Alan Sullivan

“ Queer to talk to a stranger as I have to you; but then most things are queer if you think about 'em long enough. Look at a printed word you know well for a minute or so, and I'll bet you'll decide it's out of spelling.”
“Perhaps you're right there. By the way, you didn't tell me what the interpreter gave you.”
“Oh—that!” He felt in his pocket, and drew out a small, green stone. “It's the emerald—the one Peng spotted between my fingers. He knew I couldn't sell it because of Laknee. It was to remind me of her—and it has. My wife thinks it's glass. That's the sort of woman she is. ”

“ I'd sooner own a really good stone, and keep it, for myself, than anything in the world. That country I speak of is a great place for 'em. The rich merchants love 'em too. They have their own private gravel washings in the hills, and draw a dead line round the spot. Get inside that, and—well—you don't get out. I could understand that, and respected them for it. But it made me keener than ever. There was one chap, Peng Yung, who was said to have more emeralds than any one else in the district. He never sold one. Used to play with 'em, they told me, and let 'em drip through his fingers. ”

“ He was silent for a while. “Queer how smells and things start one thinking. Ever realize that? Things more than people, and smells more than things.”
I agreed. There was nothing in his appearance to rouse one's imagination. ”

“ I'll bet there isn't a man in Kew Gardens who feels about a white mulberry as I do. Wouldn't expect that from a chap who runs a grocery shop in Clapham, would you?”
He wanted so obviously to talk that my only thought was to be quiet, agreeable and receptive—at any rate till I knew what was in his mind. There was nothing mysterious about him, or suggestive in his manner—but one can never tell. And I had a whole hour to play with.
“White mulberry,” he murmured. "Well I'll be damned!” ”

“ So he will imprint on your mind a picture that will never leave it. This you will now see. If you speak, or attempt to interfere, it will mean death. He puts your life in your own hand. Also when you leave this place you will say nothing to anyone. Peng has a long arm. It is always well to remember that.”
“Peng clapped his hands, and a curtain that hung over one end of the room fell down, and there was Laknee, sitting like an image on a pile of cushions. Her shoulders and breast were bare, and festooned with strings of emeralds. There was a big cabouchon the size of a hazel nut at her throat. ”

“ I knocked about for a while, got a few emeralds, then worked along the southern fringes of China.”
“You were a long way from civilization,” I hazarded.
He shook his big head. “That's where you're wrong. I was in the middle of a civilization much older than ours. What's civilization anyway? Wireless and the cinema? No! I've got a two valve set at my place in Clapham. Had to get it; my wife—understand? And I hate it. Sooner hear a temple bell across a valley any day. The bell I hear now is the cursed thing that rings when you open the shop door. ”

“ We think we know it all, don't we; but, by God, when I compare Laknee with a lot of people in Clapham, I I begin to see what makes a heathen. Wait till you get the rest of it and you'll understand. Not fed up, are you? ”

“ It seems he kept her pretty well shut up, and was going to marry her to another silk merchant whose plantation adjoined his own. Man about the same age as himself. Sort of trade arrangement, I made it. But Laknee wasn't having any if she could help it. I lived in a sort of rest-house then on the edge of the town. Plantations on the hillside further up. One day when I was sitting under a tree—Morus alba—a woman passed, looked at me over her shoulder, and made a sign to follow. ”

“ I waited.
“IT'S a queer country, that south edge of A China. You can't tell where China begins. and God knows it never ends. What struck me about the people was that they knew a lot more than they said. They don't like strangers, and they didn't like me. Expect the monks were at the bottom of it. I traded for a while, getting hints every now and then that it would be a good thing for my health if I moved on. I moved, right enough. Do you like emeralds?”
“My favorite stone.”
He was silent for a moment, and I noticed that his fingers hunched up in his trouser pocket. ”