Prologue Beijing, 1966
It seems every tale of Dee Ren Jie begins with a fight.
Dee himself is the most patient and just of men; yet in some places and in some times, patience and justice are not the virtues most prized by some men. In those times and places, preparing oneself for the rigors of physical combat is the way of wisdom, and Dee is also wise.
In years to come, men looking back on China in our day, as I am looking back now on England in an earlier one, may conclude that was how things were with us. I cannot say.
But with certainty, I can say this: it was how things were in London in the late summer of 1924.
CHAPTER ONE London, 1924 I’m just telling yer, Mr. Dee, and with respect, o’ course, I don’t much like this place yer’ve brought us to. A mist so thick I can almost grab ’old of it, and trees way over me ’ead, with ’oo knows what’s walking around in ’em. Monkeys and such, I’ll warrant! And the smell in the air—it ain’t natural, sir. With nary a streetlamp to be seen. Just shadows and the shadows o’ shadows. And deer! Deer, Mr. Dee! With great sharp ’orns. Could we not do our business elsewhere, is all I’m asking.”
“We could do our business anywhere, Jimmy.” Judge Dee, unseen, answered the complaint of young Jimmy Fingers from deep in the darkness under a massive oak. “The men we’ve come to intercept, however, insist on doing theirs here. Don’t worry. If all goes well, I’ll have you back on the streets of London within the hour.”
This promise was a touch superfluous, as we had not left London. To reach the streets, one would have had merely to stroll ten minutes from the Richmond Park clearing, in which we stood. Our errand had not brought us very far into that greensward, certainly not far enough to encounter the King’s deer, with or without great sharp horns. The damp and loamy scent Jimmy protested was, in fact, that of man’s original Arcadian state, in contrast to the scents Jimmy preferred and that awaited us beyond the park’s walls: the smoke of coal fires and the exhaust of buses and motorcars, the aromas of cooked meat and horse dung and whatever was floating at the moment in the Thames. As for monkeys, the nearest were twenty-five kilometers away, asleep in their cages at the Regent’s Park Zoo.
“Jimmy,” I said, speaking in English as Dee had, for admire Dee as he did, the lad had yet to learn a word of Chinese, “does an evening in the greenery not suit you?”
“That it don’t, Mr. Lao. The dark is too . . . dark! And things is rustling—” He jumped as a thing rustled. “I ’aven’t spent a great deal o’ time in such places, see. Parks and trees and all don’t ’ave much to offer a man engaged in my line o’ work.”
Although Jimmy had for a time been, and was now again, in the employ of Dee, Dee had lately been absent from London for some months. In April, he’d sailed for China, and none of us—myself, Jimmy, or Sergeant Hoong, who completed our foursome here in the clearing—had been sure he would return, and if he were to do so, when. Hoong had reverted to his shopkeeping, with which he claimed to be content. I could not say as much for my sentiments toward my own life lecturing in the basics of the Chinese language at the University of London. Classes, when I took them up again, I found no more stimulating than when I first began them upon my arrival in London the year previous. For his part, Jimmy Fingers asserted, whenever we three met for a bowl of noodles—to his credit, the young man had developed quite an appreciation for the cuisine of my homeland during his first stint in Dee’s service—that he was
tiptoeing the straight and narrow, that I am, sirs. However, according to Hoong’s intelligence, Jimmy had happily resumed his career as a pickpocket. Pickpocketing, of course, requires pockets to pick, which are hard to come by amid tall trees and things that rustle.
“Lao,” said Sergeant Hoong now, interrupting my reverie, “you are lollygagging. Do you intend to take advantage of our time here to learn this skill, or have you so quickly lost interest in improving your fighting technique?”
Jimmy laughed. “Lollygagging! Mr. ’Oong, sir, that’s a fine bit o’ English yer’ve picked up there!”
I was less amused. “I am not ‘lollygagging,’ nor anything like it. I’ve practiced your one-inch punch until my knuckles bleed, and all I have to show for it is a sore shoulder.”
“And bleedin’ knuckles, o’ course,” Jimmy put in helpfully.
“In fact,” I said, “I’m beginning to question the value of this vaunted skill. How much force can actually be exerted by a blow of such a short distance?”
Jimmy tilted his head thoughtfully. “A fair question, that.”
