He increased his pace. Three or four drunks lay in the gutter of High Street like old sacks of coal, others scattered here and there down along the seafront. He stepped over one man, avoided a raucous group of inebriated merchant seamen staggering for their boats, ran up his steps into the large foyer of Struan's, up the staircase to the landing and down the corridor that led to suites of rooms the whole length of the godown.

Quietly he opened a door and peered in.

"Hello, Jamie," Malcolm Struan said from the bed.

"Oh, hello, Malcolm, 'morning. I wasn't sure if you'd be awake." He closed the door behind him, noticed that the door to the adjoining suite was ajar, and went over to the huge teak four-poster that, like all the furniture, came from Hong Kong or England. Malcolm Struan was pasty-faced, and drawn, propped on pillows--the boat trip back from Kanagawa yesterday had drained more of his precious strength even though Dr. Babcott had kept him sedated and they had made the journey as smooth as possible. "How are you today?"

Struan just peered up at him, his blue eyes seemingly faded and set deeper into their sockets, shadows underneath. "Mail from Hong Kong's not good, eh?" The words were flat, and gave McFay no way to break it easily.

"Yes, sorry. You heard the signal gun?"

Whenever the mail ship came within sight, it was custom for the Harbor Master to fire a cannon to alert the Settlement--the same procedure all over the world, wherever there were Settlements.

"Yes, I did," Struan said. "Before you tell me the bad, close her door and give me the chamber pot."

McFay obeyed. The other side of the door was a drawing room and beyond that a bedroom, the best apartment in the whole building and normally reserved exclusively for the tai-pan, Malcolm's father.

Yesterday at Malcolm's insistence and her happy compliance, Angelique had been installed there. At once the news had rushed around the Settlement, feeding other reports and rumors that their Angelique had become the new Lady of the Lamp, and the betting odds on that she was Struan's in more ways than one, every man wanting to be in his bed.

"You're mad," McFay had told some of them at the Club last night. "The poor fellow's in terrible shape."

Dr. Babcott interrupted, "He'll be up and about before you know it."

"It's got to be wedding bells, by God!" someone said.

"Drinks on the house," another called out expansively, "Good-oh, we'll have our own wedding, our first wedding."

"We've had lots, Charlie, what about our musumes?"' "They don't count for God's sake, I mean a real church wedding--and a right proper christening an--"' "Jumping Jehovah, are you implying one's in the oven?"' "The rumor's they was like stoats on the ship coming here, not that I blame him..."

"Angel Tits weren't even feeanced then, by God! Say that agin', impugg'ning 'er 'onor, and I'll do you by God!"

McFay sighed. A few drunken blows and broken bottles, both men had been thrown out to crawl back within the hour to an uproarious welcome. Last night, when he had peeped in here before going to bed himself, Malcolm was asleep and she was nodding in a chair beside the bed. He awoke her gently. "Best get some proper sleep, Miss Angelique, he won't wake now."

"Yes, thank you, Jamie."

He had watched her stretch luxuriously like a contented young feline, half asleep, hair down around her bared shoulders, her gown high waisted and loose, falling in folds that the Empress Josephine had favored fifty years before and some Parisian haute couturiers were trying to reintroduce, all of her pulsating with a male-attracting life force. His own suite was along the corridor. For a long time he had not slept.

Sweat soaked Struan. The effort of using the chamber pot was vast with little to show for all the pain, no feces and just a little blood-flecked urine.

"Jamie, now what's the bad?"

"Oh, well you see..."

"For Christ sake tell me!"

"Your father passed away nine days ago, same day the mail ship left Hong Kong direct us, not via Shanghai. His funeral was due three days later. Your mother asks me to arrange your return at once. Our mail ship from here with news of your, your bad luck won't arrive Hong Kong for another four or five days at the earliest. Sorry," he added lamely.

Struan only heard the first sentence. The news was not unexpected and yet it came as violent a slash as the wound in his side. He was very glad and very sad, mixed up, excited that at long last he could really run the company that he had trained for all his life, that for years had been hemorrhaging, for years held together by his mother who quietly persuaded, cajoled, guided and helped his father over the bad times. The bad was constant and mostly due to drink that was his father's medicine to cushion blinding headaches and attacks of Happy Valley ague, mal-aria, bad air, the mysterious killing fever that had decimated Hong Kong's early population but now, sometimes, was held in abeyance by a bark extract, quinine.

Can't remember a year when Father wasn't laid up at least twice with the shakes, for a month or more, his mind wandering for days on end. Even infusions of the priceless cinchona bark that Grandfather had had brought from Peru had not cured him, though it had stopped the fever from killing him, and most everyone else. But it hadn't saved poor little Mary, four years old then, me seven and forever after aware of death, the meaning of it and its finality.

He sighed heavily. Thank God nothing touched Mother, neither plague nor ague nor age nor misfortune, still a young woman, not yet thirty-eight, still trim after seven children, a steel support for all of us, able to ride every disaster, every storm, even the bitter, perpetual hatred and enmity between her and her father, godrotting Tyler Brock... even the tragedy last year when the darling twins, Rob and Dunross, were drowned off Shek-O where our summer house is. And now poor Father. So many deaths.

Tai-pan. Now I'm tai-pan of the Noble House.

"What? What did you say, Jamie?"

"I just said I was sorry, Tai-pan, and here, here's a letter from your mother."

With an effort Struan took the envelope.

"What's the fastest way for me to get back to Hong Kong?"

"Sea Cloud but she isn't due for two to three weeks. The only merchantmen here at the moment are slow, none due for Hong Kong for a week. Mail ship would be the fastest. We could get her to turn around right smartly but she's going via Shanghai."

After yesterday, the idea of an eleven-day voyage more than likely with bad seas, even typhoon, horrified Malcolm. Even so he said, "Talk to the captain. Persuade him to go direct Hong Kong. What else's in the mails?"

"I haven't been through them yet, but here..."

Greatly concerned with Struan's sudden pallor, McFay offered the Hong Kong Observer.

"Nothing but bad, I'm afraid: The American civil war's picking up steam, seesawing with tens of thousands of deaths--battles at Shiloh, Fair Oaks, dozens of places, another at Bull Run with the Union army the loser and decimated. War's changed forever now with breech-loading rifles and machine guns and rifled cannon. Price of cotton's gone sky high with the Union blockade of the South.

Another panic on the London Stock Exchange and Paris--rumors that Prussia will invade France imminently. Since the Prince Consort died in December, Queen Victoria still hasn't appeared in public--it's rumored she's pining to death. Mexico: we've pulled our forces out now it's apparent nutter Napoleon III'S determined to make it a French domain. Famine and riots all over Europe." McFay hesitated. "Can I get you anything?"

"A new stomach." Struan glanced at the envelope clenched in his hand. "Jamie, leave me the paper, go through the mails then come back and we'll decide what to do here before I leave..."