LITMIR.BIZ

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of them women with parasols over their heads. Here and there a donkey moved, loaded with heavy panniers, a man leading it or goading it from behind. He saw a sedan chair carried by four bearers on long swaying poles, everyone giving way to it as it passed. He looked up over the roofs of the low houses opposite. There the river glittered in the sunlight, sailing ships, junks, steamers and warships moving silently and slowly over the oil-smooth yellow waters. On the other bank there were long, low buildings - warehouses, he supposed - with the black jibs of cranes rising austerely over them.

      'Yes.' Mason came and leant over the parapet beside him. 'You're lucky to have these quarters.' He flicked his cigar butt out into the air, watching it arch slowly, spinning, down into the street. It landed beside a coolie trotting past with two baskets swaying from his springy shoulder pole. 'I only had one room when I started.' He sounded momentarily resentful of Denton's better fortune. 'Old Smithy waited over a year for these quarters, ever since he was a griffin, and then he only lasted three months.' He pushed his weight off the parapet and strolled back into the shade of the bedroom. 'That's what we call the new chaps by the way, griffins. It's a racing term. Young and green, that's what it means. No offence.'

      Denton nodded absently. He was recalling the execution, the thud of the blade striking the man's neck, the spouting blood, the helpless flapping limbs. He still felt shaky and weak. He knew that if he spoke, his voice would tremble.

      'Yes, old Smithy....' Mason was gazing reflectively round the room. 'Silly fool got cholera.'

      Denton listened now with a new, apprehensive interest. Then a sudden movement on the ceiling by the gas lamp caught his eye. It was a little greenish lizard, like a miniature dragon, flickering along then suddenly freezing. 'Er, what's that?' he asked anxiously, imagining it might be poisonous or carrying cholera germs. He was right, his voice was trembling.

      'What? That? A tjik-tjak. Quite harmless, they catch mosquitoes. Only their damn droppings fall on your sheets sometimes. Seem to like white for some reason, the little brutes.... No,' Mason resumed his interrupted thread, 'Say what you like to him, you could, old Smithy would not take precautions. This is your sitting room, by the way. Not much in the way of furniture yet, just a couple of armchairs and a table - you'll have to get curtains and covers and all that sort of stuff yourself. No,' he surveyed the bare sitting room, gloomy and musty behind the unopened shutters. 'Silly bastard thought he'd be all right if he only wore a stomacher. Would not take advice. Ate anything, drank unboiled water, went anywhere.' He shrugged, loosening the brass buttons of his tunic. 'Marvel he lasted as long as he did, when you come to think of it. Only died last week. Still, he got it in the end, all right.' He laughed, a short harsh laugh of retributive satisfaction. 'You got a stomacher, by the way?'

      'A stomacher?' Denton asked diffidently. 'What's that?'

      Mason's eyes widened with almost petulant surprise at Denton's ignorance. 'A cholera belt! Didn't they tell you that in London? Well, you can get it with your kit later on. I'll show you the tailor's. It keeps the chills out, that's half the battle against cholera. But the thing is, you've got to watch the food and water too. Only old Smithy, he would know best.... Still, there you are,' he shrugged disclaimingly, his jacket falling apart at last as the lowest, straining, button popped open. 'There, that's my stomacher.' He gave a proprietary pat to the wide felt band that girdled his swelling paunch. 'You can get one when they kit you out, after you've seen the chief. Brown's his name. Deputy assistant commissioner. I'll take you along to see him presently, after you've had a wash and brush up.' He reached with two fingers into his fob, hauled his watch out again, and frowned down at it, holding it away from him in the palm of his great red hand. Denton glanced shyly at the stomacher and the vest beneath it, moist with sweat, and at Mason's heavy chest, in the middle of which a little jungle of curly reddish hair grew, spreading right up the base of his bull-like throat.

