The Ruby in the Smoke

  Sally heard the city clocks chiming the half-hour: half-past one. She walked slowly back and forth, ignoring the occasional pedestrian and the even more occasional cab or four-wheeler. Once a policeman stopped and asked if she was all right, evidently thinking that here was another of those poor wretches who took to the river as the answer to all their sorrows; but she smiled and reassured him, and he walked on steadily.

  A quarter of an hour passed. A cab rolled up to the rank at the northern end of the bridge, but no one got out. The driver hunched his coat up around his shoulders and dozed, waiting for a passenger. The river moved beneath her; she watched the tide flowing in, lifting the boats tied up at both banks, with their riding lights glowing. Once she heard the chugging of a police steam-launch moving down from Southwark Bridge. She watched it come and disappear beneath her feet, and then walked across to see it come out the other side and go down slowly past the dark bulk of the Tower, and curve off towards the right. She wondered if that thickly clustered shore on the left was Wapping, and if so, which of those black wharves backed on to Holland's Lodgings.

  Time passed; she got colder. The clocks chimed again.

  And then a figure appeared under the gaslamp at the northern end of the bridge - a squat, dumpy figure in black.

  Sally straightened, and a yawn died away in her throat. She stood in the middle of the pavement, clear of the parapet, so as to be seen, and in a moment the figure began to move towards her. It was Mrs Holland; Sally could see her clearly. Even at this distance, the old woman's eyes seemed to glitter. She moved in and out of alternate shadow and light, limping a little, wheezing, holding her side, but never stopping.

  She came to within three yards of Sally and stopped. The ancient crooked bonnet she wore obscured the top part of her face so that only her mouth and chin could be seen clearly, her mouth working all the time as if she were chewing something small and resistant; but still the eyes glittered in the darkness.

  "Well, dear?" she said at last.

  "You killed my father."

  Mrs Holland's mouth opened a little, exposing the great sheet of teeth. A pointed leathery tongue crawled slowly across them and withdrew.

  "Well," she said. "You can't make accusations of that kind, missy."

  "I know all about it. I know that Major Marchbanks - that Major Marchbanks was my father. He was, wasn't he?"

  Silence from Mrs Holland.

  "And he sold me, didn't he? He sold me to Captain Lockhart, the man I thought ... the man I knew as my father. He sold me for the Ruby."

  Mrs Holland was perfectly still, perfectly silent.

  "Because the Maharajah gave the Ruby to my - to Captain Lockhart as payment for protecting him during the Mutiny. That's right, isn't it?"

  Slowly the old woman nodded.

  "Because the rebels thought he was helping the British. And my f ... and Captain Lockhart left Major Marchbanks guarding the Maharajah in - in the dark somewhere -"

  "The Residency cellars," said Mrs Holland. "With the women - some of 'em. And the children - some of 'em."

  "And Major Marchbanks had been smoking opium - and he was afraid and ran away and they killed the Maharajah and when he came back with my - with Captain Lockhart... They quarrelled. Major Marchbanks begged for the Ruby. He had debts and he couldn't pay them -"

  "The opium. Pitiful. It was opium as killed him."

  "You killed him!"

  "Now, now. I want that ruby, miss. That's what I come for. I got a right to it."

  "You can have it - when you tell me the rest of the truth."

  "How do I know you got it?"

  For answer Sally took the handkerchief out of her bag and set it on the parapet under the gaslight. She unwrapped the Ruby so that it sat, red on white, in the very centre of the broad stone ledge. Mrs Holland took an involuntary step towards it.

  "One more step and it goes over," said Sally. "The truth. I know enough now to be able to tell if you're lying. I want it all."

  Mrs Holland faced her again.

  "All right," she said. "You got it right. They come back and find the Maharajah dead, and Lockhart knocked Marchbanks down for a coward. Then he heard the child crying. You, that was. Marchbanks's wife had died - sickly thing. Lockhart says, is this pore child going to grow up with a coward for a father? A coward and an opium-smoker? Take the Ruby, he says. Take it and be damned, but give me the child..."

  She stopped. Sally heard the heavy tread of the policeman returning. Neither of the women moved; the Ruby lay on the parapet, in plain view. The policeman stopped.

