by Evelyn James
Clara watched Albert’s face keenly. His eyes had turned to the photograph of him as a young man that Mrs Pear had accidentally left out on a table by the sofa. He was thinking – remembering.
“You won’t go to the police?” he asked, his eyes coming back to Clara. She sensed he was weakening.
“Why would I? What would the police do?” Clara answered honestly. “My word alone is not enough to arrest your employer. They still need evidence of a crime and I imagine he is clever enough to avoid leaving any of that.”
Albert was still dubious. He didn’t like the idea of getting into trouble for giving Clara a name. Clara tried one last attempt to convince him.
“You might earn yourself a cut of the money. For bringing me to the attention of your boss?”
Albert considered this suggestion. He seemed to like it. After a moment he conceded.
“All right. I’ll give you his name,” he said. “I work for a man called Brilliant Chang, I’ll give you his London address.”
Clara said nothing as he reeled off an address, her heart was sinking inside her. That was all she needed, to find herself involved with Brilliant Chang yet again. She managed not to sigh. She should have guessed he would be after the dragon. But she had his name now and that made her one step closer to restoring the dragon to Mr Jacobs. It was just a shame that doing so was going to take her back into the orbit of a man she had hoped never to see again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The last time Clara had found herself within the world of Brilliant Chang it had been as a result of police corruption. Chang had bribed a policeman to look the other way when it came to his nefarious activities and had caused the near murder of another constable. Clara had unravelled the mystery but Chang had eluded her. The wily Chinaman had slipped away with his freedom and a grin to Clara’s failure. She had hoped never to meet him again.
Chang was dangerous; there was no doubt about that. He ran a criminal organisation in London, with his fingers in a lot of pies, though Chang was not interested in casual street crime. He had his mind set on greater and much more profitable adventures. Clara knew about only a fragment of the illegal activities he was involved in, but it was enough to know that he was a man with few scruples when it came to earning money.
Chang moved in affluent and important circles. His misdemeanours were not unknown to his society friends but they ignored them because he was charming, good looking and wealthy. Also, he had the sense not to bite the hand that fed him. He never caused his friends any harm.
Chang was ridiculously rich and you could just as easily find him partying the night away in a famous actress’ mansion, as in some nightclub arranging his next heist. Chang owned people, just like he owned race horses and race cars, and a string of grand homes. He had made wise investments when it came to the world of high society. There were lords and earls across the country who owed Chang more than one favour – it might be because he had loaned them money at a desperate time, or because he had helped a wayward son or daughter out of a tricky and scandalous situation. Not to mention that he was at the heart of the drug trade in London, possibly in England. If you bought products from him you knew they were good stuff and not cut with other inferior goods like those from a street dealer. He charged well for these luxury highs, and he had clients who were attached to him forever more because of their addiction.
A man like that could pull strings to keep the police off his back. A man like that was very much out of Clara’s league. But then, Clara never really took much heed of social status, just looking at her career choice would tell you that.
Clara would have to go to London and brave the lion’s den. At the end of the day, if she could negotiate for the sale of the dragon back to Mr Jacobs, she would have fulfilled her mission and avoided losing face before the infuriatingly arrogant Chang. He had a committed a crime, yes, but it was the police’s duty to arrest him for that. She just had to rescue the dragon.
Clara was planning her next trip to the capital, working out when Bob would be able to accompany her and which trains to catch, when the telephone in the hall rang. Clara began to rise but Annie, always on the ball, reached it first and answered. Clara listened to her half of the conversation.
“Hello… yes, she is here… may I say who is calling…”
Annie appeared in the parlour.
“Do you know a Mr McFry?”
Clara jumped up and ran to the telephone.
“Mr McFry,” she said, hoping the businessman had news for her. “This is unexpected.”
“Aye, well I have been doing a bit of poking around,” McFry said placidly. “Thought you might like to know what I have learned.”
“I would indeed,” Clara said.
“Not that everyone wants to admit to paying for a robbery to be committed, but if you phrase things in the right sort of way and drop a few hints, well, it’s surprising what people will talk about over a good lobster dinner,” McFry was pleased with himself. He was a good negotiator, a man who had worked his way up from nothing by persuading people. He knew how to get people talking and saying things that common sense would normally suggest they shouldn’t. “Do you happen to know the Ambassador for Japan?”
The question had been a genuine one. McFry often forgot that most people did not wander in his elevated circles.
“No,” Clara said politely. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Shame. Nice fellow. Good for a late night game of backgammon. And very keen on his country’s cultural heritage being preserved in the face of modernisation,” McFry continued without concern that Clara had no idea who he was talking about. “Japan is becoming a modern society, such as our own, but in the process they have been a little careless, on occasion, about their history. I think all societies are guilty of that, look at the great castles of England left to fall to ruin? Money can sometimes seem more important than culture.”
“Especially when an ancient system of rule is being overhauled,” Clara understood. “People might feel little compassion towards the objects of the past during such a time.”
