Chapter 18 Erika Entertains the Emissaries
On the following afternoon, George Chan was busy at his ornate
eighteenth-century desk poring over the proceeds from the various gambling
houses of the Chans' empire, when his son Chiang tapped at the door and entered.
"Has there been any word of her yet?" George asked his son.
"No, father. An elderly couple who live in the neighborhood saw her leave
with the professor; we know that they started back toward the central city, but
the trail grows cold after that. It was quite dark by then, remember.
"Do you think that accursed cripple could have killed her, disposed of her
body, and then killed himself out of remorse? You knew him better than I."
"He was a strange man, father; anything is possible; there was blood on the
floor and on some of the instruments." Chiang nodded his head indicating the
room behind the golden curtain.
George slammed his fist loudly on the desk. "If the bitch is alive, I want
her back, do you hear? No one makes a fool out of George Chan," George fumed,
as a determined scowl spread across his face.
"Father, some of the Scorpions are waiting in the rear garden; they may
have news. I should go and see if they have any news."
"Yes, by all means; let me know as soon as you hear anything of her
whereabouts.
"Of course, father. I shall see you at dinner, if not before."
And with that, Chiang Chan slipped through the golden curtain that led into
the punishment chamber where Erika had been confined. There was a rear door to
that chamber that led to the palatial gardens at the back of George Chan's
stately residence.
George turned back toward his ledgers but he could not concentrate. His
thoughts kept returning to the German girl; her stay with him had been all too
brief. And her disappearance could not have come at a worse time - it had been
weeks since he had been with Ming-tsu, and the pressures of business had kept
him away from Madame Wong's since the night he had tried out the new nipple
clamps on Peony. As a result, he was as randy as a Manchurian mink.
He put the papers down for a second and glanced up at the two pairs of
erotic paintings that had caught the eye of Professor Leung. On his left there
was a beautiful rendering of a pair of houris entertaining some twice-blessed
caliph in the throne room of a castle borrowed from the Arabian Nights. In the
background of the painting a drummer, a flautist, and a player of some
unfamiliar stringed instrument were playing, the vitality of the music evident
from the enthusiasm of their faces.
But it was the foreground of the painting that truly caught the viewer's
eye. The skillful artist had captured one of the girls, clad only in the
filmiest of veils, in mid-stride, as she twirled on bare, dancing feet. The
other, naked save for luminous golden bracelets and earrings, knelt submissively
at the prince's side, her weight back on her haunches, her arms clasped behind
her, her sumptuously-sculpted breasts thrust shamelessly forward. The prince
held what appeared to be a bastinado in his right hand; darkening streaks on
the kneeling girl's cafe-au-lait breasts suggested that the fierce-eyed warrior
prince had occasionally been keeping time to the music by slapping the nasty
looking instrument across the generous breasts of the slave-girl at his side.
There was a subtly shaded but umistakably massive bulge in the caliph's sequined
trousers.
By a strange chain of circumstances the sight of those lovingly rendered
slave girls reminded George Chan once again of the missing blonde. A few weeks
earlier, as he had told Richard the night he had taken Erika to the Black
Pagoda, a number of dignitaries from the far off capital, Peking, had made their
way to Shanghai. Their supposed mission was to look into some "irregularities"
that citizens had complained about. Richard Chan had been in Hong Kong on
business and it had been left to George to deal with the visitors.
It had long been George's experience that powerful ministers on the
national level were no less corrupt than the local officials that he and Richard
Chan had been paying off for years. In light of that fact, it had occurred to
him that providing the visiting guests with an evening's entertainment a la
Erika Weiss - who had been his house prisoner since completing her rigorous
training at the hands of Ming-tsu and Li Chang -- might well ingratiate the
House of Chan to the imperial emissaries.
The delegation had been led by General Wang, a distant relative of the
Emperor himself, and a man feared throughout China for his tyrannical manner.
He had risen to power during the dreadful Taiping Rebellion, that had begun a
generation earlier and had lasted almost fifteen years. Millions upon millions
had died from war, disease and famine during the uprising. The ruthless General
Wang had been responsible for more than his share of carnage, burning scores of
villages and slaughtering thousands of rebels, not to mention civilians who
lived in rebel-infested areas.
When the rebellion had finally been suppressed, Wang had used his
newly-acquired power to build a little empire of civilian underlings, all of
whom lived well at the expense of the impoverished masses. Wang had not
mellowed much in civilian life; he was still known far and wide for his cruelty
and unpredictability. He had ruined powerful men before, George knew, and was
capable of doing it again.
All the more reason for George Chan to entertain his important guests on
the top floor of his brother's luxurious Black Pagoda, in the great banquet
room. They had begun, as was the custom in those days, with many toasts, and
George Chan had spared no expense. Richard Chan's vast collection of liqueurs,
wines, and other spirits had provided a priceless bottle of champagne from a
tiny monastery in the Marne valley, a bracing bottle of Aquavit from
Scandinavia, a rare vodka from St Petersburg, and a bottle as old as himself of
a tart liqueur from the house of the great Becher distilling dynasty of Bohemia.
The drinks were served, it need hardly be said, by the ravishing fraulein
herself, who was swathed in a semi-diaphanous knee-length cocoon of pale azure
silk. She had bathed in coconut milk for an hour before the banquet, at
George's order, giving her skin both an inviting scent and a most becoming
softness. As soon as she strode into the room carrying the champagne the polite
pre-dinner conversation among the dignitaries came to a halt as they admired the
statuesque westerner from the other side of the world. At George's instruction
she had worn high heels; in them, she stood some three to five inches taller
than the dignitaries, save for the general himself. As George had surmised, her
presence was as unexpected to the Pekingese functionaries as would have been
that of Queen Victoria herself.
