, that the Princess was seven thousand miles away in a remote part of China, gave him good grounds for suggesting that the hunt for her should be abandoned. But in that he was overruled by a combination of Mr. Wu-ming Loo, the lady A-lu-te and Captain Ah-moi Sung; so to save face he was compelled to agree to the mission’s continuing to carry out its instructions.

  Now that we were bound for Yen-an he was under the necessity of getting rid of Wu-ming, in case he learned on our arrival there of the bargain that had been made with Lin Wân. Moreover, my handling of Quong-Yü must have caused him to realise that I, too, might prove a serious menace to his plans; so he decided that both of us must be eliminated at the earliest suitable opportunity.

  ‘Having set his servant P’ei to spy on me, after we had been two weeks at sea he learned that it was my habit to have Foo bring me a cocktail every night when I was changing for dinner. One evening the cocktail brought to me contained poison. At the time I did poor Wu-ming the injustice of believing that it was he who had attempted to murder me; although Foo told me that P’ei had been in the pantry when he mixed the drink. Two months later, when Foo rescued the Princess from P’ei and beat him up, he forced him to talk. P’ei then confessed that his master, Kâo Hsüan, had ordered him to put poison in my cocktail.’

  Ah-moi held up his hand. ‘One minute! What is this about Foo rescuing the Princess from Kâo Hsüan’s servant?’

  Gregory cast a swift glance at Kâo, who, grey-faced and glowering, had now resigned himself to the role of silent onlooker; then he replied:

  ‘We shall come to that in due course, Excellency. With your leave I will continue to take each event in its proper order. As I was about to say, I had the good fortune to escape your President’s polite attention, but poor Wu-ming did not. After his attack on me he was in no state to defend himself, and again we have an admission by P’ei to Foo, that it was he and his master who threw Wu-ming overboard.

  ‘In an endeavour to kill two birds with one stone, Kâo Hsüan did his best to cast suspicion for that crime on me; and things might have gone ill for me then, had not the lady A-lu-te generously provided me with an alibi.

  ‘The removal of suspicion from myself tended to throw it upon the murderers, although I had not the sense to see that at the time; so my enemy’s next move was a double-edged one aimed at diverting suspicion from himself and depriving me of my watch-dog Foo, so that I might be more easily attacked. Two nights later, he took advantage of Foo’s being at the top of a ladder with him to throw himself down it, then he accused Foo of having attempted to kill him. By his stratagem he succeeded in getting Foo locked up; but apparently he could find no opportunity to make a further attempt upon myself until we reached Antung-Ku.

  ‘That it was P’ei who went ashore there from the sampan and procured a snake to put in my bunk on Kâo Hsüan’s orders can rest only on assumption, as Foo, knowing nothing of that episode, did not question P’ei about it. I escaped, but Tsai-Ping’s old servant, Che-khi, died of the snake’s bite; and, in view of all that had gone before, who can doubt that Kâo Hsüan was also responsible for the agonising death suffered by this innocent man.

  ‘During our long journey up river I can only think that I owed my immunity from attack to the confined quarters of the sampan. My would-be murderer must have felt that should he again try to kill me while we were in it, and fail, he would have exposed his hand and might become the victim of a reprisal. But after we left Tung-kwan, he made one final effort to eliminate me before we reached Yen-an. He suborned the master and men of the caravan with which we were travelling to stone me to death. Fortunately for me, Foo, who had joined the caravan in disguise, learned of the plot and succeeded in foiling it.’

  Gregory paused and, opening the diary again, went on, ‘I will now read you some further passages from the secret jottings set down by Lin Wân. Those which interest us start on September the 28th. On that day an entry reads:

  ‘“A surprise this morning. There arrived here one P’ei, a servant of Kâo Hsüan, with a letter from his master. In it Kâo tells me that he is on his way up from Tung-kwan, to collect the little Princess. This is good news in one way but bad in another. The half-million dollars that he brings will be welcome; but had he sent them I had meant to keep them, and the Princess; at least until he had disgorged another half-million for her. But as he is coming for her himself I have not the face to go back on our bargain so must hand her over to him. I never expected that Kâo would find himself in a position to pay up so soon—if ever; so I had intended to marry the girl to Tû-lai. Fortunately he has shown some reluctance to take her for a wife, so he will not be greatly disappointed. Kâo asks me in his letter to make no mention of our bargain to any of those who are accompanying him. But I must now tell Tû-lai something of this matter, and at the same time warn him to keep it a close secret.”

