The Hidden Blade (33 page)

He grabbed the steamer’s second mate, who happened to be passing by. “Sir, those two storms have put me behind. I need to be in Shanghai this minute. Are any of those ships leaving immediately?”

The second mate scanned the harbor and its myriad vessels, then pointed toward one. “Today is Friday. The
Kaitsung
should be leaving for Shanghai in about three quarters of an hour.”

Leighton waited and waited, keeping out of the view of the men with binoculars. Then he took a deep breath and climbed down into a sampan. Almost immediately the men with binoculars began rowing in his direction. He instructed his boatman to head full-speed for the
Kaitsung
.

The
Kaitsung
pulled anchor almost as soon as he came aboard. The men chasing him in the sampan shouted, but their words were drowned by the
Kaitsung
’s engines and the general din of the harbor.

It was a sunny, mild day. Though a stiff wind blew from the sea, it was still beyond pleasant to stand on deck, watch Hong Kong recede, and savor another day of freedom.

The problem with having boarded the first steamer leaving port, however, was that Leighton hadn’t bothered to inquire after its itinerary. The
Kaitsung
called at every port along China’s eastern seaboard—or at least at Amoy, Foo-Choo, and Ningpo, while Leighton paced the decks, impatience and frustration rising in tandem.

Now he had lost the time he had hoped to gain.

On the day the
Kaitsung
was to reach Shanghai, he woke up with a fever. His joints ached. And when he got up from his bunk he swayed—not from the rolling of the sea, but from dizziness.

He stumbled about, disoriented: He was almost never sick, and he must have been a small child when he’d last run a fever. When he was dressed, he lay down again, his stomach pitching with a greater intensity than the winter sea outside.

When he got up again a couple of hours later to prepare for disembarkation, he felt even worse. He forced himself to check his belongings, making sure that he hadn’t left anything behind. Then he mentally reviewed what he had learned from his fellow passengers: Steamers arriving from Tientsin would advertise their departure in the local paper for the next day, though it was not unusual for them to remain in port for two or three days. Also, he should expect a journey of up to seven days, with rough seas at Chefu, and the likelihood of being stuck on a sandbar near Tientsin.

He was close. So close, the journey of ten thousand miles almost at an end. He just had to be careful, to evade his pursuer for a little longer.

But as he disembarked, clutching at the rope ladder to get into a sampan that would take him the remainder of the distance to land, he could barely manage to keep his balance, let alone be alert and observant. His stomach heaved. His brain felt as if it had been turned into a pile of hemp rope, full of rough fibers that scraped his nerves with every step.

Onshore he allowed a porter from Astor House, which he’d heard mentioned as a respectable establishment on the Bund, to conduct him to the hotel, a quadrangle of one-story buildings around a central greensward—a Western-style establishment, like almost all the other places he had passed inside the International Settlement.

At the reception he asked for a room, declined the offer of food—the thought of which made him recoil—and took a newspaper with him as he was led away. In his room he opened the English-language paper. But his eyelids drooped heavily.

He fell into bed, the newspaper crunching underneath his weight. A lovely feeling, all the aches and pains and nausea fading away, anesthetized by the long slide into slumber.

He jerked as a knock came on the door.

“Mr. Atwood, open the door, please.”

He swore under his breath, but as there was no question of running away in his current condition, he only said, “Go to hell.”

And closed his eyes again.

He woke up feeling much better. His fever was gone, his stomach was at peace, and his joints moved without any discomfort. The newspaper crinkled as he sat up, reminding him that he had yet to scan the advertisement section for ships departing to Tientsin in the near future.

The next moment his heart thudded most unpleasantly.
Mr. Atwood, open the door please.

He had registered under a false name. Anyone who knew his real name would be someone who meant to send him back to England. To Sir Curtis.

Outside his window a man stood in the fading light of a winter afternoon. Not one of the men he had seen in Hong Kong—a local helper, then?

He thought for a moment, left his bed, changed into fresh clothes, and combed his hair. Then he opened the door—there was no point cowering in the room—and came face-to-face with the man who had been waving and shouting at him as the
Kaitsung
steamed out of port.

“Ah, Mr. Atwood. Good afternoon. Allow me to introduce myself—George Lafferty. I have been sent by—”

“I know who sent you,” said Leighton. He should be afraid, but somehow he wasn’t. He was no longer fourteen. He was ten thousand miles from England. And unless he was very much mistaken, Astor House was in the American Concession, where British laws did not apply. “I am not going anywhere with you. You may show yourself out—or find out how management treats those who bother the guests of this hotel.”

Lafferty appeared completely taken aback. “I’m afraid there must be a misunderstanding of some sort. I do not require you to come with me anywhere, sir. I am only a messenger, so to speak.”

His surprise seemed genuine. Leighton narrowed his eyes. “What does Sir Curtis wish me to know?”

