She kept trying to tell her story, and Lady Sara kept hushing her. “Have your tea first,” she said. After a time she was able to sit up and sip the hot tea I had brought and even munch on a biscuit. The tenseness gradually oozed out of her, but she still looked terrified. Lady Sara watched her patiently, keeping her attention on the tea until she had finished a large cup.
Madam Shing had once been a valuable Limehouse agent. She had conscientiously roamed a large area and made herself an important source of information. She was a well-known and highly respected character among London’s Orientals. Her innate dignity inspired a local rumour that the Dowager Empress of China was a distant connection of hers, and even Chinese who spoke no English called her “Madam Shing.”
For the past few years, old age had curtailed her wanderings and failing eyesight blurred her observation. Now she rarely left the single room she lived in, and the last report we had from her had come several years before. A son in China sent her a small stipend, and Lady Sara made it possible for her to live comfortably by continuing to pay her ten shillings a month. Each month she had to be persuaded to accept it. She knew she was doing nothing to earn it. Whoever was acting as Lady Sara’s paymaster would persuade her to take it on the grounds that something momentous might occur just outside her window, and she would once again become an invaluable source of information. Eventually she pretended to believe that and accepted the money.
Contrary to all of our expectations, something had happened, and it had frightened her severely. When she finished her tea and indicated herself ready to talk, she croaked, “I was looking out of the window, and I saw it.”
“Saw what?” Lady Sara prompted her.
“Man with ladder.”
We waited.
She corrected herself. “Man with a long white beard and ladder. He put a ladder against the building and climbed up.”
“The building across the street?” Lady Sara asked.
“Yes. Across the street.”
“And what did he do then?”
“He opened the window and climbed in.”
“Charlie Tang lives across the street,” Lady Sara said. “Was it his window the man climbed into?”
“Yes. Charlie Tang’s window.”
“Were the Tangs at home?”
“No. Gone to Liverpool.”
Charlie Tang had a brother in Liverpool who occupied a position similar to his in London. Both were leading merchants. Christmas was not a holiday among the East End Chinese except for the small community of Chinese Christians that patronised the Chinese Mission House run by the Reverend George Piercy. Both the Tangs had married English wives, however, and were thoroughly Westernised. They attended the Church of England, sent their bright, happy children to English schools, and associated with leading English merchants while maintaining all of their Chinese connections.
Obviously they were holding a family Christmas gathering in Liverpool, and if Madam Shing’s sketchy description was to be believed, during Charlie Tang’s absence someone had broken into his dwelling, which was above his shop.
That was as much as Madam Shing would say. Lady Sara questioned her at length, but she would not elaborate. She had described exactly what she had seen, or thought she had seen, and not a jot more: A man with a long white beard had placed a ladder against the building across the street and climbed into the first-storey window that was directly opposite to Madam Shing’s own window.
“What sort of clothing was he wearing?” Lady Sara asked.
Madam Shing hadn’t noticed anything special about his clothing. It was a cold night; she supposed he had a coat on.
“What happened to the ladder afterward?” Lady Sara wanted to know. “Was it still there when you left?”
Madam Shing gazed at her blankly. She hadn’t given any further thought to the ladder. She hadn’t looked out of her window again. As soon as she saw what was happening, she determined to tell Lady Sara about it. She bundled herself up, which took time, and when she reached the street the ladder was gone.
“When the man with the long white beard was climbing up, were there other men waiting at the foot of the ladder?” Lady Sara persisted.
Madam Shing had seen only the one man, the man who climbed the ladder. She watched him until he vanished through the window. It never occurred to her to look down at the street for other men, so she didn’t know whether there were any. The one man had frightened her enough.
I was pouring another cup of tea for Madam Shing. She looked as though she still needed it. Lady Sara said, “Colin, would you awaken Rick and Charles? Also, John. Give them my apologies, but there is work to do.”
That was as much instruction as she needed to give me. The fact that she asked for both of her footmen as well as her coachman indicated what she wanted done. She owned two taxi-cabs, a four wheeler and a hansom, for use in her investigations. One of the footmen would drive Madam Shing home. We couldn’t allow her to walk back such a cruelly cold distance, and if we gave her money for a cab, she certainly would walk anyway and save it.
The other footman would be driven in the second cab by John, Lady Sara’s coachman, so he could follow Madam Shing on foot if the need arose.
Madam Shing refused to elaborate her story a syllable beyond the bare bones of the facts she had already presented. Her voice was vibrant with truth and honesty — as it always had been when she reported to Lady Sara. We had never had a more reliable agent. This time, however, I had no intention of believing her until I had investigated every word carefully. Obviously Lady Sara felt the same way about it.
When the horses had been harnessed and the two cabs were ready — one of them was waiting out of sight — we bundled Madam Shing up again, Lady Sara gave her congratulations and thanks, added a few shillings to compensate her for her ordeal in walking so far in the cold, and assured her we would take action at once. I assisted her into the four wheeler Rick was driving, and she was whisked away. Rick was to take her directly home. As they turned into Edgeware Road, the hansom cab driven by Old John, with Charles as his passenger, hurried after them.
I returned to Lady Sara’s office with her. She sat down at her desk; I took a chair nearby. I said, “I would like to be present when you relate to Chief Inspector Mewer this Christmas Eve tale about a man with a long white beard climbing a ladder in order to break into the residence of a prominent Chinese merchant. If I’m not mistaken, men with long white beards are supposed to be able to visit homes on Christmas Eve without breaking in.”
“Do you believe her?” Lady Sara asked.
“I do not.”
“Has she ever told us a lie before?”
“Not that I know of. She always has been painstakingly exact and truthful. However, she may be so far gone in senility as to be imagining things.”
“That was a long way to walk on a cold night just to indulge her senile imagination.”
“If she really did walk that far,” I suggested.
“She certainly was cold and gasping for breath when she arrived,” Lady Sara observed.
“She could have achieved that by walking from Gloucester Place,” I pointed out. “After all, she is elderly.” Gloucester Place was a mere three squares away.
“She knows me well,” Lady Sara said. “Even in senility, I don’t believe she would attempt to fob a complicated lie onto me. Nor would she walk so far to do it. Further, in all of my dealings with her, she always has been an exact and factual witness. Her objectivity has never been disturbed by a ripple of emotion. Yet suddenly she has become a different kind of person. Even so, I think we must assume there is some truth in what she told us. She had an experience tonight that was genuinely terrifying.”