Upon re-entering the hall Judge Dee saw that Min, Yen and Liao had seated themselves at the large table in the rear. Now it bore four large earthenware bowls of rice, four platters of pickled vegetables, and one of salted fish.
'Please excuse the poor fare!' Mr Min said, as a halfhearted attempt at observing the customary amenities due to a guest. Raising his chopsticks as the sign to begin, he grumbled: 'Stocks are running low. My brother ought to have seen to it that. ...' He shook his head and buried his face in his rice bowl.
They ate in silence for a while. The judge was hungry, and he found the simple, solid food much to his taste. The bailiff rose and fetched from the wall table a brown stone jar and four small porcelain cups. As he was pouring the warm wine, the steward gave him an astonished look. He said crossly:
'So it was you who got that jar out, Yen! How can you possibly think of wine, the night after Miss Kee-yu died; and in our present situation too!'
'Why should we let those beastly bandits swill our wine?' the bailiff asked indifferently. 'The best vintage too! You don't object, do you, Mr Min?'
'Go ahead, go ahead!' the fat man mumbled with his mouth full.
The steward bent his head. The judge noticed that the man's hands were trembling. He sipped from the wine and found it of superior quality.
The steward suddenly put his chopsticks down. Darting a worried glance at the judge he said timidly:
'As a magistrate you must have dealt often with robbers and bandits and so on, sir. Couldn't we persuade them to accept a money draft? The landowner has excellent relations with two banking houses in the city and ...'
'I have never yet heard of bandits accepting anything but cash,' the judge said dryly. The wine had warmed him, and his boots had dried. He rose and took off his fur coat. Underneath he wore a long travelling robe of padded brown cotton, fastened by a broad sash of black silk, wound several times round his waist. As he was laying his fur coat on the wall table he said: 'We shouldn't be too pessimistic about all this, you know! I see more than one possibility of extricating ourselves from our predicament.'
He sat down again and pushed his fur cap back from his brow. Then he put his forearms on the table and resumed, looking levelly at his three companions:
'The bandits are, admittedly, in an ugly mood, because they are convinced your story about the stolen money was a trick. And they are pressed for time, because they must be off on their rafts before the flood subsides. They are afraid of the soldiers in the fort, and frightened men are hard to deal with. You need not expect them to show us any mercy. There's no use in parleying with them either, unless we establish ourselves in a good bargaining position first. I suppose that your tenant farmers do a lot of fishing in the river, in summer?' As the bailiff and the steward nodded, the judge went on: 'Good. I expect that the bandits will attack us early in the morning. Tonight, choose a couple of sturdy farmhands who know about fishing, issue a large drag-net to them, and let them climb on this side of the roof of the gatehouse. No one should know about this, because the bandits may well have a spy among the refugees. When the bandits arrive I shall go outside and talk to them. I know how to handle their kind. I shall tell their leader that we are well-armed, but that we shan't put up any resistance if they spare our lives. They may enter the house, and collect everything they want, including a lot of gold and silver finery. They'll accept the proposal, of course. For that will enable them to plunder the house leisurely, and kill us afterwards. However, as soon as the leader and his bodyguards have passed through the gate, our men on the roof will drop the net over them, men and horses, while we close the gates in the face of the rest of the bandits. The leader and his bodyguards will be heavily armed, but when they are in the net we shall disable them easily enough by means of a few blows with threshing flails. Then we'll have hostages, and we can start upon serious negotiations.'
'That isn't such a bad idea,' Mr Min said, nodding slowly.
The steward's face had lit up. But the bailiff pursed his lips and said worriedly:
'Far too risky! If there should be a hitch, the scoundrels won't put us to death quickly. They'll torture us!'
Disregarding the frightened exclamations of Min and Liao, the judge said firmly:
'If anything goes wrong, you just close the gate behind me. I can look after myself.' He added with a wry smile: 'I was born under the Sign of the Tiger, you know!'
Mr Min bestowed a thoughtful look on him. After a while he said:
'All right. I'll see to it that the trap is laid. You'll help me, Liao.' He rose briskly and asked: 'Will you see the magistrate up to his room, Yen? I shall go to the watchtower, presently, to take my turn.' To the judge he added: 'We take turns of three hours, you see, watching for an unexpected move of those scoundrels. All the night through.'
'I'll join you, of course,' the judge said. 'Shall I take the watch after you, Mr Min?'
Mr Min protested that they could never accept that, but Judge Dee insisted, and finally it was agreed that the judge should go to the watchtower from midnight to three o'clock. Yen would then take over from him till dawn.
Mr Min and the steward left for the store-room where the fishing nets were kept. The judge laid his fur coat over his shoulder, took up his sword and followed Yen to the stairs. The bailiff took him up to the landing, then they climbed a narrow, creaking staircase in the corner that led up to the third floor. There the judge saw only a passageway ending in a door of solid wooden boards.
Yen halted and said contritely:
'I do regret that the master assigned this room to you, sir. I hope you don't mind sleeping in a room where only last night ... I could easily find you a room downstairs, the others need not know that ...'
'This room will do,' the judge cut him short.
The bailiff opened the door and led him inside a dark, ice-cold room. While lighting the candle on the side table, he resumed:
'Well, it's the best furnished room in the house, of course. Miss Kee-yu was a girl of elegant taste, sir. As you can see for yourself.'
He indicated the furnishings of the spacious room with a sweeping gesture. Pointing at the broad sliding doors that took up most of the wall opposite, he added: 'Outside is a balcony that runs along the entire breadth of this top floor. Miss Kee-yu used to sit there on summer nights, enjoying the moon over the mountains.'
'Was she all alone up here?'
'Yes, there are no other rooms on this floor. Originally it was a store-room, I heard. But Miss Kee-yu liked the view and the quiet up here, and the master gave it to her. Although properly she should have stayed in the women's quarters, of course, in the east wing of the compound. Well, I'll send Mr Min's old servant up with a tea-basket. Have a good rest, sir! I shall come and fetch you at midnight.'
When the bailiff had closed the door behind him, Judge Dee put on his fur coat again, for it was bitterly cold in the room, and a nasty draught was coming through the sliding doors. He laid his sword on the rosewood table in the centre of the thick-piled blue carpet, then leisurely surveyed the room. In the corner to the right of the entrance stood a narrow couch, a thin gauze curtain suspended on its four rosewood posts. Next to it was the customary pile of four clothes boxes of red lacquered leather, and close by the sliding doors a dressing-table, with a row of small powder boxes arranged under the round mirror of polished silver. To the left of the entrance stood a high, oblong music table, with a seven-stringed lute lying ready on it, then an elegant book-rack of polished spotted bamboo. In the corner by the sliding doors stood a writing-desk of carved ebony. The judge walked up to it for a closer look at the painting on the wall there. It represented a branch of plum blossoms, a fine specimen of the work of a well-known former artist. He noticed that the ink slab, the brush holder, the paperweight and all the other writing implements on the desk were valuable antiques, evidently selected with loving care. The room bore the stamp of a well-defined personality: an educated, refined girl of fastidious taste.