"His henchman Kang Choong has stated in his confession that Liu at once ordered all his men to search for his daughter's body. He then behaved so strangely that Kang Choong, Guildmaster Wang and Wan I-fan began to worry over their leader. They strongly disapproved of Liu's abducting Han Yung-han; they said it was much too risky, and that the murder of the courtesan would be sufficient warning to Han not to talk about what she had told him. But Liu refused to listen; he had to hurt his rival in love. Thus Han was put in a closed palanquin by Liu's underlings, carried round in Liu's garden, then brought into the secret room under his own house! Han described to me the hexagonal room correctly, and he remembered that he was carried up the ten steps that lead from Liu's secret passage up to the crypt. The man with the white mask was Liu himself, who would not forego this opportunity for humiliating and maltreating the man with whom he thought Almond Blossom had been deceiving him.
"We now approach the end of this somber tale. Moon Fairy's body is not found; Liu is hard pressed for money, and he also fears that I am beginning to suspect him. In this tight corner he decides to disappear as Liu Fei-po, and to direct the final phase of the conspiracy in his role of Councilor Liang.
"I arrest Wan I-fan before Liu has apprised him of his planned disappearance. When I tell Wan that Liu has fled, Wan is convinced that Liu has abandoned his ambitious scheme, and he decides to tell me everything, in order to save his own skin. But the clerk of the court, Liu's agent in our tribunal, warns Liu, and Liu has him hand Wan the poisoned cake. The lotus emblem on the cake was not intended for Wan-remember that it was dark in his cell! -it was meant for me, in order to frighten and confuse me so that I would not interfere those last days before the revolt.
"That same night Liu lets Wang and Kang Choong be informed that henceforward they must contact him in the Councilor's residence. Wang and Kang hold council together; they agree that Liu is losing his head, and that Wang shall take over. Wang goes to the crypt to appropriate the secret-key document, which will give him power over the entire organization. But Liu had already transferred that document to the hiding place in the goldfish bowl. Tao Gan and I surprise Wang in the hexagonal room, and he is killed."
"How did Your Honor know that the document was concealed in the goldfish basin?" Chiao Tai asked eagerly.
Judge Dee smiled. He said:
"When I visited the so-called Councilor, and was kept waiting in his library, the goldfish first behaved in a perfectly natural manner. As soon as they saw me standing over the bowl, they came to the surface, expecting to be fed. But when I stretched out my hand to die statue, they suddenly became very excited. That astonished me, but I didn't stop to think about the possible cause. However, after I had reached the conclusion that Liu was acting the part of the old Councilor, I suddenly remembered the incident. I knew that those fish are hypersensitive, like all animals of breeding; they do not like people dipping their hands in their water. I realized that they must have had a previous experience of a hand doing something under the water and thus disturbing their small, quiet world. Thus I deduced that the pedestal probably was a secret hiding place. And since the most important possession of Liu was a small document roll, I assumed that he had hidden it there. That's all!"
Judge Dee took up his angling rod and started to put the line in order.
"This important case," Sergeant Hoong said with satisfaction, "will doubtless bring quick promotion for Your Honor!"
"For me?" the judge asked, astonished. "Goodness, no! I am very glad that I wasn't summarily dismissed from the service! The Grand Inquisitor has reprimanded me severely for my belated discovery of the plot, and the official document about my being reinstated in my function as magistrate here repeated that remark in black and white, and in no uncertain terms! There was added to it a note from the Board of Personnel, which said that it was only my last-moment finding of the key document to the conspiracy that had moved the authorities to clemency. A magistrate, my friends, is supposed to know what is going on in his district!"
"Well," Hoong resumed, "anyway, this is the end of the case of the murdered courtesan!"
Judge Dee remained silent. He put down his rod and looked pensively out over the water for a while. Then he slowly shook his head and said:
"No, I have a feeling that this case is not yet ended, Hoong; not quite. The courtesan was possessed by such an implacable hatred that I fear that Liu's suicide has not appeased her. There are passions so intense, of such an inhuman violence, that they gain, as it were, a life of their own, and retain their power to harm even long after those who harbored them have died. It is even said that those dark powers will sometimes possess themselves of a dead body and then use it for their sinister aims." Noticing the disconcerted look on the faces of his four companions, he hastily added: "However, strong as they are, those ghostly forces can only harm a man who raises them himself by his own dark deeds."
The judge bent over the gunwale and looked into the water. Did he see again, deep down below, that still face staring up at him with unseeing eyes, as on that fateful night on the flower boat? He shivered. Looking up, he spoke, half to himself.
"I think that a man whose mind is bent on evil had better not roam alone at night on the banks of this lake."
POSTSCRIPT
Judge Dee, the central figure of the present novel, is, as in all old Chinese detective stories, a district magistrate. From early times until the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1912, this government official united in his person the function of judge, jury, prosecutor and detective.
The territory under his jurisdiction, a district, was the smallest administrative unit in the complicated Chinese government machine. It usually comprised one fairly large walled city, and all the countryside around it, say for sixty or seventy miles. The district magistrate was die highest authority in this unit; he was in charge of the town and land administration, the tribunal, the collection of taxes, registration of births, deaths and marriages, while he was also generally responsible for the maintenance of public order in the entire district. Thus he had practically full authority over all phases of the life of the people in his district, who called him, therefore, the "father-and-mother official." He was responsible only to the higher authority, viz. the prefect, or the governor of the province his district formed part of.
It was in his function of judge that the district magistrate displayed his talents as a detective. In Chinese crime literature, therefore, we find the masterminds that solve baffling crimes never referred to as "detectives," but always as "judges."
As in the other Judge Dee novels, I have tried to show here how comprehensive the duties of the magistrate were. Crimes were reported direcdy to him; it was he who was expected to collect and sift all evidence, find the criminal, arrest him, make him confess, sentence him, and finally administer to him just punishment for his crime.
To assist him in this onerous task he received but little help from the permanent personnel of the tribunal. The constables, the scribes, the guards, the warden of the jail, the coroner, all these minions of the law performed only their routine duties. The judge was not supposed to require their help in the gentle art of detection.
Every judge, therefore, had attached to his person three or four trusted lieutenants, whom he carefully selected at the beginning of his career, and kept with him while being transferred from one post to another, till he ended his career as a prefect or a provincial governor. These assistants derived their rank and position-which was higher than that of any of the other members of the tribunal-from the personal authority of the judge. It was upon them that the judge relied for assistance in the detection and solving of crimes.