Bill for the Use of a Body Read Free

for humanity was mainly due to the able planning and administration of selfless and devoted British civil servants, it could not have been achieved without the wholehearted co-operation of the Chinese, who made up nine-tenths of the Colony’s population.
    Before the war Hong Kong’s prosperity had arisen from the fact that it was the entry port for the great Chinese city of Canton that lay some sixty miles away to the west up the great island-spattered estuary. With the triumph of Communism in China the door had suddenly been slammed, cutting off the multi-million trade between Europe and China. For a while it had looked as though Hong Kong must wither and become bankrupt. But during the years of strife on the mainland great numbers of wealthy Chinese had seen the red light, got their money out in time and emigrated to Hong Kong. With British encouragement these highly intelligent men had revolutionised the status of the Colony. It had originally been mainly a channel for supplying China with goods from the Western world, but by building over 5,000 factories, large and small, and establishing a great variety of new enterprises, they had made the Colony not only self-supporting, but, with the one exception of Japan, the greatest centre of industry in the Far East.
    To that had to be added the contribution of the million Chinese who, mostly penniless, had sought refuge in the Colony. Thrifty, cheerful and industrious by nature, they were gluttons for work. They were no believers in short hours, let alone wildcat strikes. Their one aim in life wasto be able to support their families in comfort and have a little money put by in case of misfortune. Three hundred thousand of them had been settled on farms, to start with in wooden shacks, but now great numbers of them were living in pleasant bungalows with radios, refrigerators and washing machines. Hundreds of thousands of others who, at first, teemed like ants in squalid shanty towns had since earned enough to furnish and live well in the flats on the great housing estates that the Government let to them at a nominal rent.
    As Julian’s eyes again swept the seventeen square miles of blue water that formed the almost land-locked harbour, they came to rest on Stonecutter’s Island. It lay close to and on the west side of the Kowloon peninsula. On a Christmas night twenty-two years earlier he had taken his life in his hands and, fully clothed, swum the two miles out to it. Even when, utterly exhausted, he had floundered ashore, and for many hours afterwards, he had still been in deadly peril; for the whole area was swarming with Japanese. At 3.15 that afternoon Hong Kong had surrendered, but the bestial Japs were still butchering any stray British soldiers they came upon, and only the fact that Julian knew a few sentences of Japanese had later saved him.
    That he knew any Japanese at all was due to the extraordinary flair of the Service departments for posting square pegs in round holes. Julian had joined up in Cairo early in the war. As he could speak most of the Mediterranean languages, including Arabic, Russell Pasha had, with his usual good sense, secured him a commission in the Interpreter Corps. In that capacity he had fought with the New Zealanders during General Wavell’s brilliant campaign in Libya and later in the disastrous expedition to Greece. After the evacuation of what remained of the British force to Egypt he had been seconded to Intelligence and for some weeks employed in Cairo translating Arabic documents. Then it had been decided to increase theHeadquarters Staff in Singapore; upon which, although Julian knew nothing about the Far East or any of its languages, some dunderhead had had him posted there as an extra Intelligence Officer.
    As he had a flair for languages, after some months of tuition he picked up enough Japanese and Chinese to get the general sense of printed or typed documents, but no-one pressed him to exert himself. The convinced