  ‘The next entry is on the 30th, and reads: “A bitter disappointment. Kâo has arrived, with his niece and a well-mannered Englishman who is, apparently, an intimate friend of the family—but no half-million dollars. It seems that Kâo has not got far with his ambitious plans since we last met, but he still has great hopes of achieving them if I will aid him. We are to talk of this tomorrow.”

  ‘The next entry reads: “I have had talk with Kâo and I am wondering if I have let him get the best of me; but I think not. He certainly has a most subtle mind, and, knowing that I would not let him have the Princess unless he paid me for her, he produced a most ingenious plan. We are to find some girl who can temporarily be passed off as Her Highness. He will take this woman away with him, and as they go down river have her drowned—although her death will be made to appear an accident. He can then return to the Island and, with his niece for witness, state that the Princess lost her life on the way there. As there is no other candidate for the throne that the Council would be willing to accept, it will remain vacant and Kâo get his chance to become Dictator. Should he succeed he will be in a position to pay me for my help. Should he fail I can take the Princess to the Island myself and expose this cheat of his in having reported her to be dead. I am to find a girl suitable to undertake the imposture; but I put my price for carrying the whole matter through at a million dollars and he agreed.”

  ‘The next entry reads: “I settled on the girl this morning. I greatly regret having
to sacrifice Shih-niang, but she is the only one in my seraglio at all suitable. She is, perhaps, a little old for the part, but she speaks French fluently and can write it fairly well; and that was the language used by Madame Août. I spent most of the day bargaining with her and, when she at last agreed to do as I wished, coaching her in the role she is to play. This evening I took them to see her, and she passed her first test to the satisfaction of both Kâo and myself. The lady A-lu-te was completely taken in, also the Englishman; and for this part of Kâo’s plan to succeed that is all that matters. I have quite good hopes now that within the stipulated time I shall receive my million dollars. But whether I do or not, I still have no intention of ordering the little Princess to be killed. If Tû-lai continues to be fool enough to refuse her I shall marry her to one of my other sons.”’

  Again Gregory closed the diary, then he said, ‘It remains only for me to give your Excellencies an outline of events after we left the House of Lin. Their main features are: First, our discovery that at no point had Communist agents been concerned in these happenings. That being so, we have no alternative but to assume that it was Kâo Hsüan himself who threw the knife over my shoulder at Shih-niang, on discovering that she had given her secret away to me. Secondly, that Kâo Hsüan, having learnt that Lin Wân contemplated double-crossing him by marrying the Princess to Tû-lai, left P’ei behind with orders to kill her. And thirdly, that P’ei, fearing that Kâo Hsüan would kill him to ensure his silence, decided to double-cross his master; with the fortunate result that after he had abducted the Princess, Foo was able to rescue her from him.’

  For a further ten minutes, Gregory gave details of these last moves that had preceded the departure of himself and his friends from China, then he said:

  ‘I will conclude by calling your Excellencies’ attention to the state in which we found things on our arrival here. We are told that a week ago Kâo Hsüan gave a banquet for sixty guests, and that nine of them afterwards died from food poisoning. Those who died were some of the most prominent men who might have been expected to stand between him and his ambitions. When you see him here today having so nearly achieved the status of a Dictator, can you believe that it was food poisoning?

  ‘There rests the case of Her Imperial Highness the Princess Josephine, of myself and of my two friends. Kâo Hsüan has already surrendered his right to act as one of our judges, I accuse him of murder on a scale equalled only by the Borgias, and I leave your Excellencies to judge between us.’

  For some time past a dull murmur from the crowd outside had penetrated to the Chamber. As Gregory ceased speaking, in the silence that followed it became much clearer. A police officer slipped in through a side door, closed it quickly behind him, looked anxiously at Kâo and said:

  ‘It is the people, Excellency. They are becoming unruly. They are demanding that the Princess should be presented to them.’

  Ah-moi answered for Kâo, ‘Tell them to have patience. An announcement will be made to them shortly, when we have concluded our deliberations.’ Then he signed to the servants to bring forward the opium pipes.

  On first entering the Chamber, Gregory had seen that A-lu-te had succeeded in taking the place of one of the seven young women whose duty it was to keep the pipes instantly ready for smoking. She now advanced with the others and, bowing low before her uncle, offered him the beautiful jade pipe which he had left in Lin Wân’s room.

