The Pointing Man | Page 9

the following morning when Hartley set out to take a stroll down Paradise Street, and from there to the Chinese quarter, where Leh Shin had a small shop in a colonnade running east and west. The houses here were very different to the houses in Paradise Street. The fronts were brightened with gilt, and green and red paint daubed the entrances. Almost every third shop was a restaurant, and Hartley did not care to think of the sort of food that was cooked and eaten within. Immense lanterns, that turned into coloured moons by night, but they were pale and dim by day, hung on the cross-beams inside the houses.
Some half-way down the colonnade, and deep in the odorous gloom, Leh Shin worked at nothing in particular, and sold devils as Mhtoon Pah sold them, but without the same success. The door of his shop was closed, and Hartley rapped upon it several times before he received an answer; then a bolt was shot back, and Leh Shin's long neck stretched itself out towards the officer. He was a thin, gaunt figure, lean as the Plague, and his spare frame was clad in cheap black stuff that hung around him like the garments of Death itself. Hartley drew back a step, for the smell of napi and onions is unpleasant even to the strongest of white men, and told Leh Shin to open the door wide as he wished to talk to him. Leh Shin, with many owlish blinkings of his narrow eyes, asked Hartley to come inside. The street was not a good place for talking, and Hartley followed him into the shop.
It was very dark within, and a dim light fell from high skylight windows, giving the shop something of the suggestion of a well. Counters blocked it, making entrance a matter of single file, and, in the deep gloom at the back, two candles burned before a huge, ferocious-looking figure depicted on rice-paper and stuck against the wall. It was hard to believe that it was day outside, so heavy was the darkness, and it was a few moments before Hartley's eyes became accustomed to the sudden change. Second-hand clothes hung on pegs around the room, and all kinds of articles were jumbled together regardless of their nature. On the floor was a litter of silk and silver goods, boxes, broken portmanteaux, ropes, baskets, and on the counter nearest the door a tiny silver cage of beautiful workmanship inhabited by a tiny golden bird with ruby eyes.
At the back of the shop and near the yellow circle of light thrown by the candles, was a boy, naked to the waist, and immensely stout and heavy. His long plait of hair was twisted round and round on his shaven forehead, and he stood perfectly still, watching the officer out of small pig eyes. He was chewing something slowly, turning it about and about inside a small, narrow slit of a mouth, and his whole expression was cunning and evil. Leh Shin followed Hartley's glance and saw the boy, and the sight of him seemed to recall him to actual life, for he spoke in words that sounded like stones knocking together and ordered him out of the shop. The boy looked at him oddly for a moment; then turned away, still munching, and lounged out of the room, stopping on the threshold of a back entrance to take one more look at Hartley.
As a rule Hartley was not affected by the peculiarities of the people he dealt with, but Leh Shin's assistant impressed him unpleasantly. Everything he did was offensive, and his whole suggestion loathsome. Hartley was still thinking of him when he looked at Leh Shin, who stood blinking before him, awaiting his words patiently.
"Now, Leh Shin, I want to ask you a few questions. Do you sell lacquer in this shop?"
The Chinaman indicated that he sold anything that anyone would buy.
"Do you happen to know that Mhtoon Pah was looking for a bowl of gold lacquer, and that he sent his boy Absalom here to get it?"
Leh Shin shook his head. He was a poor man, and he knew nothing. Moreover, he knew nothing of July the twenty-ninth, he did not count days. He had not seen the boy Absalom.
"Let me advise you to be truthful, Leh Shin," said Hartley. "You may be called upon to give an account of yourself on the evening and night of July the twenty-ninth."
Leh Shin looked stolidly at the mildewed clothes and tried to remember, but he failed to be explicit, and the greasy, obese creature, still chewing, was recalled to assist his master's memory. He spoke in a high chirping voice, and looked at Hartley with angry eyes as he asserted that his master had been ill upon the