As I drove away from the complex, I noticed the mob of tourists had knocked down a section of rail fence. Staring at the scene, I had a sudden thought. If I stepped on it, I could get to the courthouse before Mrs. Nims closed up.
Everybody was standing and applauding. Leaning against the theatre’s back wall beside me, Seth Fuller beamed. I don’t know, how Reede and Elaine had worked out their problems, but the lines at the end of Death of the Duchess had not been changed and Roger Manchester had given a magnificent performance.
I turned to Seth. “I guess you’d better come with me now.”
“I should have known better, but one big score and my dreams of a powerful regional theatre would have been possible. How did you figure it out?”
“Someone had to be directing Tod and Rod. Your old tobacco barn in back was a great place to store the marijuana, and the records down at the courthouse show that while you sold off a lot of property, you still own that plot of land behind Clem’s. The way I see it, you had a deal with the Bowsers, but on one of his walks Fields stumbled on the cache and wanted in. That was the big deal that caused him to drop out of the play. That night you saw Manchester return to his cottage. You waited for Elaine and Reede to go into his place. Then you confronted Fields. When you couldn’t work out something with him, you lost your hair-trigger timper and hit him with the trophy.”
“Don’t you see,” Seth said without looking at me, “I thought the play couldn’t go on without Fields, but he backed me into a corner. He wanted such a huge split I wouldn’t have been able to put the playhouse back in shape. There was nothing else I could do.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I let Seth stay around long enough to accept the congratulations from the audience and cast. Today I had learned how bad shattered dreams could hurt.
Clement County settled down soon afterwards. Philip Reede went back to New York to launch Death of the Duchess. Elaine promised to come up for the premier. I didn’t much like the idea of her traipsing off to New York, but it was her decision. Reluctantly Sarah Fricker returned the books she had “borrowed” from the library and put up a TV antenna to feed her fantasies.
The only excitement we’ve had around here lately came the day the State Police destroyed the confiscated marijuana. TV cameras were everywhere. And wouldn’t you know, Reverend Spiker and CUT showed up to support the burning of “the demon weed” — downwind.
The Gem Show
by R. Tuttle
A long time ago the green elephant had been taken from him. Now, sixty years later, Sing Li was determined to get it back — at any cost!
Madame Chen was born Mai Ling in the year 1910 in a tiny hamlet in Northern China. The citizens of her village were simple, hard working folk who knew little of the world beyond the limits of their homes except for the grim, frightening stories of ruthless bandits who roamed the barren hills spreading havoc and death.
One such outlaw was Sing Li, who in 1920 was a tall, lean, hard faced stripling of nineteen with ten years of bandit activity behind him. Born of simple stock, he had been kidnapped at an early age and had learned all aspects of the bandit’s trade from the notorious Wong Ho. When Ho was killed in 1919 by government soldiers, Sing Li took over the band and continued to terrorize the hills. His constant companion was a hand sized gem shaped like an elephant that hung on a chain around his neck. Hand ground, the piece boasted hundreds of flat surfaces that literally shattered light into an everchanging spectrum of beautiful colors. Sing had stolen it from a rich merchant at the tender age of fourteen and it was said by his men that this gem was the only real love in Sing Li’s life. He was known as the evil one with the green elephant to his victims.
In August of 1920, Sing Li and his band of cutthroats attacked Mai Ling’s village.
The village elders and youth were not fighters so the battle, if indeed it could be called a battle, was shortlived. Mai Ling’s mother managed to hide ten year old Mai but was caught by the lustful Sing Li in a clearing in back of her home.
Mai Ling watched in horror and disbelief as her mother was first ravished then killed by the mad animal called the evil one with the green elephant.
After the bandit’s orgy had run its course, they began to drink and soon were fighting among themselves for the pitiful loot from the village. Sing Li, drunk from rice wine was sitting in the clearing near the body of Mai Ling’s mother lost in admiration of the green elephant. Over and over, he vowed he would take it to his grave.
He fell asleep.
Mai Ling waited several minutes, then crawled out of the bushes and after first touching her mother’s dead face reverently, crawled over to the sleeping Sing Li. Her small, delicately featured face was tense with both sorrow and hatred. The green elephant gleamed at her in the moonlight.
He had taken her mother so she would take the elephant.
His head was slumped over his chest and he was leaning back against a tree. Her small hands quickly removed the elephant and chain from his neck. She saw a stubby dagger on the ground nearby. Anger flared in her face. She picked up the knife and was about to plunge it into his chest when his eyes suddenly opened.
They stared at each other for an instant, then he grabbed her arm.
“Pig!” he snarled.
Mai Ling leaned forward and clamped her teeth hard on his wrist. With a cry of pain, he let go of her arm. Mai darted off into the darkness, dropping the knife but clutching the green elephant.
Sing Li glanced down at his bleeding wrist, then tried to rise but the rice wine had taken its toll on his legs. He was too drunk to do anything but shout threats into the darkness.
A few days later, Mai Ling was found by government soldiers and taken to a British Mission where she stayed for many years. A highly intelligent girl, she quickly learned English and the ways of the Western world, yet managed to maintain her own identity. At eighteen, she was a beautiful young lady with ambitions far beyond the scope of the small Mission so she joined a Merchant’s caravan and went to Hong Kong. There, she quickly found work in a British household and in 1933, married a gem merchant many years her senior. She worked closely with her husband and soon became an expert in the gem trade.
And she still had the green elephant.
In 1936, her husband died of a heart attack leaving her with two small sons, Y and Fong, and a rich bank account. The talk now was of war and the possibility that the invaders might attack Hong Kong. Mai Ling, now Madame Chen, left Hong Kong and went to San Francisco where she set up a gem shop on Grant Avenue. Her two sons went to school and she became a businesswoman to be reckoned with.
She kept the green elephant in a locked glass case in her office just off the shop. She gazed at it often, remembering the ruthless Sing Li and how he murdered her mother. Sometimes while sleeping she would dream about him. In her dream, she would have a gun and would shoot him as he pleaded for his life. During her waking hours, she often thought about him. Where was he? Was he dead?
Sing Li wasn’t dead. In 1923, he had been arrested and condemned to death. However, when the guards came to get him they found an empty cell with a barless window. After several months he surfaced in Singapore where he found work with a British Firm. He had a quick mind so he soon picked up the King’s English even to the point of speaking with a slight British accent. He also made it a point to learn how to read and write his new language. Although a good worker and personable, he was still Sing Li the bandit so he made contact with the mob hierarchy and soon became adept at playing both sides of the game.