      'Yes, in about an hour.' Mason closed his watch with a snap. 'Don't know why he couldn't make it later.' He turned to leave. 'Old Smith's things are being auctioned this afternoon, by the way. You could get his furniture if you want it. It's the usual thing when a fellow dies, auction his stuff off. Help to pay his chits and things. Well, I'll leave you to it. I'm off to have a nap. Night duty last night, see? Need a bit of kip. Give me a knock if I don't turn up by ten-thirty. I'm just next door to you.' He took his topee from the mattress, set it rakishly on the side of his head and sauntered out, leaving the door swinging open behind him.

      Denton closed the door softly and looked round the room, his hand still clasping the brass handle. The glare from the unshaded veranda dazzled his eyes and the cries from the street rose up strident and raucous. He closed the door, closed the shutters and leant back against them. Above the bed, a greyish-white mosquito net hung, tied in a loose, bunchy knot. On the white-washed ceiling, its cornice garlanded with cobwebs, were several of those little green lizards - what had Mason called them? He eyed them warily. Either they darted rapidly, or else they were immobile, as if glued where they were. They never moved slowly. The very way they turned their heads was swift and jerky, even the way their flanks moved as they watchfully breathed.

      Somewhere down the corridor a door banged, and he heard Chinese voices, a man's and a woman's, shrill in argument. Otherwise the building was still and quiet, and the voices died like the chatter of birds round an empty pool. There were several faint rectangular patches on the walls, darker than the surrounding paint, where pictures must have hung. For an instant he saw the twitching, pumping trunk of the pirate framed in one of them. He looked quickly away to his homely, battered tin trunk, focussing his eyes on the large dent in the lid by the handle. There was sticky sweat on his neck, on his wrists, all over his body.

      For a moment he wanted to climb onto the bed, pull the mosquito net down round him and hide behind it like a child. He imagined himself lying there with the net like a filmy wall all round him. Then he thought of Smith. Perhaps Smith had died on that mattress, with the screen of the net round him? Death by cholera, death by decapitation - was that China, the land he'd come to? But the mattress was new; Smith couldn't have lain on it. Probably they'd burnt the old one. He took a deep steadying breath and took off his tie, jacket and waistcoat before bending to unlock and unpack.

      He laid his clothes tidily on the mattress, trying not to think of Smith or the pirate. There was a cupboard of bare, yellowish-varnished wood in the corner. When he opened the door, he caught his breath - two large, metallic-brown cockroaches about three inches long scuttled out over his shoe and disappeared behind the back of the cupboard. After a moment he went to wash his hands at the wash-stand in the bathroom, pouring water from the jug into the basin beside it. There was no soap, no towel. He splashed his face and dried himself slowly on his handkerchief. As he glanced at his lean, pallid reflection in the heavy wood- framed mirror, its glass cracked in the top right corner, he glimpsed his Adam's apple above the parting of his loosened collar. He had nicked it whilst shaving that morning. Now there was a clean little scab over the cut. He touched the scab gently and then without warning he was helplessly imagining the executioner's sword slicing through his own neck, just there, where the scab was, slicing through the skin and bones and muscles, through all the veins and arteries, in one savage stroke which seemed for all its speed to go on and on, always cutting and cutting again. He closed his eyes tight and shook his head, only to see the stiffened grimaces of pain and fear on the heads nailed to poles that Mason had pointed out to him as they left the execution ground.

      He shuddered and walked back to sit miserably, not on the bed where his clothes were neatly piled, but on his empty trunk. How far away from England he was now! England, where he had packed those same clothes tidily into the trunk! How far from the P&O liner, with its civilised routine and order!

      A mosquito was whining monotonously by his ear. He took out his watch and wound it. He had set it to Shanghai time by the ship's clock the night before. Forty-five minutes still to wait.

      3

      DENTON TAPPED HESITANTLY on Mason's door at half-past ten, and heard a slurred, morose acknowledgment. Ten minutes later Mason -appeared, heavy-lidded and taciturn as he fastened his jacket, and they took another rickshaw, this time by a direct route, to the deputy assistant commissioner's office in the Customs House on the Bund. The Customs House was like the Town Hall at Enfield, Denton thought, with a tall square tower and a

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