Liang Foo shrugged his narrow shoulders.
'Two of my men had established a regular watchpost in the house at the back of Nee's, directly after your man Chiao's first visit to Nee. Mansur was hiding there too. When he saw your lieutenant going there, he sent his two men over the roofs at once to kill him with one of the captain's swords. I thought that quite a good idea of Mansur, for Nee deserved to die on the scaffold, as a murderer. The lecher debauched my sister.'
'He did not. But let's not digress; let's return to the game of chess; its last, concluding phase. Your chess-men had got completely out of hand. My scheme of exposing the faked head of the Censor worked. Early this morning Zumurrud went to Colonel Chiao's inn, and asked him to take her to me so that she could claim her reward. There she was killed. Now the queen has been taken and you have lost the game.'
'I had to have her killed,' Liang muttered. 'She was going to leave me, to betray me. I used the best javelin-thrower I knew. She did not suffer.' He stared into space, absent-mindedly stroking his long moustache. Suddenly he looked up. 'Never measure a man's wealth by what he possesses, Dee. Measure it by what he failed to acquire. She despised me, because she knew me for what I really am, a coward, afraid of others, and of myself. And so she wanted to leave me. But now, embalmed, her beauty will be with me forever. I shall talk to her, talk to her every night, of my love. No one will come between us anymore.' Righting himself, he added fiercely; 'And least of all you, Dee! For you are on the verge of dying!’
'As if your murdering me would help you!’ the judge said with scorn. 'Do you think I am such a fool as to come here and confront you with your crimes, without having acquainted the Governor and my lieutenants with all the facts I have discovered against you?'
'Yes, I certainly do think so!’ Liang answered smugly. 'As soon as I knew that you were going to be my opponent, I made a careful analysis of your personality, you see. You are a famous man, Dee. The many astounding criminal cases you have solved during the last twenty years have become public property, they are told and re-told in the tea-houses and wine-shops all over the Empire. I know exactly how you work! You have a logical mind, rare intuitive power, and an uncanny knack of connecting seemingly unconnected facts. You pick your suspect, mostly through your shrewd insight into human nature, and relying heavily on your intuition. Then you pounce on him, bringing to bear on him the full force of your personality — which is rather overwhelming, I admit. You get your man to confess in one brilliant, spectacular move — and you explain afterwards. That is your typical method. You never bother about building up a complete case, patiently plodding along till you have collected conclusive evidence, and sharing your discoveries with your assistants, as other criminal investigators do. For that would run counter to your character. Therefore I know most assuredly that you did not tell the Governor a thing. And your two lieutenants only very little. And therefore, my dear Counsellor, you are going to die here.' He bestowed upon the judge a patronizing look, then went on placidly, 'My dear sister shall die here too. My Tanka stranglers failed to kill her twice, first in Yau's house and then again in the Examination Hall, but I know she is here in this house now, and I shall catch her at last. With her goes the only witness that could testify against me. For the stupid Tanka I employ know nothing, and they live in a world apart where they can never be traced. Mansur has his suspicions, but that clever scoundrel is on the high seas by now, in an Arab ship bound for his own country. The Censor's case will be recorded for what it essentially was: a murder of passion, committed by a misguided pariah woman, killed in her turn by a jealous Arab lover who stole her dead body. Neat case!’ After a sigh he continued: 'It will be universally regretted that in your zeal to solve the case you over-exerted yourself, and died from a heart attack while visiting me for a consultation. Everybody knows that you have been working too hard for many years, and human strength has its natural limits. The poison I used produces exactly the same symptoms as heart failure, and it can't be traced. Got the recipe from Zumurrud, as a matter of fact. Well, that such a famous man breathes his last in my humble house I consider a signal honour! I shall call your man Tao Gan inside, later, and he shall help me with the preparations for conveying your body to the palace. The Governor shall take all the other routine measures, I trust. Your two lieutenants are competent and intelligent — I never underestimate my enemies — and they'll doubtless have their suspicions. But by the time they have convinced the Governor to take a closer look at my affairs, all traces of what really happened here will have been effaced. And don't forget that I shall be appointed as your successor soon! As to the men you so thoughtfully posted in my front courtyard, and the guards who surround my house, I shall explain that you expected a murderous attack on me by Arab scoundrels. I shall let your men discover one Arab hooligan here, and he shall be duly executed. Well, that is all.'
'I see,' Judge Dee said. 'And so it was the tea. I must confess that I had expected a more ingenious manner of attack. A secret trap door, or something coming down from the ceiling, for instance. You'll have noticed that I took precautions against that by shifting my chair.'
'But you hadn't forgotten that old trick of the poisoned tea either,' Liang said with an indulgent smile. 'You shifted our cups, as I had expected you would while I had turned my back on you; mere routine on the part of an experienced investigator like you, of course. The poison was smeared on the inside of my cup, you know. Your own cup contained only harmless tea. So you drank the poison, and it should start to work by now, the dose was carefully graded. No, don't move! If you rise the poison will work at once. Don't you feel a dull pain in your heart region?'
'I don't,' Judge Dee said dryly. 'And I shan't either. Didn't I tell you I knew you have the chess-player's mind? He thinks in sequences of connected moves. I knew that if you chose poison as your weapon, you'd never adopt the crude method of putting it in my cup. That was confirmed when I noticed that your cup was cracked, which meant that you wanted to be able to make sure that I had indeed made the anticipated move of shifting our cups. Well, I made a second move. I not only shifted the cups, but also their content. I poured the poisoned tea in this bowl of chees-pieces here, you know, and the harmless tea into the cracked cup. Then I poured the poisoned tea from the chess-bowl into my cup, now yours. You can see it for yourself.' He took the chess bowl and let Liang look at the wet chess-men inside.
Liang sprang up. He went to the sacrificial table, but half-way he halted. Swaying on his feet, he clasped his hands to his breast.
'The queen! I want to see her. I...' he brought out in a choking voice.