Chapter 58 The Dungeon of Fear
At about the same time that Chiang Chan was sitting down with his uncle for
the interview that would result in the order to bring Ming-tsu to the Black
Pagoda, that dark-haired beauty was slipping out of a whisper-thin celadon green
chemise preparing to step into a steaming hot tub. She glanced at the full
length mirror a few feet away and was dismayed to find that a restless night,
plagued by horrifying nightmares, had left her eyes, usually so luminous and
captivating, looking a bit tired and drawn.
As she slipped a pretty toe into the tub, the same fears that had kept her
on edge all night raced through her furiously, abrading her raw nerves and
leaving her stomach queasy. Taking a deep breath she slid downward into the
perfumed bath, the water of which was hotter than most people could stand. But
since her days as a blossoming adolescent Ming-tsu had always found hot baths to
be restorative to her nerves, soothing to her supple body and stimulating to her
thought processes.
Ming-tsu's seductive body had stood up well under the rigors of the past
few days, she judged, as she lifted a lissome limb out of of the soap-scented
water, admiring the pleasing curvature of her bent leg, as she doused it with a
dripping sponge. If only her nerves had been able to cope with the strain half
so well ...
********
During the past few days Ming-tsu had seen her fortunes climb with the
speed and trajectory of the brilliantly-colored skyrockets that were fired in
celebration of the New Year, only to plunge just as quickly. The strenuous but
ultimately rewarding bout of lovemaking in George Chan's den {The Unfolding
Lotus, Chapter 24} had surely convinced him that she was capable of pleasing him
as no other woman could. Was not the jade pendant he had given her following
that lusty encounter ample evidence of her success in that regard?
Furthermore, by targeting Wen-chi and Liu as relatives of Li Chang and
hoodwinking Liu into facilitating the capture of her former lover, she had
surely consolidated her position not only as George Chan's favorite concubine,
but also as a valuable ally in terms of extending the power and influence of the
House of Chan. A lifetime of ease and prestige as courtesan and confidante
seemed well within her enterprising grasp.
But the stormy night on which Liu had been forced to ride the Tiger to her
ultimate death had contained the seed of a new tempest. And that storm
threatened to destroy the edifice of success on which Ming-tsu had labored for
upwards of a year, within hours of its completion. When the Scorpions had
returned without the jewels after carting the four bodies off to the harbor, her
prospects had sunk as swiftly as the chained bodies Richard Chan's hoodlums had
thrown into the sea. All of the sexual humiliations she had willingly endured
to please George Chan, all of the depraved and sadistic impulses she had
satisied -- were they all to have been for nought?
Indeed they were, Ming-tsu concluded reluctantly, unless she came up with
the answer to the question that had plagued her every waking minute -- and she
had had precious few minutes of sleep that had not been punctuated by fearful
nightmares in the last few days -- since the death of Liu:
What could have happened to the jewels?
Ming-tsu adjusted her position slightly in her luxurious bath, unconscious
of the fact that the dark and lovely jewels that tipped her nicely-lathered
breasts, as eye-catching as any pearls, poked boldly through the gossamer mist
of bubbles that clung to them. Stiffened to a pleasing semi-erection, no doubt,
by the stressfulness of her perilous situation.
The seductive concubine had been in a state of ever-rising agitation over
the missing diamonds and pearls ever since the Scorpions had returned from the
harbor to tell her that they had found nothing in the garments of the four
victims whose bodies they had thrown into the bay. She had returned to the
Black Pagoda and searched its forbidding cellar with no success, and had gone
back a second time to search again only last night. She had been turned away -
although she did not know it -- only because Richard Chan had been entertaining
Qieu in the dungeons of the Black Pagoda at that very moment.
********
On her first visit to the dungeon of the Black Pagoda to search for the
missing jewels, she had lit a torch and had set about inspecting every dark
corner of the spacious dungeon, hoping that Mai-Lee's priceless gems had
somehow rolled out of sight whenever and however they had been removed from
Liu's body.