“You grasp my point,” McFry sounded pleased down the phone line. “Mr Hokami, the Japanese ambassador in London, is most worried that Japan’s heritage will be robbed away for the sake of profit, much like what has happened in Egypt, where the old pharaohs are sold as novelties to the tourists. Mr Hokami does not blame Englishmen for buying such goods when they are offered to them, but he does deplore his countrymen who are ransacking their country’s history for profit. According to Mr Hokami, there is quite the trade in stolen antiquities from Japan.”
“Might that include a certain jade dragon?” Clara asked.
She was certain McFry was smiling to himself as he replied.
“It would, indeed. Thefts from the imperial palace of Japan have been going on since the last century. The penalty for being caught thieving is death, but the rewards for a successful theft are high enough to counter the fear. Objects have been disappearing from the palace at an unhealthy rate. Things worsened during the war, because of the economic impact the conflict had on the country. Japan is an uneasy nation right now and their old ties with Great Britain and the Empire are looking frayed.”
“That sounds ominous,” Clara observed, “from a political point of view, but what about the dragon?”
“Mr Hokami knows I am a collector of Japanese antiques. He knows my interest in his nation’s culture,” McFry explained. “We play backgammon one evening a week. Finding a competent opponent is challenging and Mr Hokami and myself are very equal in our skill, so we regularly aim to outwit each other. Yesterday evening we met as usual for dinner and a game. During the course of the evening I brought up the news of a stolen netsuke, one that had been exhibited at the British Museum. Mr Hokami knew very swiftly the object I was describing, as he had been to the exhibition and seen the green jade dragon for himself. When I mentioned that the British Museum experts had their concerns about how the item ended up in E
ngland, he became quite talkative.”
“He had his concerns too?”
“Not just concerns, he knew the dragon was a stolen item,” McFry had that pleased sound to his voice again. “Mr Hokami had quite the story to tell, and I think it ties in nicely with the side of the story you told me. According to the ambassador, a few hundred years ago the then emperor of Japan was deeply concerned with his own mortality. As comes with such positions of power, he feared the prick of an assassin’s blade and also the creeping hand of old age, that persistent and unavoidable assassin of men. The emperor did not wish to leave his life of glory to travel to the next world, despite ideas that the next was as grand, or even grander, than this life. The emperor was the sort of man who valued what he physically had, over an idea of what might be. So he became obsessed with preserving his existence eternally.
“The emperor commissioned all manner of objects and medicines to secure his immortality. Among them were items of rare jade, a precious stone that has been considered the key to immortality in the Orient. The Chinese emperor, for instance, would drink crushed jade in alcohol to increase his longevity. What is good for a Chinese emperor, ought to be good for a Japanese one, or so the Japanese emperor imagined. He became obsessed with having jade about him, believing it would preserve him indefinitely.
“Among the objects he had commissioned were two jade dragons. The dragon in itself is a lucky symbol, a symbol of power and fortune. The pair of dragon netsukes were made to hang on the emperor’s belt and to offer constant protection. They were made by the best craftsman of the age, his name sadly now lost largely to time. It is said he was rewarded handsomely for the work, but was penalised a finger so that he might never craft something so fine for anyone else.”
“That seems the fate of all too many master craftsman in antiquity,” Clara remarked.
“You would think they would have learned by now,” McFry chuckled. “Ah, but I should not mock the man’s loss. Anyway, the jade dragons were made and were prized by the emperor. The flies in the ointment were the emperor’s heirs who did not much like the idea of their father living forever. A plan was concocted. Fearing the jade dragons did truly carry a magical power, a concubine was sent to the emperor one night with the object of drugging him while he was engaged in her pleasures and then removing the jade dragons to a safe place. Once off the royal body, they could not wield their much-feared magic.
“That night an assassin, hired by the emperor’s sons, was sent to his chamber and murdered him. The deed done, once the court had settled from the shock, the eldest son took to the imperial throne. But the power of the dragons appears not to have been as mitigated as the sons had hoped. Not long after he was made emperor, the eldest son contracted a fever and died. The next heir ruled barely a year before the great excesses of his lifestyle took him to the next life too, and the last heir slipped from his sedan chair at the coronation, fell out onto the paved road to the palace and cracked open his skull. The three murderers had all apparently succumbed to the jade dragon’s curse.
“The new emperor, a distant relation and not involved in the assassination of his predecessor, had the jade dragons removed to a specially locked cabinet where he hoped they would cause harm to no one, especially himself. He ruled for nearly forty years and it seems the curse did not touch him. But the legend of the jade dragons’ power grew. Mr Hokami explained that when the first western visitors came to Japan and heard the story they were curious about the dragons and were granted permission to look upon the magical creatures. Illustrations were made of them and Mr Hokami referred to one which I was able to locate in an old book written by a visitor to the country. The image tallied exactly with the dragon I saw at the British Museum, down to the craftsman’s characters etched into the base.”
“And then they were stolen?” Clara queried.
“One was,” McFry answered. “At some point between one tourist being shown them and another asking to see them, one dragon disappeared. The servants at the palace naturally blamed the previous tourist, the officials at the court blamed the servants. The man who held the keys to the cabinet lost his head, by that I mean literally.”
