Yen Yuan, the bailiff, was not difficult to place. His handsome, regular face with the jet-black moustache and the neatly trimmed chinbeard, together with his slightly affected accent, indicated the young man about town. Although he could not be much older than twenty-five, there were dark pouches under his heavy-lidded eyes, and deep lines by the side of his loose, rather sensual mouth. The judge wondered idly how a typical gay young blade from the city came to be bailiff on an isolated country estate. When Yen had placed a large tea cup of coarse green earthenware before him, the judge asked casually:
'Are you related to the landowner, Mr Yen?'
To the old mistress, rather, sir. My parents live in the provincial capital. My father sent me here last year, for a change of air. I have been rather ill.'
'Soon we'll be cured of all our ills. For good!' the fat man muttered crossly.
He spoke with a broad country brogue; but his heavy-jowled, haughty face, framed by grey whiskers and a long, straggling beard, seemed to point to a businessman from the city.
'What illness is your brother suffering from, Mr Min?' the judge inquired politely.
'Asthma, aggravated by a heart condition,' Mr Min replied curtly. 'Might live to be a hundred, if he took proper care of himself. The doctors told him to take it easy, for a year or so. But no, he would gad about in the fields, rain or shine! So I had to come rushing out here. Had to leave my tea firm to my assistant, that lazy good-for-nothing! What will become of my business, of my family, I ask you? Those blasted Flying Tigers will put us to the sword, every one of us. Confounded bad luck!'
He set his tea cup down on the table hard, and angrily combed his beard with the short fingers of his podgy hand.
'I presume,' Judge Dee said, 'that you are referring to a band of highwaymen that is infesting this area. For I was waylaid by an armed robber on the road, who wore a cape of tigerskin. He didn't put up much of a fight, though. Well, unfortunately severe floods often tempt vagabonds and other riff-raff to profit from the disrupted traffic and the general confusion and engage in assault and robbery. But you need not worry, Mr Min. My military escort is armed to the teeth, so that those robbers would never dare to raid this country house. My men will be here as soon as the bridge has been repaired.'
'Almighty Heaven!' Mr Min shouted at the bailiff. 'When the bridge is repaired, he says! That's officials for you!' Taking hold of himself with an effort, he asked the judge in a calmer voice:
'Where do you suppose the timber would come from, worthy sir? There isn't a stick of timber to be had for miles around!'
'You are talking nonsense!' the judge said testily. 'What about the oak forest I just passed through?'
The fat man glared at the judge, then he sat back in his chair and asked the bailiff with a resigned air: 'Would you be kind enough to explain the situation, Mr Yen?'
The bailiff took a chopstick from the tea tray. Having laid it on the table in front of the judge, he placed an inverted tea cup on either side of it.
'This chopstick is the Yellow River,' he began. 'It flows here from east to west. This tea cup on the south bank is the fort, the cup on the opposite bank represents this country house.' He dipped his forefinger in the tea, and drew an oval round the latter cup. 'This is the mountain range here, the only tract of elevated ground this side of the river. All the rest of the surrounding country consists of rice fields; they belong to the landowner here, for about six miles north. Well, the river rose till it overflowed the south bank, transforming this mountain range into an island. A section of the raised highway north of the range crumbled away, as you saw when you crossed the temporary bridge the militia built over the gap. The ferry on this side was carried away by the current yesterday afternoon; Mr Min and a party of travelling merchants were the last to use it, yesterday morning. This country house is the only inhabited place hereabouts. So, you see that we are completely isolated, sir. Heaven only knows when the ferry can be re-installed, and it will take days before they have brought down from up north the timber necessary for repairing the bridge over the gap. There isn't a single tree for miles around north of the gap, as you must have seen for yourself when you came riding south.'
SKETCHMAP OF THE FLOODED AREA
Judge Dee nodded.
'I see that you have a number of refugees here, however,' he remarked. 'Why not select a dozen sturdy peasants from among them, and send them on horseback to the gap? They could fell trees, and ...'
'Didn't you see the severed head on the stake by the roadside when you came up here?' Mr Min interrupted.
'I did. What does that mean?'
'It means,' the portly gentleman replied in a surly voice, 'that those bandits keep a careful watch on us — from then — caves up the mountain slope, behind the house here. The head you saw is that of our groom. We had sent him to the gap, to inform the militia of our predicament. Well, just when he was about to take the highway, six horsemen swooped down on him. They dragged him back here, first cut off his hands and feet, then beheaded him, right in front of our gatehouse.'
'The insolent dogs!' Judge Dee called out angrily. 'How many are they?'
'About a hundred, sir,' the bailiff answered. 'All of them heavily armed, seasoned fighters, and desperate men. They are the remnants of a strong robber band of over three hundred who infested the lonely mountain region in the southern part of the province half a year ago. The army drove them away, but then they began to roam the countryside, burning the farmsteads and killing the inhabitants. Army patrols chased them from one place to another, killing about two-thirds of them. They fled north, and, when the water rose, sought refuge on this deserted mountain range.
'They established themselves in the caves, and posted lookouts on the top of the range, and down at the gap. They had planned to lie low here till the water fell, but when the ferry was carried away, and they did not need to be afraid any longer of being attacked by the soldiers from the fort, they conceived a better plan. Yesterday six of them came to the gate here. They asked for two hundred gold pieces; travelling funds, as they chose to call it. They would leave the next morning, they said, on the rafts a few of them are building on the west point of the island. If we refused to pay, they would storm this country house, and put everyone inside to the sword. They must have had a spy among our servants, for the sum they asked for represents just about the amount of cash the landowner usually keeps in his strongbox.'
The bailiff shook his head, cleared his throat and went on: 'My master decided to pay. The bandits said their leader would come personally to fetch the gold. Mr Min and I went to my master's room, he gave us the key, and we opened the strongbox. It was empty. The gold had been stolen. Since one of the maidservants absconded that same night, we suspect that it was she who stole the gold.'
'When we told the leader of the Flying Tigers that the gold was gone, he flew into an awful rage. He accused us of trying to gain time by base trickery, and said that if the gold was not brought to his cave before nightfall today, he would come down with his men to take it himself, and kill all of us. In despair we sent out the groom to contact the militia at the gap. And you have just heard what they did to him.'
'To think that the fortress is just across the river!' the judge muttered. 'They have more than a thousand soldiers there!'
'Not to speak of several hundred heavily armed river police, who congregated there when they had to evacuate the traffic control stations up river,' Yen remarked. 'But how can we establish contact with the fortress?'