During her search she had become more fully aware of Richard Chan's vast
collection of contrivances, some artistic and refined, others bluntly brutal,
for inflicting pain on tender female bodies. From the ceiling above her hung an
astonishing array of rings and pullies, ropes and chains, instruments of bondage
that could be used to suspend a young woman in whatever fashion her tormentor
found most pleasing. Long tables, narrow benches and sturdy chairs of wood and
iron were equipped with a variety of evil-looking straps and chains that could
be used to bind a desirable damsel in any conceivable position. Dozens of
long-legged spiders and scores of repulsive black beetles, no doubt attracted
and nourished by the dessicated droplets of blood that covered them, scurried
soundlessly over an array of blood-stained wooden T's and X's and Y's, that were
propped against a wall in one grim corner.
But not all of the engines of the Chans' dire dungeons were so massive.
Smaller implements lined one entire wall, forming a gruesome gallery of
pain-dealing instruments. Instruments for flogging, gripping, and piercing
feminine flesh that had been gathered from the four corners of the earth, to add
to Richard Chan's voluminous collection. The whips and canes alone numbered
into the hundreds; of these only a few were museum pieces. Either Richard Chan
or one of his minions had tested nearly all of them on soft female flesh. Few
had been found wanting.
The longer her search remained fruitless, the more agitated Ming-tsu
became. For she was well aware that if she did not locate the jewels, she
herself might be next in line in the long procession of unfortunate beauties who
had come to grief in the Black Pagoda.
She doubted that she would ever forget the grim configuration of the rack
that she had chanced upon in a dark and airless corner of the dungeon, a rack
whose rusty windlass looked to rival, in age, a three or four century-old Ming
vase. But she had little doubt that if the ancient device was in the dungeon of
the Black Pagoda, that it worked and worked well.
She had stood there, flaming torch in hand, staring at the dreadful
mechanism for a minute or two, enshrouded in the eerie silence of the sinister
chamber of horrors, interrupted occasionally by the chilling sound of chains
clanking together overhead in response to an unfelt draft. So powerful was the
ghastly spell cast by the medieval machine that she could almost hear the awful
grinding of its powerful ratchet, the metallic rattling of its heavy chains, and
the faint, horrible cries of agony of the numberless nubile victims whose
sweat-covered bodies and taut, straining limbs had been tortured to the limits
of endurance and beyond. The sight of the rack had so unnerved her that the
slim hand which held the torch had shaken uncontrollably. When she had crouched
down on her knees to make sure that the missing jewels had not somehow slid
beneath the dreadful engine, she had had to look a second time to make sure that
her eyes had not deceived her.
But there had been yet another device in the gruesome dungeon, one that,
for Ming-tzu, had occasioned even more horror than the medieval rack, one that
had haunted her ever since. She was to learn later that one of Richard Chan's
army of agents had recovered the bizarre apparatus from the ruins of a Burmese
warlord's castle on the banks of the Irrawaddy, upriver from Mandalay. A
long-ago warlord who, according to legend, had been but twenty when he had been
scornfully rejected by a beautiful but too-proud Laotian princess. Never
forgetting this slight, the bellicose young tyrant plotted his revenge while his
armies grew mighty. Soon he came to be renowned throughout southern Asia for
his depravity and cruelty.
Three years after his failed courtship, the warlord had led a party of
raiders into the nearby realm of the princess for the sole purpose of abducting
the lovely maiden who had once rebuffed his advances. Then, upon their return to
his dark castle, the young despot had used his ingenious invention to revenge
himself upon the still-defiant young princess.
It was this ancient legend of a kindred spirit that had led Richard Chan on
a costly quest to find the warlord's castle, to salvage and restore whatever
evil implements of torture could be found in the wreckage of his fortress. It
was before that most-prized of all the warlord's cruel conceptions that Ming-tsu
stood now.
The seemingly innocuous device in question consisted of a two-part
vertical wooden frame with a hinged mechanism that opened upward, and a pair of
orange-sized circular openings. At first she had thought it to be merely a pair
of stocks for enclosing a woman's wrists or ankles.
But as she examined it more closely, she noticed that the warlord's
punishment frame was held upright by two sturdy posts, and that the two circular
openings were positioned about four feet off the ground. Slowly its true but
terrible purpose dawned on her. Try though she might, she could not tear her
eyes from the awful apparatus, staring disbelievingly at it as if doubtful that
the mind of man could conceive a contrivance as cruel and inhuman as the one
that stood before her.
Even after she left the dungeon, having found no trace of the jewels, the
memory of the bizarre Burmese mechanism obsessed her. And provided the stimulus
for the horrifying visions that had plagued her dreams these last two nights.