Lafferty immediately shook his head. “Oh, no, indeed, sir. Sir Curtis is no more. I have been tasked by his widow to find you.”

“What?”
It
sounded
as if Lafferty said that Sir Curtis was dead. But Sir Curtis wasn’t going to die; he was going to endure until there was nothing left of him but skin and spite. “What did you say?”

“Three weeks ago I was engaged by the governor’s office—the governor of Hong Kong, that is—on Lady Atwood’s behalf. In her cable she said that she was almost certain you would have to pass through Hong Kong, and soon. A few days after that a man came to me and delivered a photograph of you. He said he had been engaged by Sir Curtis to watch for your arrival in Hong Kong but had been recently relieved of that charge—I wasn’t sure why Lady Atwood wanted a different man to wait for you but I wasn’t about to complain. And that was how I recognized you at the harbor—with the help of the photograph. I had no idea you would go on the run. Fortunately you took the slow boat, and I was able to overtake you and wait for you in Shanghai instead.”

“No, no.” Leighton waved an impatient hand. “Tell me the part about Sir Curtis being—deceased.”

“Yes, he passed away about a month ago—or perhaps a little less. I read about it in the papers.”

A month ago Leighton had been crossing the Andaman Sea, not having access to any newspapers.

“You are sure?”

“Well, now I wish I had made a cutting of the obituary. The paper was more than a week old by the time I picked it up to flip through, and it had caught my attention because just that day I had been engaged to deliver the cable for Lady Atwood.”

“What cable?”

“Yes, of course.” Lafferty reached inside his coat and pulled out a rather crumbled envelope.

Leighton tore it open.

Dear Master Leighton,

Your uncle is dead. I have recalled the men he had engaged to track you down and will find someone of my own to deliver the news to you. May this greeting find you well.

Alexandra Atwood

“I can go write my report to Lady Atwood, now that I’ve delivered her message,” said Lafferty. “Is there anything you’d like me to convey, sir?”

Leighton was still stunned. He scanned the telegram one more time. “You may convey my gratitude to Lady Atwood—and tell her that I remain always in her debt. And thank you for coming all this way. I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you by leaving Hong Kong so precipitously.”

Lafferty touched the brim of his hat. “Not a problem.”

He turned to leave.

“Wait, please,” said Leighton.

He took a handful of Mexican dollars, which was much preferred by the people of the Far East for the purity and consistency of their silver content, and handed them to Lafferty. The man smiled broadly, thanked him, and departed with a rather jaunty gait.

When he was gone, Leighton slowly closed the door and sank into a chair. Sir Curtis, dead. No more men who hunted him. No more dreading being taken back to Rose Priory—or someplace far worse.

He was…he was free.

His shock was still too great for him to feel euphoria—or even relief. But he understood now that everything had changed.

He understood that it was a whole new world.

He cabled his mother. He cabled the misses McHenrys’ niece in New Zealand. He wrote a letter to Mr. Cromwell, Herb’s solicitor, asking for his help in finding out the whereabouts of Mr. Colmes—so many boxes he and Herb had sent to Mr. Cromwell, he had the man’s address memorized, whereas he had no idea how to reach his own family solicitor.

He did not try to contact Herb, because there was no telegraph service between Shanghai and Peking, and he would arrive in person sooner than a letter could.

The next day he was on a Jardine, Matheson, and Co. steamer, headed for Tientsin. His second day upon the choppy East China Sea, however, all the same awful symptoms came back. His head throbbed, his joints were stiff with pain, and his temperature was so high that his own breath scalded the skin beneath his nostrils.

The next day he was much better, the day after torturous. But the day after that, as he disembarked in Tientsin, he was again well enough that his main thought was the acquisition of a passport and the arrangement of transports.

He was in luck. The passport was speedily granted, and a Frenchman who had organized relay ponies along the route for a swift trip to the imperial capital could not start for another week. Leighton gladly took over this preexisting arrangement and set out with a guide, a Chinese Catholic who spoke fluent French.

It snowed the entire way, the landscape silent and white except for squares and strips of scarlet paper inked with Chinese characters and affixed to every door and pillar they passed. The words on the long strips were couplets expressing good wishes and blessings, the guide explained, and on the red paper squares was the character for good fortune—Chinese New Year was barely a fortnight ago and everyone was expressing their hopes for a year of peace and prosperity.

As they rode inland, the snow kept falling and the temperature kept dropping. Leighton had not been anywhere so cold in a very long time. The wind bit right through his coat. His fingers were quite frozen in his gloves, and he’d stopped feeling his nose and ears hours ago.

They pressed on, changing ponies every few hours. It was as the walls of the imperial city loomed ahead in the deep twilight that Leighton started to shiver uncontrollably. He was burning, his head pounded, and it was all he could do to hold on to the pony and keep going.