The Emperor's Pearl

With a sigh he rose and inspected the bare room. He knitted his eyebrows in a puzzled frown Next to the chair, the only piece of furniture was a bamboo couch. There were no cupboards or wall niches, no place to store away any­thing. The walls and ceiling had been recently repaired, and the window provided with solid iron bars. The door con­sisted of thick new boards and had a large iron lock. Per­plexedly shaking his head, he took the candle up and lighted his lantern with it. Then he descended into the walled-in garden again and walked over to the main build­ing.

Not a stick of furniture was left in the dark, damp rooms. In the half-ruined main hall his eye fell on an inscription engraved in the plaster of the back wall. The two large letters read 'River Villa'. They were signed by the name Tong I-kwan.

'Good calligraphy!' he muttered as he continued his tour of the house. In the empty corridors a few bats came fluttering round his head, attracted by the light of his lantern. But apart from those and a few large rats that scurried away on his approach all was silent as the grave.

He walked back to the pavilion to collect the two knives. Then he would return to Marble Bridge and order the village headman to come with his men and bring the dead woman to the city. There was nothing he could do here in this dismal place. When he entered the walled-in garden he saw that the moon had come out again.

Suddenly he stood stock-still. Somebody was walking stealthily along the other side of the low wall that separated the garden from the forest. He saw only the intruder's tousled head, moving away from the pavilion. Evidently he had not heard the judge, for he unhurriedly continued his progress.

Judge Dee crouched and stepped noiselessly up to the low wall. Grabbing its top he vaulted over and landed in a kind of ditch, overgrown with wild plants. Scrambling up he saw that on this side the wall rose more than six feet above the narrow bank of the ditch. No one was there.

He looked up at the wall and froze in nameless terror. The tousled head was creeping along the top of the wall all by itself, with strange, jerky moves.

He stood breathless for a moment, his eyes fixed on that horrible thing. Then he smiled suddenly, and heaved a deep sigh of relief. The moonlight had played him a trick. It was just a bunch of tangled weeds, being dragged along by some small animal or other.

He reached up and pulled the weeds apart. The small land tortoise underneath gave the judge a reproachful look from its opaque eyes, then quickly drew its head and legs inside its shell.

'A wise policy, my little friend!' Judge Dee muttered. 'Wish I could do the same!'

It was a comfort to talk. The forbidding atmosphere of this strange place was beginning to oppress him. He cast an uneasy glance at the black mass of the wood, rising on the other side of the ditch from a solid wall of thick under­growth. This evidently was the Mandrake Grove, sacred to the River Goddess. Not a leaf was stirring in the silvery moonlight.