Kai Lung's Golden Hours by Ernest Bramah (best detective novels of all time .TXT) 📕

of all-embracing justice and greatly do I fear that we must again submit.”

With these well-timed words the broad-minded personage settled himself more reposefully among his cushions and signified that Kai Lung should be led forward and begin.

The Story of Ning, the Captive God, and the Dreams that mark his Race i. THE MALICE OF THE DEMON, LEOU

When Sun Wei definitely understood that the deities were against him (for on every occasion his enemies prospered and the voice of his own authority grew less), he looked this way and that with a well-considering mind.

He did nothing hastily, but when once a decision was reached it was as unbending as iron and as smoothly finished as polished jade. At about the evening hour when others were preparing to offer sacrifice he took the images and the altars of his Rites down from their honourable positions and cast them into a heap on a waste expanse beyond his courtyard. Then with an axe he unceremoniously detached their incomparable limbs from their sublime bodies and flung the parts into a fire that he had prepared.

“It is better,” declared Sun Wei, standing beside the pile, his hands buried within his sleeves—“it is better to be struck down at once, rather than to wither away slowly like a half-uprooted cassia-tree.”

When this act of defiance was reported in the Upper World the air grew thick with the cries of indignation of the lesser deities, and the sound of their passage as they projected themselves across vast regions of space and into the presence of the supreme N’guk was like the continuous rending of innumerable pieces of the finest silk.

In his musk-scented heaven, however, N’guk slept, as his habit was at the close of each celestial day. It was with some difficulty that he could be aroused and made to understand the nature of Sun Wei’s profanity, for his mind was dull with the smoke of never-ending incense.

“To-morrow,” he promised, with a benignant gesture, turning over again on his crystal throne, “some time to-morrow impartial justice shall be done. In the meanwhile—courteous dismissal attend your opportune footsteps.”

“He is becoming old and obese,” murmured the less respectful of the demons. “He is not the god he was, even ten thousand cycles ago. It were well—”

“But, omnipotence,” protested certain conciliatory spirits, pressing to the front, “consider, if but for a short breath of time. A day here is as threescore of their years as these mortals live. By to-morrow night not only Sun Wei, but most of those now dwelling down below, will have Passed Beyond. But the story of his unpunished infamy will live. We shall become discredited and our altar fires extinct. Sacrifice of either food or raiment will cease to reach us. The Season of White Rain is approaching and will find us ill provided. We who speak are but Beings of small part—”

“Peace!” commanded N’guk, now thoroughly disturbed, for the voices of the few had grown into a tumult; “how is it possible to consider with a torrent like the Hoang-Ho in flood pouring through my very ordinary ears? Your omniscient but quite inadequate Chief would think.”

At this rebuke the uproar ceased. So deep became the nature of N’guk’s profound thoughts that they could be heard rolling like thunder among the caverns of his gigantic brain. To aid the process, female slaves on either side fanned his fiery head with celestial lotus leaves. On the earth, far beneath, cyclones, sand-storms and sweeping water-spouts were forced into being.

“Hear the contemptible wisdom of my ill-formed mouth,” said N’guk at length. “If we at once put forth our strength, the degraded Wun Sei is ground—”

“Sun Wei, All-knowing One,” murmured an attending spirit beneath his breath.

“—the unmentionable outcast whom we are discussing is immediately ground into powder,” continued the Highest, looking fixedly at a distant spot situated directly beyond his painstaking attendant. “But what follows? Henceforth no man can be allowed to whisper ill of us but we must at once seek him out and destroy him, or the obtuse and superficial will exclaim: ‘It was not so in the days of—of So-and-So. Behold’”—here the Great One bent a look of sudden resentment on the band of those who would have reproached him—“‘behold the gods become old and obese. They are not the Powers they were. It would be better to address ourselves to other altars.’”

At this prospect many of the more venerable spirits began to lose their enthusiasm. If every mortal who spoke ill of them was to be pursued what leisure for dignified seclusion would remain?

“If, however,” continued the dispassionate Being, “the profaner is left to himself he will, sooner or later, in the ordinary course of human intelligence, become involved in some disaster of his own contriving. Then they who dwell around will say: ‘He destroyed the altars! Truly the hands of the Unseen are slow to close, but their arms are very long. Lo, we have this day ourselves beheld it. Come, let us burn incense lest some forgotten misdeed from the past lurk in our path.’”

When he had finished speaking all the more reputable of those present extolled his judgment. Some still whispered together, however, whereupon the sagacious N’guk opened his mouth more fully and shot forth tongues of consuming fire among the murmurers so that they fled howling from his presence.

Now among the spirits who had stood before the Pearly Ruler without taking any share in the decision were two who at this point are drawn into the narration, Leou and Ning. Leou was a revengeful demon, ever at enmity with one or another of the gods and striving how he might enmesh his feet in destruction. Ning was a better-class deity, voluptuous but well-meaning, and little able to cope with Leou’s subtlety. Thus it came about that the latter one, seeing in the outcome a chance to achieve his end, at once dropped headlong down to earth and sought out Sun Wei.

Sun Wei was reclining at his evening rice when Leou found him. Becoming invisible, the demon entered a date that Sun Wei held in his hand and took the form of a stone. Sun Wei recognized the doubtful nature of the stone as it passed between his teeth, and he would have spat it forth again, but Leou had the questionable agility of the serpent and slipped down the other’s throat. He was thus able to converse familiarly with Sun Wei without fear of interruption.

