I felt a hand dip into my pocket and recoil when it came in contact with the handle of my pistol. I spun ’round in time to see a Chinese boy run off, who could not have been more than eleven.
“Quite a to-do,” I said to Barker over the firecrackers.
“Yes, it is the only time of the year the district kicks up its heels.”
There was the steady clamor of a gong ahead, and Barker and I pushed our way through the crowd to a large intersection. Everyone was milling about expectantly.
The crowd parted as Bok Fu Ying stepped forward into the street. She was without her veil and the plait she wore was down to her waist. She wore a suit of Chinese clothing made of red silk and a pair of embroidered slippers. In her hand was a long broadsword with a red sash. Somewhere off to the right, a band of Chinese musicians began to play a low melancholy tune and she began to move.
The crowd of mostly foreign men watched this representative of their homeland with rapt attention as she spun. The sword in her hand scythed the air left and right, the trailing sash popping like the string of a kite. The blade was extremely thin, though as broad as a pirate’s cutlass, and it bent and shivered to and fro as she moved from position to position. It looked like a beautiful dance, or so I would have said a year earlier. Now my eye recognized one deadly technique after another. She could have cut a man to ribbons with that sword, and I could personally attest that she kicked like a Surrey mule.
Finally, she came to a standstill in the center and settled down into a cross-legged position. The music changed and became lower and more eerie. I heard a woman give a short scream of surprise, which set us all craning our necks. The crowd parted and a creature came bounding out, heading straight for Bok Fu Ying.
It was a lion, or at least it was supposed to be. In fact, it was two very agile dancers in a lion costume, a multicolored Chinese fantasy with a huge head, blinking eyes, and a snapping jaw. It looked more like Harm than an actual lion, but then I realized Pekingese are called lion dogs in China, or more exotic still, butterfly lions. The creature charged toward Bok Fu Ying and skidded to a stop. The maiden feigned fear, keeping him at bay with her sword. It pranced about her like a tiger circling its prey. Sometimes both dancers inside would squat down, so that the long fabric of the body touched the ground on both sides. At others, the lead dancer raised the head as high as his arms would reach, the jaws chomping and the eyes rolling all the while. The crowd was enthralled.
Bok Fu Ying dipped, and the lion dipped. She stood and it stood. She turned in a circle, waving her sword, and the lion pranced about her. When it came too close, she smote the lion’s foot with the flat of her sword, which made it hop about with a paw in the air while the crowd laughed. The giant head shivered as if the lion were crying. It staggered and lunged toward the crowd as if asking solace, but everyone backed away. Finally, it limped back to Bok Fu Ying and made an elaborate bow in front of the courageous maiden, admitting defeat. In a moment, she had rolled it over on its back and was rubbing its belly as its feet kicked in the air. Everyone, even Barker, seemed to be enjoying the show.
Suddenly, there was an explosion of fireworks from the other side of the street. A new green and red creature appeared then and began to move toward them. This time, it was a dragon. The head was the size of the lion’s, but inside the long body, there must have been close to twenty dancers. It took up half the street, zigzagging and curling in a huge circle around Bok Fu Ying and the lion, as it attempted to catch its tail.
The dancers growled in unison as they attacked Bok Fu Ying and the lion. She slashed at its body, but the sword could not penetrate its scaly hide. With one sweep of its tail, it sent the lion sprawling. I could almost believe it real. Bok Fu Ying kept waving her sword at its face, which was vulnerable. The lion attacked, biting the tail of the dragon, which hopped around, trying to get it off.
The finale came when the lion was sent sprawling a second time and the dragon rushed upon the maiden. It reared up as the dancers inside mounted each other’s shoulders until the head was a full fifteen feet from the ground.
Quick as lightning, Bok Fu Ying struck. Her sword was thrust into the dragon’s breast, using the old theater trick of holding it between a dancer’s side and his arm. The creature reared in the throes of death. It danced about like an old tragedian, not having the decency to die until it had milked every last emotion from the crowd. Finally, it reared up and fell forward on top of Bok Fu Ying and there it lay, as if dead.
The lion, acting like a lapdog, revived. It pranced ’round the slain dragon, looking for its maiden. Finally, it seized the tail in its jaws and with a rough shake, rolled the row of dancers onto their backs one by one. I and everyone in the crowd craned our necks. Bok Fu Ying had vanished.
Barker put his head down as if he were listening, then slowly he nodded. I looked behind us and saw four Chinese men in the long quilted coats they favored. My first thought, foolhardy as it may have been, was that we could take them. There were but four, and even if I bested only one, that left three and Barker could easily take twice that many on an average day. Then I felt the barrel of a pistol in my side and realized we had been jugged as neatly as a hare. I put my hands up.
“That is not necessary,” one of them said. “Please step this way.”
We were herded through an empty-looking warehouse to a spiral staircase going down a floor. After that we were ordered through a grate into a sewer tunnel. A feeling of dread came over me. Nothing would prevent them from shooting us in this godforsaken spot if something we had done had given them reason. I didn’t want to end my life in a sewer.
The tunnel, I noted, was dry and must have been blocked up and bricked over some time in the City’s past. It had been given a new life, however, as I noticed when we reached the end. Suddenly, the tunnel turned into a hallway, and I took in the incongruous sight of a floor rug and a table containing a small painting of a Chinese scene. It lent an aura of domesticity not in keeping with sewers and pistol-wielding Chinamen. We were waved down the corridor and I felt as if I were walking into someone’s home. We passed a room in which four elderly men, like sages come to life from an old painting, were playing mah-jongg. I only got a glimpse before I was prodded in the kidney with the pistol.
“Keep moving,” the Chinaman said.
Barker opened the door at the far end, and we followed him inside. A creature screeched as we entered and for a moment I was more afraid of it than the man behind me. I gasped, which must have frightened it, for the animal ran for its cage and flung itself inside. It was a monkey of some sort, with white tufts over each ear like an old Scotsman.
“You have frightened my marmoset,” the occupant of the room complained in an abstract way, as if it mattered little to him. I did not have to even look to realize both the voice and the monkey belonged to Mr. K’ing. His face was thin and intelligent, his narrow eyebrows complementing his mustache. He seemed completely at ease. He raised his silk-clad arms and the gunmen searched us and took possession of our weapons.
“My ward,” Barker dared command. “Produce her at once.”