Judge Dee finished the gruel, put his spoon on the table and began:

'It must have hurt you, Sergeant, when you saw me accept that wretched abbot's bribe. Three bars of gold and three bars of silver! The fact is that although at that time I had not yet decided on a definite course of action, I knew that sooner or later I would be in need of funds. You know that I have no income except my official salary and I did not dare to take money from the comptroller of the tribunal for fear that the abbot's spies would discover that I was contemplating some action.

'As it turned out this bribe was exactly sufficient to pay expenses for setting my trap. Two gold bars were used for redeeming the two girls from the house that owned them. The third I gave to Apricot, to be used in persuading the abbot to let her stay in the temple for one night. One bar of silver I gave to the steward of my distinguished colleague Lo, the magistrate of Chin-hwa, as commission for arranging this transaction and to cover the costs of conveying the two girls to Poo-yang. I gave the second bar of silver to my wife to buy the girls new dresses. The rest was used to purchase their cloaks and for the rent of the two luxurious palankeens in which they proceeded to this temple yesterday afternoon. Thus you can dismiss that worry from your mind, Sergeant.'

The judge noted the look of relief on the faces of his assistants. He smiled patiently and continued:

'I selected these two girls in Chin-hwa because I recognised in them those virtues that make our peasant class the very backbone of our glorious Empire, virtues that even the exercise of an unfortunate profession cannot substantially affect. I was confident that if they assisted me in the execution of my plan, they would certainly be successful.

'The girls themselves, and also my family, thought that I had bought them as my concubines. I did not dare to confide my secret to anyone, not even to my First Lady. As I said before, the abbot may well have had spies among the servants in my mansion and I could not afford the slightest risk of the secret leaking out. I had to wait till the two girls adapted themselves to their new mode of life and until they could play the role of a distinguished lady and her maidservant, before I could execute my plan.

'Thanks to the untiring efforts of my First Lady, Apricot made unusually quick progress and yesterday I decided to act.'

The judge picked up some vegetables with his chopsticks.

'Yesterday, after I left you, Sergeant,' he went on, 'I went directly to their courtyard and told the girls of my suspicions regarding the Temple of Boundless Mercy. I asked Apricot whether she would consent to play her role, adding that since I had an alternative plan that did not involve their co-operation she was completely free to refuse. Apricot, however, agreed immediately. She indignantly said she would never forgive herself if she let this chance pass to save other women from the lusts of those depraved monks.

'Then I told them to put on the best dresses my wife had given them, and conceal these by wrapping themselves in the long hooded cloak of Buddhist nuns. They were to leave the tribunal secretly by the back-door and rent two of the best palankeens in the market-place. When they arrived at the temple, Apricot was to tell the abbot that she was the concubine of an exalted personage in the capital, so exalted indeed that his name could not be disclosed; that his First Lady was exceedingly jealous of her, and that she feared further that her master's feelings for her were cooling. Threatened with being expelled from that mansion, she had come to the Temple of Boundless Mercy as a last resort. Her lord was childless and if she could present him with a son, her position would be safe.'

Here Judge Dee paused for a moment. His assistants had hardly touched their food.

'Now this was a plausible story,' the judge went on.' but since I knew the abbot to be an extremely shrewd man, I still feared that he would refuse her because Apricot would not give him her real name and more personal details. So I instructed her to appeal to both his greed and his base lusts. She was to offer him the bar of gold and show him her beauty, giving him to understand by the means well known to every woman that she thought him a handsome man.

'Finally I told Apricot what to do during her vigil. I did not rule out the possibility that after all everything rested on the miraculous powers of the statue of the goddess, especially since I had been greatly impressed by Tao Gan's failure to locate a secret entrance to the pavilion.'

Tao Gan looked embarrassed. He hastily buried his face in his bowl of gruel. Judge Dee smiled indulgently and continued:

'So I told Apricot that should a real saint appear before her in mid-air, she was to prostrate herself on the floor and humbly tell the complete truth, stating that I, the magistrate, bore full responsibility for her being there under false pretences. If, however, a common mortal should enter her room, she was to try to find out by what means he had effected his entrance- thereafter she was to act as circumstances dictated. But I gave her a small box of red lip salve and instructed her to mark the head of the man who embraced her.

'At the end of the fourth nightwatch Blue Jade would secretly slip out of the guest quarters, and knock twice on the door of Apricot's pavilion. If she was answered by four knocks she would know that my suspicions had been groundless, three knocks meant that there had been foul play.

'The rest you know.'

Ma Joong and Tao Gan clapped their hands excitedly, but the Sergeant was looking worried.

After some hesitation, Sergeant Hoong said:

'The other day, when Your Honour gave me what I then thought to be the final statement on the problem of the Temple of Boundless Mercy, Your Honour made a remark that still greatly worries me. Namely that even if convincing evidence against the monks could be found, and their confessions obtained, the Buddhist church would intervene and protect them, and have them set free long before the case would have been closed. How can this problem be solved?'

Judge Dee knotted his heavy eyebrows, and pensively tugged his beard.

Just at that moment the clatter of hooves was heard outside in the courtyard. Chiao Tai came rushing into the refectory.

He quickly looked about and seeing the group he came running to their table, his brow covered with sweat.

'Your Honour,' he panted excitedly, 'I only found four foot soldiers in the garrison headquarters! The rest of the garrison left yesterday for Chin-hwa on emergency orders of His Excellency the Governor. When I passed the stockade on the way back here, I saw a furious crowd of several hundred people ramming the palissade. The constables had fled inside the tribunal!'

'This is a most unfortunate coincidence!' exclaimed Judge Dee. 'Let us hasten back to the city!'

He hurriedly explained the situation to the general and put him in charge of concluding affairs in the temple, assisted by the master of the Guild of Goldsmiths. Judge Dee asked the retired Judge Wan and the master of the Carpenters' Guild to accompany him.

Judge Dee ascended the general's military palankeen with Sergeant Hoong. The old judge and the guildmaster disappeared into theirs while Ma Joong and Chiao Tai leaped on their horses. They raced back to the city as fast as the bearers could go.

The main street was teeming with an excited crowd, which broke out in wild cheers as they saw Judge Dee in the open palankeen. On all sides people shouted 'Long live our Magistrate!' 'Thousand years to His Excellency Judge Dee!'

As they approached the tribunal, however, they found fewer people about and when they rounded the north-east corner of the compound an ominous silence hung over the deserted streets.