  For the past half-hour Kâo had been sitting hunched upon his stool, with all the life gone out of his usually cheerful face. Now, taking the pipe from his cushion, he gave her a sardonic smile and murmured:

  ‘So you, too, are among my enemies?’

  But he made no move to smoke the pipe. Instead, laying it aside, he stood up and said in a loud voice, ‘As I am not sitting in judgment on this case, it would be wrong for me to join my colleagues in smoking a pipe of deliberation.’

  The old scar above Gregory’s left eyebrow showed white in a sudden frown. For a moment it seemed that by getting Kâo to forgo any part in judging the case he had sabotaged his own carefully laid plan.

  But Kâo bowed to him and went on in a quieter tone, ‘Nevertheless, Mr. Sallust, I congratulate you on your victory. A good General knows when he is defeated.’

  As he spoke the last words he swiftly slipped something that he had just taken from his pocket into his mouth. Next moment he was seized with violent convulsions, and his great body fell with a crash from the dais to lie sprawled at the feet of his fellow Mandarins.

  24

  The Three Wishes of Gregory Sallust

  On the following afternoon Gregory was walking with A-lu-te in her garden, and they were talking of the amazing scenes that had taken place the preceding day, after Kâo had committed suicide.

  While the trial was going on, the crowd outside had swollen until it included nine-tenths of the population of the Island, and extended for nearly half-a-mile down the avenue of palms. The clamour of the people to see Josephine had grown so great that had they been refused rioting would have resulted; so the six remaining Mandarins led her out on to the first-floor balcony of the Palace, and, being by then convinced that she was the real Princess, they did so willingly. She received a tremendous ovation, and it was over an hour before the people would let her go in.

  Afterwards the Council had held an Extraordinary Session. During it the argument had been put forward that perhaps, after all, it was a good thing that she was already married, as had she married into one of the Seven Families that family might have been unduly favoured with appointments and in time come to regard itself as superior to the others. It was also pointed out that although Foo was not of sufficient birth to be acceptable as Emperor, he had high-caste Manchu-warrior blood in his veins, so was not unfitted to assume the role of Consort. In consequence, it had been decided that Josephine should be made Empress, and that as Kâo had been the last male of the Hsüan line, Foo should be appointed to fill the vacant place as the Seventh Mandarin.

  On the announcement of these decisions the population had gone wild with excitement. The whole Island had been given over to rejoicing, and the Mandarins had opened the reserve store-houses to the people so that there might be feasting in every home. Bonfires had been lit, thousands of fireworks let off and the joyous celebrations gone on till dawn.

  After Gregory and A-lu-te had talked of this happy outcome for a while, they fell into an uneasy silence. At length she broke it by saying:

  ‘There is something I have to ask you, but I don’t know how to put it.’

  ‘Oh fire away,’ he answered lightly. ‘If we are to be married, surely there is nothing you need to be afraid to say to me.’

  ‘If …’ she echoed. Then, after an awkward pause, she added, ‘That is just it. Do … do you really want to marry me very much?’

  His face was serious, but he smiled down at her. ‘Before I answer that, since it was you who brought the question up it is only fair that you should tell me how you feel about it.’

  Looking down at the ground, she murmured, ‘I plighted my troth to you, and I could not go back on that. So I am yours if you wish it.’

  ‘Of course I wish it—given certain circumstances,’ he said slowly. ‘But it has always been accepted that the girl has the right to change her mind. During the two months we have been separated your feelings may have changed. If you no longer love me, I should not wish it.’

  With her eyes still cast down she nodded. ‘It is that which I felt you should know. You have so many wonderful qualities that any woman would be proud to be your wife; and you are the most delightful companion that anyone could have. But I know now that the feeling I have for you is not really love.’

  ‘If that is so, you must love someone else.’

  Again she nodded. ‘Tû-lai. He does not know of our secret engagement, and last night he asked me to become his wife.’’

  ‘And what did you reply?’

  ‘I said that I would give him his answer this evening.’
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  Gregory put his arm round her shoulders and gave her a little hug. ‘Then I willingly release you from your promise to me. I have always felt that I was too old for you. He is the right age and a splendid fellow. I’m certain that he’ll make you happy in a way that I could never do.’