“Oh dear,” Clara said, appalled at such drastic measures. “But, I take it, no one really knew who was responsible?”
“No,” McFry agreed. “The dragon was lost, at least for a while. Then someone reported seeing it being sold to an Englishman. You have to understand, there were spies for the emperor everywhere in Japan and they often informed him of what foreign tourists were getting up to. The English were especially viewed with suspicion. The emperor sent men out to locate the dragon, but the trader who had sold it had already vanished. The Englishman, oblivious to having committed any crime, was easier to pursue. Mr Hokami did not know the whole story, but it seems agents were sent to track this man and retrieve the dragon. They failed and never returned to Japan. Until the exhibition earlier this year, no one knew what had become of the green jade netsuke stolen from the imperial palace.”
Clara found herself sighing as the story concluded.
“What did Mr Hokami have to say about the burglary of Mr Jacobs’ house?”
“I think he wasn’t surprised. There are wealthy Japanese in this country who have as much concern for the heritage of their nation as he does. He thinks, like I do, that someone paid to have the dragon stolen so it might be returned home.”
“That is a very noble idea,” Clara pointed out. “And thieves are rarely noble. Someone might have stolen it because it was valuable.”
Clara was thinking that Brilliant Chang was neither Japanese nor much interested in heritage, but he did have an abiding fascination with money.
“Mr Hokami hinted that he knew who would go to those lengths for Japan,” McFry explained. “I was unable to get the name, however.”
“No matter, you have gone to great lengths for me already,” Clara assured him. “What I can’t fathom is why no one offered to simply buy it back from Mr Jacobs?”
“Oh, I can think of a lot of reasons. Pride, not wanting to pay for an item that was stolen, fear that Mr Jacobs would reject an offer and then suspect the person who made it when the burglary occurred. You must admit, the way the dragon was taken has left little trace and given the person behind the plan the chance to remain anonymous.”
Clara could not disagree with that. But she knew something that McFry and Mr Hokami could not know. She knew that Brilliant Chang had orchestrated the burglary, either for his own personal benefit or at the behest of someone else. Tracing him was the key to retrieving the dragon, though Clara was as yet uncertain of who she was precisely supposed to retrieve it for. It was, after all, a stolen item that should be returned to Japan.
And then there was the question of Mr Jacobs’ uncle and his unfortunate carriage accident. That was beginning to seem less and less likely to have been a chance mishap. And what of the agents sent after him who never returned home? Was it simply because they could not risk returning to Japan empty-handed? Clara knew there was yet more to this story than she had been told and London was likely to be the only place to find answers.
Chapter Twenty-Four
They were once again a party of four as they set off for London the following Saturday. Tommy and Captain O’Harris were as insistent as before about accompanying Clara, and Bob was a natural addition to the party. The weather had taken a turn for the worse and they had to dodge puddles and people with umbrellas as Clara took them all first to Scotland Yard.
Clara had paid another call on Inspector Park-Coombs after her conversation with Mr McFry and had explained the story the Scotsman had told her, along with her concerns about the unfortunate death of Edmund Jacobs. The fact that her information had come from the Japanese ambassador himself, (via McFry) added credence to the possibility that Edmund Jacobs’ accident had been less than accidental. Clara doubted it was important to her case, but wished to follow up the mystery, perhaps to bring justice to the poor man who had died all t
hose years ago. It might lead her to the agents who were tracking him, but she doubted it. Those men had vanished long ago, they would be very old men now and it seemed unlikely they were still in pursuit of the dragon, though there was no telling, of course. Perhaps they were still pursuing their mission all these years later.
The story expounded, Park-Coombs agreed to arrange for Clara to meet with his counterpart in London. The same man who had offered information on the thieves. Park-Coombs would smooth the way and enable Clara to ask her questions. She might not get answers, but at least she would have tried.
There was, however, no room for four in the interview, and Clara persuaded her male companions to waste time at a nearby café while she spoke with Inspector Arran of Scotland Yard. After all, she was hardly likely to come to any harm within the confines of the police station.
So it was that Clara found herself awaiting Inspector Arran, friend and colleague of Inspector Park-Coombs, in a large tiled reception area that felt chilly on this damp and gloomy day. There were several people in the reception, and there was an air of discontent about the place. People were queuing to report crimes or nuisance affairs, without really much hope of anything being done about them. The London constabulary was as over-strained as every other constabulary about the country, only they had a city to police and all the complications that added.
Clara was relieved when a gentleman in a grey suit appeared in the reception and introduced himself as Inspector Arran. He was not very tall, about Clara’s height and with pale eyes and a thin face that was etched with the lines of a life of too little sleep. He smiled readily enough, and his eyes crinkled up. He shook Clara’s hand when she offered it.
“You must be Miss Fitzgerald.”
“Yes, Inspector Park-Coombs rang ahead for me,” Clara explained.
Inspector Arran merely nodded, too busy to worry about lengthy introductions.
“My office is this way.”