Hoong, with a disdainful glance at us both, walked through the mist to a small statue of Cupid that stood at the center of the clearing. It was a silly, frilly thing, all curly locks and flower garlands. Pulling his fist back an inch from the sculpture’s round belly, Hoong marshalled the energy of his body from the bottoms of his feet up through his torso, focusing it all into his forearm—or so he instructed me every time I attempted this technique. With a low cry (we were, after all, waiting in this place to create an ambush) of “Chuen ging, inch power!” Hoong thrust his fist an inch forward and made contact with the stone.
Cupid toppled to the ground.
“Oh,” I said, rather weakly.
“Oh!” marveled Jimmy Fingers, with more strength.
“Oh,” snapped Dee. “Hoong, really.” He stepped forward from the oak’s inky shadow.
Any man unprepared would have been terrified into paralysis by seeing Dee, in this form, appear between ancient trees at midnight. The black of his tapered trousers and tunic was echoed in his leather gloves and tall boots and in the silk cape, scalloped like bat’s wings, that billowed behind him. Short, sharp horns protruded from his head, and his face, with features somewhere between a devil’s and a dream-fiend’s, wore a fierce and evil leer.
However, we three had seen Judge Dee costumed as Springheel Jack, the Terror of London, on previous occasions, and thus—with the exception perhaps of a tiny step back taken by Jimmy—we were not alarmed.
Dee, from behind the monstrous mask, gazed at the prone statue. “I hope you’ve only dislodged the thing and not damaged it,” he said. “What would your father say?” Sergeant Hoong’s father had been tutor to Dee and his younger brothers back home in Yantai. “I recognize,” Dee went on, “how exasperating it can be to deal with Lao. Still, you must control yourself better.”
“Exasperating?” I said. “I must protest! I was in no way the cause of this insult to Eros.”
“I’ve been given to understand,” Dee said, walking over the soft grass toward the statue, “that you and the young Lord of Love have parted ways.”
I sighed. “We are perhaps more distant than we once were,” I conceded. “Women, I fear, continue to bewilder me.”
“Ah, Lao, but that in itself may be the difficulty. Women are no different from men except in the obvious respects. If you assume that a woman will behave in an unpredictable manner for abstruse reasons, you may count yourself bewildered not by her but by your own expectations.”
“You yourself are so abstruse in your commentary, Dee, that I might almost believe you are mocking me.”
I could not see Dee’s face behind the mask, but I was sure it wore an entirely false air of wounded innocence.
“I must protest also,” Hoong said as he bent to the fallen Cupid. “A rebuke from you, Dee, is almost more than I can bear.”
“Yes, I’m quite sure of that,” Dee said drily, joining Hoong on Cupid’s other side. “Yi! Er! San!” On Dee’s count of three, the two men, working seamlessly together, righted the stone image of that most fickle of deities.
“Well!” said Jimmy Fingers. “I just seen something I never seen before—two men ’oisting a statue with neither rope nor chain. Mr. ’Oong, Mr. Dee, you gents are full o’ surprises. You too, Mr. Lao,” he added generously, if disingenuously. “But look ’ere now. If we find ourselves at the point o’ knocking over angel statues, it’s certain we’ve been in this place too long. Mr. Dee, your Russian and his pal ’ave likely changed their minds. ’Ow about we scarper and get ourselves a pint?” In the moonlight, Jimmy’s face held a hopeful cast.
“I think not, Jimmy,” said Dee. “I hear them now.” He held up a hand.
Jimmy cupped his palm behind his ear. “I don’t—”
Dee lifted a warning finger to him.
I listened intently, though I could hear no more than Jimmy.
Hoong stood perfectly still, then turned to Dee and nodded.
Dee motioned us forward, and as one, we crept to the line of trees separating this clearing from the next. My heart pounded, thoughts of the matter to come banishing the banter of a moment before.
Three days earlier, after Hoong, Jimmy, and I had welcomed Dee back to London with surprise and joy, Hoong, at Dee’s request, had begun discreet inquiries among certain people of his acquaintance, requesting information about an impending transaction in which Dee had taken an interest. Reports had come back that the business was arranged to take place tonight, in Richmond Park, in the small clearing just beyond the larger one where Cupid dwelt.
It was this transaction we had come here to stop.
Copyright © 2025 by Erasmus Fox. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