  "All right, ladies?"

  "Yes, thank you," said Sally.

  "Nasty night to be out. We're going to have more rain, I shouldn't wonder."

  "Wouldn't be surprised," said Mrs Holland.

  "I should get off indoors if I was you. I wouldn't be out meself if I didn't have to be, eh? Well, back to the beat."

  He touched his helmet and walked on.

  "Go on," said Sally.

  "So Marchbanks snatches the child - that's you - from the cradle and gives it to Lockhart. It was the opium and the debts working in his mind. And he pockets the Ruby, and - that's all."

  "No it isn't. What did Captain Lockhart's wife say?"

  "Wife? He never had a wife. He was a bachelor."

  And that was Sally's mother gone. Wiped away at a stroke: and it was almost the worst blow of all to know that that wonderful woman had never existed.

  Sally said shakily, "But I've got a scar on my arm. A bullet -"

  "That was no bullet; that was a knife. The same knife as killed the Maharajah, rot his soul. They was going to kill you, only they was disturbed."

  Sally felt faint. "Well, go on," she said. "What about you? How do you come into it? Don't forget, I know some of it, and if you don't tell the truth -"

  She took hold of the corner of the handkerchief. It was a lie: she had no idea of how Mrs Holland was involved, but from the old woman's gasp as Sally reached for the Ruby, Sally knew she would get the truth.

  "It was me husband," she said hoarsely. "Horatio. He was a soldier in the Regiment, and he got wind of it."

  "How?" said Sally, and pushed the stone closer to the edge.

  "He was down there," said Mrs Holland swiftly, her hands twisting round each other in her anxiety. "He saw it and heard it. And later on back home -"

  "You blackmailed him. Major Marchbanks, my real father. You robbed him of everything. Didn't you?"

  "He was ashamed. Bitter ashamed. Course he didn't want no one to hear about what he done. Sell his own child for a jewel? Dreadful."

  "But why did you hate my - Captain Lockhart? What had he done to you? Why do you want to kill me?"

  Mrs Holland wrenched her eyes away from the Ruby.

  "He reduced my Horatio to private soldier," she said. "He was a Sergeant. I was proud of that. To be a private again - that was cruel."

  Her voice shook with the injustice of it.

  "But why do you say the Ruby is yours? If the Maharajah gave it to Captain Lockhart, and he gave it to Major Marchbanks, what right have you got to it?"

  "I got the best right of any of you. He promised it to me hisself twenty years before, the lying bastard. He promised it."

  "Who? My father?"

  "No - the Maharajah!"

  "What? Why? Whatever for?"

  "He was in love with me."

  Sally laughed. The idea was preposterous; the old woman was making it up. But Mrs Holland shook her fist in fury, and hissed, "It's true! So help me God I made a bargain with you, missy, the truth for the Ruby, and this is God's own truth. You look at me now and you think I'm old and ugly, but twenty year before the Mutiny - before I married - I were the loveliest lass in the whole o' northern India. Pretty Molly Edwards, they used to call me. My father were the Company farrier in Agrapur - only a humble civilian, but they all came to pay their respects, the officers, and make eyes at me - and not only the officers, neither. The Maharajah hisself fell for me, d
amn him. You know what he wanted... He were crazy with love for me, and I'd toss me head at him - a head full o' dark curls... You think you're pretty; you're a washed-out mournful thing beside the girl I was. You're nothing, you are. You'd never compare. Well, the Maharajah promised me the Ruby. So I gave in. And then he laughed, and threw me out the palace; and I never saw the Ruby again till that night in the Residency cellars--"

  "It was you who saw everything, then! Not your husband!"

  "What's it matter now? Yes, I saw it all. More than that: I let in the men who killed him. And I laughed as he died..."

  She smiled at the memory. Sally could see nothing of the beauty she claimed to have had. There was nothing left at all - nothing but age and cruelty. And yet Sally believed her, and felt sorry - until she remembered Major Marchbanks, and his strange timid gentleness the day they had met, the way he had looked at the girl who was his daughter... No, she did not feel sorry.