Erika carried herself with a most becoming blend of pride and submission.
During Erika's sojourn with Ming-tzu and Li Chang at the mountain lodge, one
entire afternoon had been devoted to perfecting her posture and her gait.
Repeated flicks from Ming-tzu's whippy little switch had taught her how to keep
her flat stomach in, her back straight, and her inviting breasts provocatively
thrust forward when she walked. But she had also learned, under the painful
penalty of the same cruel switch, how to appear submissive in repose.
In more recent days, had Erika had been given a day's training by Richard
Chan's wine steward so that she could serve the aperitifs properly; after the
first morning session the fault-finding sommelier had reported to George Chan
that his student had been inattentive at times. Twenty-five sharp strokes of the
strap across the backs of her lissome thighs during the lunch break had improved
her concentration during the afternoon session considerably.
Erika's stint as sommelieuse had proceeded without incident until she was
refilling the glass of Hsi Fong, the Commissioner of the Imperial Seal, whose
office provided him the opportunity to tax documents to 'establish their
authenticity'; his office, George had mused, might equally have been called the
Ministry of Graft. Someone had bumped Erika's arm just as she was refilling his
glass, causing her to spill the clear strong spirits down the front of the
bureaucrat's jade-green robe. He had glared at her with eyes as frosty as the
vodka (which had been packed in ice for hours) itself, but had said nothing.
When Erika had turned to see who had bumped her arm, the only one behind her was
the ever-beaming George Chan himself, who by now was beside himself issuing
apologies to the royal emissary. Surely, she thought, George would not have...
When the lengthy round of pre-dinner toasts had been concluded, servants
began bringing in the first courses of the fine repast. And what a feast had
been prepared for the delectation of the guests from the north! George had
spent a small fortune on the dinner -- there had been soup of shark fin, eel
prepared in the Japanese style, several varieties of sea urchin and sea
cucumber, the marinated breasts of three dozen Nanking nightingales, and a
hundred other delicacies.
The dinner itself had been served at a specially constructed large round
table under a massive crystal chandelier in the banqueting room. The table, as
is customary at large Chinese dinner parties, had a carousel in the center --
similar to what George had heard the British call a 'lazy Susan'. Both the
table and the carousel itself had been designed and built per George's precise
specifications during the past few days.
The fifteen courses of the dinner had taken over two hours to serve, and
Erika had been at hand - so to speak - to serve drinks throughout. Furtive
fingers, surreptitiously at first, had grazed the softness of her silken-clad
legs throughout the dinner, growing bolder with each fresh round of intoxicating
libations. By the end of the meal, lustful eyes were peering down into the
delicious valley between her splendid breasts each time she stooped to pour a
drink. Even worse, from Erika's point of view, groping hands, seemingly given
license by alcohol, were taking every opportunity to squeeze her supple thighs
and fondle her rounded buttocks.
Thinking back on the events of that evening, George remembered
smiling with satisfaction when he he had opened another bottle of well-aged
Spanish port. So far everything had proceeded exactly as he had planned.
After the dishes had all been cleared to a long sideboard, George had
shooed the servants out of the great hall, telling them that they could finish
cleaning up in the morning. Erika had made as if to leave, too, but George had
caught her by the arm, asking her sternly if she had concluded that his guests
should be without a wine-server. Nervously she had softly answered, "Nein," and
lingered behind.
George recalled how she had watched with apprehension as he had locked the
doors at each end of the banqueting room, not only preventing the other servants
from re-entering, but also preventing her from leaving. He remembered
distinctly how the metallic click of the bolt in the massive door at the main
entrance to the dining room had caused her to tremble.
When the room had been secured he had approached the table, squeezing past
the General's aide, and touched a tiny lever beneath it, which caused a hinged
circular leaf to drop down, so that one could stand directly adjacent to the
central carousel. He then had proceeded to take a puzzled Erika Weiss by the
hand, and, after instructing her to remove her shoes, he had assisted her in
mounting the over-sized carousel, indicating to her that she was to kneel in the
center of it.
The blonde's eyes had begun to dart around nervously then, George
remembered with satsfaction. And why shouldn't she have been apprehensive --
locked in a room with six half-drunk corrupt politicians and a master whom she
had every reason to fear. And now she was kneeling on a circular platform, as
helplessly subject to the intense scrutiny of George's six guests as if she had
been a butterfly pinned to a collector's spreading board.
She found herself facing General Wang, the indisputable head of the
delegation, a bald, stern-looking man of about fifty. On his left was his
assistant, Cheng, a timid looking young man of twenty-five, who was plainly not
used to drinking the amount he had drunk tonight. On the general's right was
the unpleasant-looking Commissioner Fong, on whom she had spilled the drink.
Directly behind her sat the obscenely fat Lu Chow, the Inspector of Corrupt
Practices and himself one of the most corrupt men in China. He was flanked by
the cadaverous Sang Chu-ming, whose function it was to prevent internal
smuggling, and the aged, white-bearded Doctor Wang, the uncle of the General,
who was, laughably enough, the Minister of Moral Uprightness.
Erika had still been sizing up her audience when George reached out and
grabbed the edge of the carousel, and gave it a healthy push, making sure that
his experiments had not been in vain. Even with Erika's considerable weight
atop it, the carousel was beautifully crafted and well-balanced, and spun quite
easily. Erika spun around three and a half revolutions, wondering what her
cruel and unpredictable Master had on his mind.
She was soon to find out...