“Sun Wei,” said the voice of Leou inwardly, “the position you have chosen is a desperate one, and we of the Upper Air who are well disposed towards you find the path of assistance fringed with two-edged swords.”

“It is well said: ‘He who lacks a single tael sees many bargains,’” replied Sun Wei, a refined bitterness weighing the import of his words. “Truly this person’s friends in the Upper Air are a never-failing lantern behind his back.”

At this justly-barbed reproach Leou began to shake with disturbed gravity until he remembered that the motion might not be pleasing to Sun Wei’s inner feelings.

“It is not that the well-disposed are slow to urge your claims, but that your enemies number some of the most influential demons in all the Nine Spaces,” he declared, speaking with a false smoothness that marked all his detestable plans. “Assuredly in the past you must have led a very abandoned life, Sun Wei, to come within the circle of their malignity.”

“By no means,” replied Sun Wei. “Until driven to despair this person not only duly observed the Rites and Ceremonies, but he even avoided the Six Offences. He remained by the side of his parents while they lived, provided an adequate posterity, forbore to tread on any of the benevolent insects, safeguarded all printed paper, did not consume the meat of the industrious ox, and was charitable towards the needs of hungry and homeless ghosts.”

“These observances are well enough,” admitted Leou, restraining his narrow-minded impatience; “and with an ordinary number of written charms worn about the head and body they would doubtless carry you through the lesser contingencies of existence. But by, as it were, extending contempt, you have invited the retaliatory propulsion of the sandal of authority.”

“To one who has been pushed over the edge of a precipice, a rut across the path is devoid of menace; nor do the destitute tremble at the departing watchman’s cry: ‘Sleep warily; robbers are about.’”

“As regards bodily suffering and material extortion, it is possible to attain such a limit as no longer to excite the cupidity of even the most rapacious deity,” admitted Leou. “Other forms of flattening-out a transgressor’s self-content remain however. For instance, it has come within the knowledge of the controlling Powers that seven generations of your distinguished ancestors occupy positions of dignified seclusion in the Upper Air.”

For the first time Sun Wei’s attitude was not entirely devoid of an emotion of concern.

“They would not—?”

“To mark their sense of your really unsupportable behaviour it has been decided that all seven shall return to the humiliating scenes of their former existences in admittedly objectionable forms,” replied the outrageous Leou. “Sun Chen, your venerated sire, will become an agile grasshopper; your incomparable grandfather, Yuen, will have the similitude of a yellow goat; as a tortoise your leisurely-minded ancestor Huang, the high public official—”

“Forbear!” exclaimed the conscience-stricken Sun Wei; “rather would this person suffer every imaginable form of torture than that the spirit of one of his revered ancestors should be submitted to so intolerable a bondage. Is there no amiable form of compromise whereby the ancestors of some less devoted and liberally-inspired son might be imperceptibly, as it were, substituted?”

“In ordinary cases some such arrangement is generally possible,” conceded Leou; “but not idly is it written: ‘There is a time to silence an adversary with the honey of logical persuasion, and there is a time to silence him with the argument of a heavily-directed club.’ In your extremity a hostage is the only efficient safeguard. Seize the person of one of the gods themselves and raise a strong wall around your destiny by holding him to ransom.”

“‘Ho Tai, requiring a light for his pipe, stretched out his hand towards the great sky-lantern,’” quoted Sun Wei.

“‘Do not despise Ching To because his armour is invisible,’” retorted Leou, with equal point. “Your friends in the Above are neither feeble nor inept. Do as I shall instruct you and no less a Being than Ning will be delivered into your hand.”

Then replied Sun Wei dubiously: “A spreading mango-tree affords a pleasant shade within one’s courtyard, and a captive god might for a season undoubtedly confer an enviable distinction. But presently the tree’s encroaching roots may disturb the foundation of the house so that the walls fall and crush those who are within, and the head of a restrained god would in the end certainly displace my very inadequate roof-tree.”

“A too-prolific root can be pruned back,” replied Leou, “and the activities of a bondaged god may be efficiently curtailed. How this shall be accomplished will be revealed to you in a dream: take heed that you do not fail by the deviation of a single hair.”

Having thus prepared his discreditable plot, Leou twice struck the walls enclosing him, so that Sun Wei coughed violently. The demon was thereby enabled to escape, and he never actually appeared in a tangible form again, although he frequently communicated, by means of signs and omens, with those whom he wished to involve in his sinister designs.

ii. THE PART PLAYED BY THE SLAVE-GIRL, HIA

Among the remaining possessions that the hostility of the deities still left to Sun Wei at the time of these happenings was a young slave of many-sided attraction. The name of Hia had been given to her, but she was generally known as Tsing-ai on account of the extremely affectionate gladness of her nature.

On the day following that in which Sun Wei and the demon Leou had conversed together, Hia was disporting herself in the dark shades of a secluded pool, as her custom was after the heat of her labours, when a phoenix, flying across the glade, dropped a pearl of unusual size and lustre into the stream. Possessing herself of the jewel and placing it in her mouth, so that it should not impede the action of her hands, Hia sought the bank and would have drawn herself up when she became aware of the presence of one having the guise of a noble commander. He was regarding her with a look in which well-expressed admiration was blended with a delicate intimation that owing to the unparalleled brilliance of her eyes he was unable to perceive any other detail of her appearance, and was, indeed, under the impression that she was devoid of ordinary outline. At the same time, without permitting her glance to be in any but an entirely opposite direction, Hia was able to satisfy herself that the stranger was a person on whom she