He recognised her. He had seen her before, on the front steps of the club beside the fox girl. His breathing grew so shallow it hardly disturbed the air as his eyes sought a flash of copper hair among the crowd. Few of the women were seated; most were standing in groups or drifting around with a glass or a fan in hand, painted lips curved down in annoyance. Something was displeasing them. He moved closer until he was tucked tight against the stonework beside the window and suddenly he saw her. The world seemed to come at him and turn brighter.
She was standing apart against one of the marble pillars, almost hidden from view behind a fat woman with a clutch of ostrich feathers in her hair. By contrast the girl looked frail and pale except for the rich colour that glowed in her hair. Chang watched her. He saw her eyes flit uneasily to the door again and again and then grow dark with alarm when it opened abruptly and two women marched in. To Chang they looked like death bringers, all clothed in stiff white robes and strange white headdresses that reminded him of the nuns who had tried to make him eat their living god’s flesh and pour their god’s blood into his mouth when he was young. His stomach still spasmed at the memory of such barbarism. But these wore no boastful cross around their necks.
With polite smiles they escorted two of the younger women out of the room and it was only when the door closed behind them that some of the tension flowed out of the fox girl’s body and she started to prowl around the outer edge of her cage, her arms still stiff at her sides, one hand plucking at the soft material of her dress. He saw her drop a lace handkerchief on the floor as if by chance, but to Chang’s eyes her fingers knew exactly what they were doing, and he wondered why. The ways of foreigners were strange.
A tall woman in a gown the colour of ripe sloes spoke to her as she passed, but the girl returned no more than a nod of the head and a slight colouring of the cheeks. She was approaching the windows now and Chang’s chest tightened as he saw her come closer. Her cheekbones were finer than he remembered and her eyes more wide-set, but around her mouth the skin was blue, as when a child feels sick.
He leaned forward, reached out and touched the wet pane of glass that separated him from her, his fingers rattling a quiet drumbeat on its cold surface that could have been the rain. She stopped midstride, frowned, and looked out into the storm with her head cocked to one side like his father’s young hunting cur used to do. Before she could move away, he stepped into the circle of light thrown out from the window and gave her a respectful bow.
Her eyes and her mouth grew as round as the moon with surprise, and then came recognition and a smile. For a brief second he held out the open palm of his hand to her in a mute offer of help, and that was when something hard and cold slammed into the side of his head. Waves of blackness swept over him. The night splintered into sharp fragments of black glass, but his muscles tensed instantly for action.
With one sweep of his leg he could disable this attacker who breathed whisky fumes and curses in his face, or snap his worthless windpipe with a knife blade strike of his hand. But a sound stopped him.
A snarl. It spoke of death.
On the wet grass at his feet a wolf-dog was crouched, its body hunched ready to spring, its teeth bared in a low-throated growl that made Chang’s blood choke in his veins. The hound hungered to tear his heart out.
He did not want to kill the dog, but he would.
Slowly Chang turned his gaze from the animal to the man. He was wearing a blue-devil cape against the rain and was tall, with long gangling limbs and empty cheeks, the kind of tree it was easy to fell. In his hand was a gun. Chang could see his own blood glistening on it. The man’s thin lips were moving but the wind seemed to be roaring in Chang’s ears and he could barely hear the words.
‘Yellow piece of shit.’
‘Thieving Chink.’
‘Peeping Tom.’
‘Don’t you stare at our women, you bloody…’ And the gun rose to strike once more.
Chang dipped to one side and rotated his waist, and like the crack of a bullwhip his leg snapped out in an upward strike. But the dog was fast. It hurled itself between attacker and master and sank its teeth into the vulnerable flesh of Chang’s foot, forcing him onto his back on the wet earth. Pain raced up his leg as fangs tore at bone. But he inhaled, letting go of the tension in his body, and instead controlled the energy of the fear. He released it in one rippling movement that sent his other foot exploding into the face of the hound.
The animal dropped its grip and collapsed on its side without a whimper. Instantly Chang was up on his feet and running before the night had even drawn breath.
‘Take one more step and I put a bullet in your bloody brain.’ Chang stilled his mind. He knew this man was going to kill him for what he’d done to the dog. It had robbed the blue devil of face. So to stay or to flee made no difference, the end would be the same. He felt a knifepoint of regret in his lungs at leaving the girl. Slowly he turned and faced the man, saw the violence in his face and the steadiness of the black eye of the gun.
‘Dong Po, what on earth do you think you’re doing?’
The voice burst through the rain and cut the thread that joined the policeman’s bullet to Chang’s brain. It was the girl.
‘I told you to wait inside the gate, you worthless boy. I shall get Li to give you a good beating for disobedience when we get home.’ She was glaring at Chang.
At that moment Chang’s heart stopped. It took all his strength to prevent a wide smile from growing on his lips, but instead he ducked his head in humble apology.
‘I sorry, mistress, so sorry. No be angry.’ He gestured at the window. ‘I look for you to see okay. So much police, I worry.’
Behind the girl stood another blue devil. He was trying to hold a black umbrella over her head, but the rain and the wind were snatching at it, so that her hair hung in rats’ tails and had turned the colour of old bronze. Over her shoulders was thrown a servant’s thin white jacket, but already it was wet through.
‘Ted, what’s up with the dog?’ The second policeman was middle-aged and heavy.
‘I’m telling you, Sarge, if this yellow bugger has killed my Rex, I’ll…’
‘Ease up, Ted. Look, the dog’s moving, just stunned probably.’ He turned to Chang, noting the blood on his face. ‘Now look, boy,’ he said, not unkindly, ‘I’m not sure what’s gone on here but your mistress got real upset, she did, when she saw you skulking around these windows. She says you were told to wait at the gate, to act as escort, see, for her and her mother when they need one of them rickshaws. Those rickshaw buggers are right dangerous, so you should be ashamed of yourself, letting her down like this.’
Chang stared in silence at his bloodstained foot and nodded.
‘No discipline,’ said the blue devil, ‘that’s the trouble with you lot.’
Chang pictured sending a tiger-paw punch into his face. Would that show him discipline enough? If he’d intended the dog to be dead, it would be dead.
‘Dong Po.’
He looked up into her amber eyes.
‘Get off home right now, you miserable boy. You aren’t to be trusted, so tomorrow you shall be punished.’
She was holding her chin high and could have been the Grand Empress Tzu Hsi of the Middle Kingdom the way she gazed at him with haughty disdain.
‘Officer,’ she said, ‘I apologise for my servant’s behaviour. Please see that he’s thrown out of the gate, will you?’
Then she started walking back along the path as if she were taking a stroll in the sunshine instead of in a raging summer storm. The blue sergeant followed with the umbrella.