"Yes, suh, I am. All governments are stupid."

"Would you join me in a glass of champagne?"

"A celebration?"

"Yes. I don't know why but I'm pleased to meet you."

"Ah, then you felt the same? Not right, is it?"

Malcolm shook his head and rang the bell.

Chen appeared and when the champagne was opened and poured he went away, his little eyes darting from silent man to silent man. "Health!"

"Health." Gornt replied, savoring the chilled wine.

"I got the impression you wanted to speak privately."

Gornt laughed. "I did indeed. Dangerous for an enemy to be able to read your mind, eh?"

"Very, but we needn't be enemies.

Rothwell's is a good client, the hatred and blood feud between the Struans and the Brocks needn't touch you, whatever Tyler or Morgan say."

Gornt put his eyes on the cut-glass crystal and the bubbles, asking them if he was correct in thinking that the time was now or if he should wait. The tawny eyes considered Struan. He decided to dismiss the danger. "You are reputed to like secrets, to be trustworthy."

"Are you?"

"In matters of honor, yes. Your reputation... do you like stories, legends?"

Malcolm concentrated, the unreality of the meeting and this man disorienting him. "Some better than others."

"I'm here under false pretenses."

Gornt's sudden smile lit up the room.

"Christ Jesus I don't believe I'm truly here with the future tai-pan of the Noble House. I've waited and planned so long for this meeting and now it's arrived, before I came here I had no intention of saying anything now, other than what Mr. Greyforth asked me to say. But now?"

He raised his glass. "To revenge."

Malcolm thought about that, unafraid and spellbound, then drank and poured again. "It's a good toast in Asia."

"Anywhere. First: I need your word of honor, the honor of the tai-pan of the Noble House, before God, that what I tell you will remain secret between us, until I release you."

Malcolm hesitated. "So long as it's a story." Then he swore the oath.

"Thank you. A story then. Are we safe here? Can anyone overhear us?"

"In Asia, usually. We're aware doors have ears as well as walls, but I can fix that.

Chen!" he called out. The door opened at once. In Cantonese he said, "Stay away from the door, keep everyone else away, even Ah Tok!"

"Yes Tai-pan." The door closed.

"Now you're safe, Mr. Gornt. I've known Chen all my life and he doesn't speak English, I think. You speak Shanghainese?"

"A little, the same with Ning poh dialect."

"You were saying?"

"This is the first time I have ever told this story,"

Gornt said and Malcolm believed him. "Once upon a time," he began, no lightness now, "a family went to England from Montgomery, Alabama--their home for generations--father, mother, and two children, a boy, and girl. She was fifteen, her name Alexandra and her father was the youngest of five brothers, Wilf Tillman was the oldest."

"The co-founder of Cooper-Tillman?"

Struan said, jarred.

"The same. Alexandra's father was a minor tea and cotton broker, an investor with brother Wilf in Cooper-Tillman, and he went to London to work with Rothwell's on a three-year contract to advise on cotton-- Cooper-Tillman was their major supplier.

They stayed just under a year. Unfortunately both parents had gotten very ill, no wonder, eh, with the fogs and that weather, I nearly died myself while I was there--I spent two years in London training with Brock's, one with Rothwell's.

Anyway, the Tillmans decided to go home.

Halfway across the Atlantic Alexandra discovered she was pregnant."

"Ayeeyah," Malcolm muttered.

"Yes. The shock, on top of her adored father's illness, killed him. He was thirty-seven. They buried him at sea. The Captain's death certificate just said "brainstorm" but both she and her mother knew the real cause was the bad news. Alexandra was just sixteen, as pretty as a picture. That was in '35, twenty-seven years ago. Alexandra had a son, me. For an unmarried girl to have a child out of wedlock, to be a fallen woman... well, Mr. Struan, no need to tell you what a stigma and disaster that is, and Alabama's Bible country, our part, and the Tillmans gentry.

Earlier we talked about honor, it's true what I said, that we take honor seriously, and dishonor. May I?" Gornt motioned to the champagne.

"Please." Malcolm did not know what else to say. The voice was lilting, pleasant, uninvolved, just a storyteller relating a history. For the moment, he thought grimly.

Gornt poured for Struan, then for himself. "My mother and her mother were ostracized by society, and the Tillman family, even her brother turned against her. When I was three my mother met a Virginian, a transplanted Englishman-- Robert Gornt, gentleman, tobacco and cotton exporter, card-playing enthusiast from Richmond--who fell in love with Mother and she with him. They left Montgomery and were married in Richmond. The story they fabricated was that she was a widow, married at sixteen to a Yankee cavalry officer who had been killed in the Sioux Indian wars. She was nineteen then.

"Everything was more or less all right for several years. Until '42--the year after Dirk Struan practically single-handedly founded Hong Kong, the year before you were born. '42 was a bad year for Hong Kong with its Happy Valley fever plague, mal-aria, the Opium War with China, the great typhoon that obliterated the city there, and unholy bad for the Noble House because the same typhoon killed the great Dirk Struan." A sip of champagne. "He was responsible for Wilf Tillman's death and for ruining the Tillman family."

"I know nothing about that. Are you sure?"

Gornt smiled his smile, no animosity behind it. "Yes. Wilf Tillman was sick with the Happy Valley fever. Dirk Struan had cinchona bark that could have cured him, but wouldn't give or sell it to him, wanting him dead, like Jeff Cooper." His voice picked up an edge. "The Boston Yankee wanted him dead."

"Why? And why should the tai-pan want Tillman dead?"

"He hated him--he had different views than Wilf. Among other reasons, Wilf had slaves, not illegal at that time, or now, in Alabama. And to assist Cooper to take over the firm. After Wilf died, Jeff Cooper bought his shares for a pittance, and cut off my family's remaining money. Dirk was responsible."

Malcolm said, "We certainly have a joint venture with Cooper-Tillman in cinchona bark, Mr. Gornt, and are old friends. As to the rest, I know nothing about it, or believe it.

I'll check the story the moment I get back to Hong Kong."

Gornt shrugged. "Years later Cooper admitted he had never approved of Wilf Tillman. His exact words were, "Listen, young man, Wilf deserved everything he got, he was a slaver and useless, never did a day's work in his life, your Southern gentleman was vile.

Dirk was right to give the little cinchona he had to others who he judged deserved it. It's been my work, mine, that made the company that's paid for your mother, stepfather and you all these years..."

Gornt's face twisted, then he was calm again. Outwardly. "He said a few other things, suh, that... that's unimportant now. But cutting off funds, our rightful money, was very important. It was then the rows between stepfather and mother began and we moved, downwards. It wasn't till many years later I found out he had married her for her money, his cotton and tobacco businesses were shams, he was just a gambler and card player, not a successful one, and she had continually covered for him. When Mother was dying she told me all this. But he wasn't bad to me, evil to me, just dismissed me, I've been dismissed all my life. Now it's time for revenge."

"I don't see why you should blame me."

"I don't."

Malcolm stared at him. "I thought "fighting irons, or swords" was the beginning."