  So she took the Ruby in her hand.

  "And is that all the truth?"

  "All that matters. Come on - it's mine. Mine before you, before your father, before Lockhart. I was bought with that stone - same as you. The pair of us, each bought for a ruby... Now give it to me."

  "I don't want it," said Sally. "It's brought nothing but death and unhappiness. My father meant me to have it and not you, but I don't want it. I give up all my claim to it. And if you want it -" she held it up - "you can go and get it."

  And she threw it over the parapet.

  Mrs Holland stood perfectly still.

  They both heard the faint splash far below as the stone hit the water; and then Mrs Holland went mad.

  First, she laughed and tossed her head like a young girl, and patted it with satisfaction as if there were not a filthy old bonnet there but a mass of dark glossy curls.

  Then she said, "My beauty. My pretty Molly. You shall have a Ruby for your lovely arms, for your blue eyes, for your red lips..."

  Then her teeth fell out. She took no notice, but her speech became incoherent, and her bonnet fell crookedly, obscuring half her face. She thrust Sally aside and scrambled up on to the parapet. She tottered wildly for a moment; Sally, horrified, put out a hand, but felt only the empty air as the old woman plunged.

  She fell without a cry. Sally put her hands over her ears; she felt rather than heard the impact.

  Mrs Holland was dead.

  Sally sank to her knees and cried.

  And at the northern end of the bridge, the driver of the cab flicked his whip gently, and shook the reins, and the cab began to move.

  It came at a walk along the roadway and stopped beside her. She was still sobbing, she looked up through a mist of tears. The driver's face was hidden, the occupant - if there was one - invisible.

  The door opened. A hand rested on it - a large sunburnt hand, with fair hairs on the back and knuckles. A voice she had never heard before said:

  "Please get into the cab, Miss Lockhart. We have something to discuss."

  She stood up, speechless. She still shook from time to time with sobs, but that was automatic: she was now devastated with astonishment.

  "Who are you?" she managed to say.

  "I have many names. I recently visited Oxford under the name of Eliot. The other day I had an appointment with Mr Selby, and the name I used then was Todd. In the East I am sometimes known as Ah Ling, but my real name is Hendrik van Eeden. Into the cab, Miss Lockhart."

  Helplessly, she obeyed. He shut the door and the cab moved away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE EAST INDIA DOCKS

  Sally held her bag tightly on her lap. Inside it, loaded, was the gun she had bought for the enemy she could not see. And here he was... She felt the cab turn right as it left the bridge and move down Lower Thames Street towards the Tower. She sat trembling in a corner, hardly able to breathe for fear.

  The man said nothing and did not move. She could feel his eyes on her, and her skin crawled. The cab turned left and began to move through a maze of smaller streets which were less well lit.

  "Where are we going?" she said shakily.

  "To the East India Docks," he said. "And then you may come further, or you may stay."

  His voice was soft and cracked. He spoke without trace of any accent, but he shaped each word carefully, as if he were remembering how to say it.

  "I don't understand," she said.

  He smiled.

  She could see his face dimly in the inconstant light from the gaslamps they passed. It was broad and genial; but his eyes, glistening darkly, traversed her slowly from head to toe. She felt as if he were touching her, and shrank away into the corner and shut her eyes.

  The cab turned right, into Commercial Road. He lit a cheroot and filled the cab with smoke; it made her feel sick and dizzy.

  "Please," she said, "may I open a window?"

  "I beg your pardon," he said. "How thoughtless of me."

  He unfastened the window on his side and threw out the cheroot. Sally slipped her hand into the bag as he did so, but he had turned back before she had found the gun. Neither of them spoke. The only sound was the trundling of the wheels on the road and the clop of the horse's hooves.

  Several minutes passed. She looked out of the window. They were passing the Limehouse Basin of the Regent's Canal, and she saw the masts of ships and the gleam of a night-watchman's fire. And then they were past and turning into the East India Dock Road. Somewhere in the night not far from here was Madame Chang... Would she help, if Sally could get to her? But she would never remember the way.

  Her hand crept, little by little, further into the bag and closer to the gun. And her heart sank, for it had been raining hard during her walk to London Bridge, and the bag was soaked. Please let the powder be dry...

