"It was Tsung Lee who gave me the idea that you were in the gallery," Judge Dee remarked. "Without him I wouldn't have found you."
She turned her head and looked affectionately at the kneeling youngster. Then she lifted her head to the judge and said weakly: "I feel so peaceful and happy now! I can never repay you for…"
"You can!" Judge Dee said dryly. "Teach this fellow to make better poetry!"
As he rose, the girl smiled faintly. Her eyelids fluttered; the sleeping drug was taking effect. Turning to Miss Ting, the judge whispered: "As soon as she is asleep, throw that youngster out and rub her gently all over with this ointment here."
There was a knock on the door. Kang I-te came in, dressed as a man.
"I just put my bear outside," he said. "What is all this commotion?"
"Ask Miss Ting!" the judge said gruffly. "I have other things to do." He beckoned Tao Gan to follow him.
Miss Ting had been staring at Kang with wide eyes. Now she gasped:
"You are a man!"
"That ought to solve your problem," Judge Dee remarked to her. Kang had eyes only for her; he had hardly noticed the poet and the still figure on the bed. The last Judge Dee saw him do was clasp Miss Ting in his arms.
XVIII
Outside, the judge said sourly to Tao Gan: "I'd better resign as magistrate and set up business as a professional matchmaker. I have brought together two young couples, but I can't find a dangerous maniac! Let's go to your room. We must devise a plan, and quick!"
While they were walking down the corridor, Tao Gan said sadly: "I am awfully sorry, sir, that when passing through the gallery to fetch the painting from the temple, I didn't pause to have a second look at that poor naked woman. Then I would have noticed the blood and…"
"You needn't be sorry," the judge remarked dryly. "It does you credit. Leave it to your colleague Ma Joong to gape at unclothed women!"
Seated in Tao Gan's small room, Judge Dee silently drank the tea his lieutenant made for him. Then he sighed and said: "Well, I know now that it was the armless wooden statue from the Gallery of Horrors that I saw Mo move about in that secret hide-out of his. So we have found the one-armed woman, but I still can't understand how I could have seen the original wooden statue through a window that isn't there! However, let's leave that problem for the time being, and concentrate on the new, concrete facts we learned. Mo must have used Mrs. Pao as a procuress, and the dead abbot must have connived at their sordid affairs. Mo must have planned to place Miss Kang in the Gallery of Horrors for some time. He had removed the wooden statue before we arrived here, and probably also prepared the clamps in the wall. The cheek of that villain to go on with his infernal scheme, right under my nose!" The judge tugged angrily at his beard. "When Mrs. Pao had informed Mo and the abbot that White Rose was thinking of giving up her plan of becoming a nun, and wanted to establish contact with Miss Ou-yang, they decided to act quickly. They knew I was scheduled to leave the monastery this morning, and if I should inquire after her, they could easily explain the girl's absence by saying that she had gone into retreat for a few days in the forbidden part of the monastery. Thereafter they would have cowed the poor girl so thoroughly by their infernal tortures that she wouldn't have dared to denounce them, and they would doubtless have found some way to explain things to Miss Ou-yang, or Kang I-te rather, and to Tsung Lee. By then she would have been raped, and she herself wouldn't have liked to see her brother or the poet again. Those unspeakable fiends!"
He knitted his thick eyebrows. Tao Gan quietly pulled at the three long hairs on his cheek. No human depravity could ever astonish him. The judge resumed: "The abbot escaped earthly justice, but we'll get Mo Mo-te, and he is the main criminal. I don't think the abbot had the pluck; he was a coward at heart. But Mo is a completely ruthless, perverted maniac. There's no time for half-measures now, Tao Gan! I'll go and rouse Master Sun. We'll have all the inmates assembled in the large hall and we'll let Kuan Lai and Kang I-te look them over. If Mo isn't found among them, we'll search the entire accursed place, as I had already planned." Tao Gan looked doubtful.
"I am afraid, sir, that we can't have the whole monastery roused without Mo suspecting that the commotion has something to do with him. He will have fled before the check began. The storm is over, and Heaven knows how many exits this place has. Once he is in the mountains, it'll prove very difficult to catch him. It would be quite different, of course, if we had Ma Joong, Chiao Tai, and the rest of the staff here, with twenty constables or so. But with only the two of us…" He didn't complete the sentence.
Judge Dee nodded unhappily. He had to agree that his lieutenant was right. But what to do then? Absent-mindedly he took up a chopstick, and tried to balance the saucer of his teacup on its tip.
"It's a great pity that we haven't a plan of this monastery," Tao Gan resumed. "If we had one, we could probably make a good guess where that bedroom is to which Mrs. Pao took White Rose. It can't be far from the store-room where Your Honour saw Mo putting away the wooden statue of the naked woman from the gallery. And then we could also verify the thickness of the walls there."
"Master Sun showed me a diagram," Judge Dee said. "A kind of outline of the plan the monastery is built on." He kept his eyes on the saucer; he thought he had got it nearly balanced. "That was a great help for my general orientation. But of course it didn't give any details."
He let the saucer go and lifted the chopstick at the same time. The saucer fell and broke into pieces on the stone floor.
Tao Gan stooped and picked the broken pieces up. Trying to fit them together on the table he asked curiously: "What were you trying to do, sir?"
"Oh," the judge replied a little self-consciously, "it's a trick Miss Ting did. You make the saucer whirl round on top of the chopstick, you see. It can't fly away because of the rim round the bottom. It's quite a neat trick. That whirling saucer reminded me of the round Taoist symbol Master Sun drew at the top of his diagram, the two primordial forces turning round and round in eternal interaction. Funny I let it drop. When I saw Miss Ting doing it, it looked very easy!"
"Most tricks look easy when they are done well!" Tao Gan remarked with his thin smile. "But as a matter of fact they call for very long practice! Good, there's no piece missing. Tomorrow I'll mend this saucer, then it can still be used for many more years!"
"What makes you so parsimonious, Tao Gan?" Judge Dee asked curiously. "I know that you have ample private means, and no family obligations. You needn't become a wastrel, even if you don't grudge every single copper!"
His thin lieutenant gave him a shy look. He said, rather diffidently: "Heaven has presented us with so many good things, sir, and gratis too! A roof to shelter us, food for our stomach, clothes for our body. I am always afraid that some day Heaven'll become angry, seeing that we take all those good things for granted, even spend them recklessly. Therefore I can't bear to throw away anything that can still be used in some way or another. Look, sir, there'll only remain that one bad crack, the one that cuts horizontally through the flower design. But that can't be helped!"
Judge Dee sat up in his chair. He stared fixedly at the re-assembled saucer that Tao Gan held together in his cupped hands.
Suddenly he jumped up and started to walk back and forth in the small room, muttering to himself. Tao Gan looked up, then stared again at the broken saucer in his hands. He wondered what the judge had seen there.