"Thank you, sir!" the girl interrupted in a soft, cultured voice. "I must hurry along now, I must…"
She looked anxiously past the judge and made to turn around again. "Don't run away!" Judge Dee ordered curtly. "I am the magistrate, and I want to talk with you. You seem quite upset. Is that actor Mo Mo-te perhaps bothering you?"
She impatiently shook her small head.
"I must go and feed my bear," she said quickly.
The judge saw that all the time she kept her left arm close to her body. He asked sharply: "What is wrong with your left arm? Did Mo wound you with his sword?"
"Oh no, a long time ago my bear scratched me there. Now I must really…"
"I fear that Your Honour didn't like my poetry," a cheerful voice spoke up behind them. Judge Dee turned around. He saw Tsung Lee, who was making an exaggerated bow.
"I did not, young man!" the judge said annoyed. "If I had been the abbot I would have had you thrown out then and there!"
He turned to the girl again. But she had disappeared.
"The abbot'll think twice before he has me thrown out, sir!" the young poet said smugly. "My late father, Dr. Tsung, was a patron of this monastery, and my family still regularly donates substantial sums to it." Judge Dee looked him up and down.
"So you are a son of the retired Governor Tsung Fa-men," he said. "The Governor was a great scholar. I have read his handbook on provincial administration. He wouldn't have liked your clumsy doggerels!"
"I only wanted to rile the abbot a bit," Tsung said with an embarrassed air. "The fellow is such a self-important stick! My father didn't think much of him, sir."
"Even so," the judge said, "your poem was in extremely bad taste. And what on earth did you mean by that silly rhyme about two abbots?"
"Doesn't Your Honour know?" Tsung Lee asked astonished. "Two years ago Jade Mirror, the former abbot of this monastery, died — or was ‘translated,' as the correct term is, I think. He was embalmed, and now sits enthroned in the crypt under the Founder's shrine, in the sanctum. Jade Mirror was a very holy man — both dead and alive."
Judge Dee made no comments He had worries enough without going into the life-histories of the abbots of the Morning Cloud Monastery. He said: "I am on my way to the actors' dressing room, so I won't detain you here further."
"I was going there too, sir," the young man said respectfully. "May I show Your Honour the way?"
He took them around the corner into a long corridor lined by doors on both sides.
"Is Miss Ou-yang's room near here?" the judge asked.
"Somewhat further along," Tsung replied. "But I wouldn't go there without her, Your Honour! That bear is dangerous."
"She must be in her room," Judge Dee said. "Didn't you see her when you came up to us, just now?"
"Of course I didn't see her!" the poet said, astonished. "How could she have been here? Just before coming up I had a talk with her, down in the hall. She's still there!"
The judge gave him a sharp look, then glanced at Tao Gan. His assistant shook his head, a perplexed expression on his long face.
Tsung Lee knocked on a door near the end of the corridor. They entered a large, untidy room. Kuan Lai and two women quickly rose from the round table where they were sitting and greeted the judge with low bows.
Kuan presented the nice-looking young girl as Miss Ting, the actress who had acted the part of the Queen of the Western Paradise. He added that her speciality was acrobatic dancing, and juggling. The dowdy middle-aged woman he presented as his wife.
Judge Dee said a few kind words about the performance. The director seemed overwhelmed by the interest shown in his troupe by this distinguished person. He didn't quite know whether he ought to ask the judge to sit down with them, or whether that would be too presumptuous. Judge Dee solved his quandary by sitting down uninvited. Tsung Lee took the seat opposite, where a wine-jug of coarse earthenware was standing. Tao Gan took up his position behind Judge Dee's chair. Then the judge asked: "Where are Miss Ou-yang and Mo Mo-te? I would like to offer them my compliments too. Mo is a fine swordsman, and Miss Ou-yang's performance with the bear made my hair stand on end!"
This kind address apparently failed to put the director at his ease. His hand trembled when he poured out a cup of wine for the judge, so that he spilt some of it on the table. He sat down awkwardly and said: "Mo Mo-te will have gone to the store-room to return his costume, sir." Pointing at the pile of crumpled, red-stained sheets of paper on the dressing table he added: "Apparently he has been in here already to remove the paint from his face. As to Miss Ou-yang, she told me downstairs that she would come here after she had fed her bear."
Judge Dee got up and walked over to the dressing table, pretending that he wanted to adjust his cap in front of the mirror there. He looked casually at the crumpled sheets of paper and the pots with ointments and paint. He reflected that the red stains on the paper might as well be blood. When he was resuming his seat, he noticed that Mrs. Kuan was looking apprehensively at him. He took a sip of his wine, and asked Kuan about the stage technique of historical plays.
The director set out on a long explanation. The judge only half listened; he was trying to follow at the same time the conversation the others had struck up.
"Why didn't you go help Miss Ou-yang to feed the bear?" Tsung Lee asked Miss Ting. "She'd have liked that, I am sure!"
"Mind your own business!" Miss Ting said curtly. "Keep to your roses, will you?"
Tsung Lee said with a sly grin:
"Well, Miss Pao is rather an attractive girl, so why shouldn't I make poems for her? I even made one for you, dear. Here it is:
True love, false love,
Love of tomorrow, of yesterday —
Plus and minus
Keep us gay
Minus and minus,
Heaven'll fine us!"
Judge Dee looked around. Miss Ting's face had grown scarlet. He heard Mrs. Kuan say: "You'd better mind your language, Mr. Tsung!"
"I only wanted to warn her," Tsung Lee said unperturbed. "Don't you know that popular song they are now singing in the capital?" He hummed a fetching tune, beating the measure with his forefinger, then sang the words in a low pleasant voice:
Two times ten and still unwed,
There's yet hope for a bright tomorrow.
Three times eight and alone in bed,
There's nothing ahead but cold and sorrow!
Miss Ting wanted to make an angry remark, but now Judge Dee intervened. He addressed the poet coldly: "You interrupt my conversation, Mr. Tsung. I must also inform you that I have but a feeble sense of humour. Reserve your witticisms for a more appreciative audience." And to Kuan: "I have to go up and change for the banquet. Don't bother to see me out!"
Motioning Tao Gan to follow him he went out, closing the door in the face of the disconcerted director. He said to his lieutenant: "Before I go up, I'll try to find Mo Mo-te. You stay here and drink a few more rounds with those people. I perceive all kinds of undercurrents. You must try to find out what's going on. By the way, what did that paltry poet mean with his plus and minus?"
Tao Gan looked embarrassed. He cleared his throat, then replied: "They are coarse terms used in the street, Your Honour. Plus means man and minus woman."
"I see. Well, when Miss Ou-yang turns up, try to verify how long she was downstairs. She can't have been in two places at the same time!"
"That poet may have lied about meeting her in the hall, sir! And again when he pretended that he hadn't seen her talking to us. It's true that the corridor is very narrow, and that we were standing in between, but he could hardly have missed seeing her!"
"If Tsung Lee spoke the truth," the judge remarked, "the girl we talked to in the corridor must have been Miss Pao, posing as Miss Ou-yang. But no, that's wrong! The girl we met kept her arm close to her body and Miss Pao used both her arms when she gripped the balustrade, frightened by Mo's swordplay on the stage. I can't make head or tail of it! Find out what you can, then come up to my room!"