The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure Read Free Page B

describing the exploits of the Hole in the Wall Gang to the Mandarin. ‘Outlaw he may be, but Mr Butch Cassidy is not an uneducated man,’ said the doctor, fumbling in his waistcoat for a match and his briar pipe. The Mandarin, reclining on the kang (he had already smoked two opium pipes and was comfortably replete after a light luncheon and an hour with his third, and favourite, concubine) gazed complacently at the frock-coated foreigner sitting on a stool beside him. With a rustle of silk and a tinkle of ornament, a maid leaned over his shoulder and carefully poured tea into porcelain cups. In a fluid motion she replaced the pot in a wickerwork warmer, and bowed her way out of the study.
    â€˜Thank you, my dear,’ said Dr Airton, nodding after her graceful figure. Smoke rings drifted round his head. ‘You may be surprised to hear that Butch Cassidy comes of a good English family,’ he continued. ‘His father, though a Mormon, was born in Accrington in Lancashire. Young Butch might not have had the fortune to be sent to good schools on the East Coast, but clearly he was educated. It takes aptitude of mind, after all, to plan and execute such successful train robberies.’
    His last words were drowned in an altercation that erupted from the courtyard outside the Mandarin’s study, angry voices barking and screaming through the sunlit windowpanes. It was the cook and the maidservant, thought the doctor, quarrelling again. It amazed him that the minions of a magisterial household could feel free to argue quite so loudly in front of their master; he could not imagine such going-ons in the home of an English judge. The Mandarin showed no rancour, but waited patiently for the noise to subside.
    â€˜It is difficult, then, to rob a train?’ he murmured.
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ said the doctor. ‘Takes lots of planning beforehand—knowledge of timetables, spies in the station, a convincing obstacle on the track, dynamite, skill with the lariat and a good getaway plan. And a certain amount of discipline in your gang. Unruly ruffians, cowboys.’
    â€˜I must teach my soldiers to beware of such robbers when the railway track is completed,’ said the Mandarin.
    Dr Airton chuckled. The idea of pigtailed Chinese wearing masks and sombreros, wielding six-guns and galloping to catch a moving train appealed to his sense of whimsy. ‘I don’t think you’ll really ever have a problem on that score, Da Ren.’ He used the courtesy title for a mandarin, literally ‘Great One’. Although they were now friends, the doctor was punctilious in using the correct term of address for local officials. In return he expected to be addressed as Yisheng, ‘Physician’ or Daifu, ‘Doctor’. He knew that he was described in a less flattering way in the town but no one had yet called him Chi Laoshu, or ‘the Rat-eater’ to his face. He was, however, proud of this nickname, which he had earned four years previously during the bubonic-plague epidemic that had first brought him to Shishan. Shortly after his arrival he had sent criers round the streets announcing that he would pay the princely sum of ten cash for every rat brought to him, dead or alive. This had earned him an eccentric reputation and convinced all those who did not already know it that foreigners were touched in the head; but the subsequent hunt for rodents had decimated the population of disease-bearing Rattus rattus, and materially assisted the elimination of plague. The Mandarin’s memorial in his praise and the rumoured award of a medal from the Great Ch’ing Emperor for his work as a wondrous healer had somewhat restored his character, but the nickname had stuck, and even today he was often waylaid by peasants bearing baskets of dead mice, hoping to appeal to his gourmet tastes.
    The Mandarin leaned forward and delicately sipped his tea. Relaxed in his study he was in a state of undress,