The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
have known Mr Solomon Haslam for a long time?”
I said a year or so, in London, and he nodded his great bald head and turned his Buddha-like face to me.
“He is taking you on a cruise round his plantations, I believe. That will be interesting – I must ask him where they are. I should much like to visit them myself some day.”
I said I thought they were on the peninsula, and he nodded gravely and sipped his sherry.
“No doubt they are. He is a man of sufficient shrewdness and enterprise, I think – he does business well.” The sound of Elspeth’s laughter sounded from the dining-room, and Whampoa’s fat yellow face creased in a sudden smile. “How fortunate you are, Mr Flashman. I have, in my humble way – which is not at all humble, you understand – a taste for beautiful things, and especially in women. You have seen” – he fluttered his hand, with its beastly long nails – “that I surround myself with them. But when I see your lady, Elspet’, I understand why the old story-tellers always made their gods and goddesses fair-skinned and golden-haired. If I were forty years younger, I should try to take her from you” – he sluiced down some more Amontillado – “without success, of course. But so much beauty – it is dangerous.”
He looked at me, and I can’t think why, but I felt a chill of sudden fear – not of him, but of what he was saying. Before I could speak, though, Elspeth was back, to exclaim again over her present, and prattle her thanks, and he stood smiling down at her, like some benign, sherry-soaked heathen god.
“Thank me, beautiful child, by coming again to my humble palace, for hereafter it will truly be humble without your presence,” says he. Then we joined the others, and the thanks and compliments flew as we took our leave in that glittering place, and everything was cheery and happy – but I found myself shivering as we went out, which was odd, for it was a warm and balmy night.
I couldn’t account for it, after such a jolly affair, but I went to bed thoroughly out of sorts. At first I put it down to foul Chinese grub, and certainly something gave me the most vivid nightmares, in which I was playing a single-wicket match up and downstairs in Whampoa’s house, and his silky little Chinese tarts were showing me how to hold my bat – that part of it was all right, as they snuggled up, whispering fragrantly and guiding my hands, but all the time I was conscious of dark shapes moving behind the screens, and when Daedalus Tighe bowled to me it was a Chinese lantern that I had to hit, and it went ballooning up into the dark, bursting into a thousand rockets, and Old Morrison and the Duke came jumping out at me in sarongs, crying that I must run all through the house to score a single, at compound interest, and I set off, blundering past the screens, where nameless horrors lurked, and I was trying to catch Solomon, who was flitting like a shadow before me, calling out of the dark that there was no danger, because he carried ten guns, and I could feel someone or something drawing closer behind me, and Elspeth’s voice was calling, fainter and fainter, and I knew if I looked back I should see something terrible – and there I was, gasping into the pillow, my face wet with sweat, and Elspeth snoring peacefully beside me.
It rattled me, I can tell you, because the last time I’d had a nightmare was in Gul Shah’s dungeon, two years before, and that was no happy recollection. (It’s a strange thing, by the way, that I usually have my worst nightmares in jail; I can remember some beauties, in Fort Raim prison, up on the Aral Sea, where I imagined old Morrison and Rudi Starnberg were painting my backside with boot polish, and in Gwalior Fort, where I waltzed in chains with Captain Charity Spring conducting the band, and the beastliest of all was in a Mexican clink during the Juarez business, when I dreamed I was charging the Balaclava guns at the head of a squadron of skeletons in mortar-boards, all chanting “Ab and absque, coram de”, while just ahead of me Lord Cardigan was sailing in his yacht, leering at me and tearing Elspeth’s clothes off. Mind you, I’d been living on chili and beans for a week.)
In any event, I didn’t sleep well after Whampoa’s party, and was in a fine fit of the dismals next day, as a result of which Elspeth and I quarrelled, and she wept and sulked until Solomon came to propose a picnic on the other side of the island. We would sail round in the Sulu Queen, he said, and make a capital day of it. Elspeth cheered up at once, and old Morrison was game, too, but I cried off, pleading indisposition. I knew what I needed to lift my gloom, and it wasn’t an al fresco lunch in the mangrove swamps with those three; let them remove themselves, and it would leave me free to explore China Town at closer quarters, and perhaps sample the menu at one of those exclusive establishments that Solomon had mentioned; the Temple of Heaven was the name that stuck in my mind. Why, they might even have dainty little waitresses like Whampoa’s, to teach you how to use your chopsticks.
So when the three of them had left, Elspeth with her nose in the air because I wasn’t disposed to make up, I loafed about until evening and then whistled up a palki. My bearers jogged away through the crowded streets, and presently, just as dusk was falling, we reached our destination in what seemed to be a pleasant residential district inland from China Town, with big houses half-hidden in groves of trees from which paper lanterns hung; all very quiet and discreet.
The Temple of Heaven was a large frame house on a little hill, entirely surrounded by trees and shrubs, with a winding drive up to the front verandah, which was all dim lights and gentle music and Chinese servants scurrying to make the guests at home. There was a large cool dining-room, where I had an excellent European meal with a bottle and a half of champagne, and I was in capital fettle and ready for mischief when the Hindoo head waiter sidled up to ask if all was in order, and was there anything else that the gentleman required? Would I care to see a cabaret, or an exhibition of Chinese works of art, or a concert, if my tastes were musical, or …
“The whole d----d lot,” says I, “for I ain’t going home till morning, if you know what I mean. I’ve been six months at sea, so drum ’em up, Sambo, and sharp about it.”
He smiled and bowed in his discreet Indian way, clapped his hands, and into the alcove where I was sitting there stepped the most gorgeous creature imaginable. She was Chinese, with blue-black hair coiled above a face that was pearl-like in its perfection and colour, with great slanting eyes, and her gown of crimson silk clung to a shape which English travellers are wont to describe as “a thought too generous for the European taste” but which, if I’d been a classical sculptor, would have had me dropping my hammer and chisel and reaching for the meat. Her arms were bare, and she spread them in the prettiest curtsey, smiling with perfect teeth between lips the colour of good port.
“This is Madame Sabba,” says the waiter. “She will conduct you, if your excellency will permit …?”
“I may, just about,” says I. “Which way’s upstairs?”
I imagined it was the usual style, you see, but Madame Sabba, indicating that I should follow, led the way through an arch and down a long corridor, glancing behind to see that I was following. Which I was, breathing heavy, with my eyes on that trim waist and wobbling bottom; I caught her up at the end door, and was just clutching a handful when I realized that we were on a porch, and she was slipping out of my fond embrace and indicating a palki which was waiting at the foot of the steps.
“What’s this?” says I.
“The entertainment,” says she, “is a little way off. They will take us there.”
“The entertainment,” says I, “is on this very spot.” And I took hold of her, growling, and hauled her against me. By George, she was a randy armful, wriggling against me and pretending she wanted to break loose, while I nuzzled into her, inhaling her perfume and munching away at her lips and face.
“But I am only your guide,” she giggled, turning her face aside. “I shall take you—”
“Just to the nearest bed, ducky. I’ll do the guiding after that.”
“You like – me?” says she, playing coy, while I overhauled her lustfully. “Why, then – this is not suitable, here. We must go a little way – but I believe that when you see what else is offered, you will not care for Sabba.” And she stuck her tongue into my mouth and then pulled me towards the palki. “Come – they will take us