  Ten more minutes passed in silence, and the cab turned into a narrow street bounded by a factory on one side and a high wall on the other. The only light came from a single gaslamp at the corner of the street. The cab pulled in to the pavement and stopped, and van Eeden leant out of the window and gave some money to the driver. Without a word, the driver got down and unharnessed the horse. Sally felt the cab rock as he climbed down, and heard the jingle of the harness, and felt the little jolt as the shafts were laid on the ground; and then she heard the faint clop of the horse's hooves as the driver led it away and around the corner. And then there was silence again.

  Sally had found the pistol. It was pointing the wrong way; under cover of shifting her position, she turned the bag around and gripped the handle. Everything felt so damp...

  "We have little more than half an hour," said van Eeden. "There is a ship beyond that wall which is going to sail with the tide. I am going with it. You may come, alive, or you may stay here dead."

  "What do you want me for?"

  "Oh, surely," he said, "I don't have to explain that? You are not a child."

  Sally felt cold.

  "Why did you kill my father?" she said.

  "Because he interfered in the affairs of my society."

  "The Seven Blessings?"

  "Indeed."

  "But how can you belong to a Chinese secret society? Aren't you Dutch?"

  "Oh, partly. It is my fate to look more like my father than my mother, but my ancestry is not in question. My mother, you see, was the daughter of Ling Chi, who earned his living in a traditional and praiseworthy way - you would call it piracy. What more natural than that I should seek to follow the example of my illustrious grandfather? I had the benefits of a European education, so I was able to obtain a post as agent to a well-known firm dealing with the shipping trade, and then to set up an arrangement beneficial to both parties."

  "Both parties?"

  "The firm of Lockhart and Selby, and The Seven Blessings Society. It was opium which provided the link. Your father refused to deal in it - a short-sighted and pointless policy, in my view, and one which led to his death. No, I was pleased with the arrangement I created, and annoyed when he threatened to ruin it."
br />   "What was this arrangement?" said Sally, playing for time. Her thumb was on the hammer; would the warmth of her hand dry the powder? And would the barrel hold, even if it did fire?

  "The finest opium," van Eeden went on, "comes from India, grown under British Government supervision, and there is an official stamp, you know, a sort of mould, to form the stuff into little official cakes with Her Majesty's blessing and approval. Very civilized. It commands a ready sale, and a high price. Unfortunately, your father would not deal in it, so Lockhart and Selby were not in a position to benefit from it.

  "So in my capacity as Ah Ling, I made a practice of intercepting vessels carrying opium from India. It is the work of a morning to persuade the crew to cooperate; the work of an afternoon to transfer the cargo to my junk; the work of an agreeable evening to sink their ship, and sail away."

  "And then Lockhart and Selby take the stolen opium and sell it, I suppose?" said Sally. "Very clever. A credit to you."

  "Far too obvious. It would be spotted at once. No, here comes the beauty of the scheme. By a lucky chance, my society came into the possession of one of those very valuable British Government stamps. So with the help of the stamp and a factory in Penang, together with some low-grade opium from the hills, one shipload becomes three or four, all stamped and certified and shipped by that most respectable firm, Lockhart and Selby."

  "You adulterate it... And what happens to those who smoke the opium?"

  "They die. In the case of those who smoke our altered opium, they die more quickly, which is a blessing for them. It was most unwise of your father to intervene; it gave me a lot of trouble. I was in Penang in the character of Hendrik van Eeden; I had to become Ah Ling and arrive at Singapore before your father left... Devilish difficult. But the gods have been kind. It is nearly over."

  He took a watch from his waistcoat pocket.

  "Admirable time," he said. "Well, Miss Lockhart, have you decided? Do you come, or do you stay?"

  She looked down and saw, with horror, the open blade of a knife in his lap. It glinted in the faint light from the dockyard over the wall. His voice was soft and thick as if he spoke through felt, and she found herself beginning to shake. No, no, be still, she told herself. But this wasn't a target pinned to a wall - this was a living man, and it would kill him...

  She pulled back the hammer with her thumb. It made a faint click.