The Chinese Maze Murders Read Online Free PDF Page B

it turns out that you have spoken the truth I shall reserve my verdict.”
    “For me,” the blacksmith said dejectedly, “there is no hope left. If Your Honour does not have my head chopped off, Chien will certainly kill me. The same goes for my comrades, who are all victims of Chien’s cruel oppression.”
    Judge Dee gave a sign to Chiao Tai. He rose, and led Fang back to the jail.
    The judge left his armchair and began to pace the floor. When Chiao Tai had come back, Judge Dee stood still and said pensivily:
    “That man Fang evidently told the truth. This district is in the power of a local tyrant, magistrates are nothingbut powerless figureheads here. That explains the queer attitude of the local population.”
    Chiao Tai hit his large first on his knee.
    “Must we,” he exclaimed angrily, “bow to that scoundrel Chien?”
    The judge smiled his thin smile.
    “The hour is late, he said, “you two had better retire and have a good night’s rest. Tomorrow I shall have much work for you. I shall stay here for an hour or so and have a glance at those old archives.”
    Tao Gan and Chiao Tai offered to stay up for assisting the judge but he firmly refused.
    As soon as they had left Judge Dee took up a candle and entered the next room. With the sleeve of his dirty travelling robe he rubbed the mould from the labels of the document boxes. He found that the most recent file was dated eight years before.
    The judge carried this box into his office and spread out the contents on his desk.
    It took his experienced eye but little time to verify that it were mostly documents relating to the routine of the district administration. On the bottom of the box, however, he found a small roll, marked “The Case Yoo versus Yoo”. Judge Dee sat down. He unrolled the document and glanced through it.
    He saw that it was a law suit concerning the inheritance of Yoo Shou-chien, a provincial governor who, nine years before, had died whilst living in retirement in Lan-fang.
    Judge Dee closed his eyes and cast his thoughts back fifteen years, when he was serving in the capital as a junior secretary. At that time the name Yoo Shou-chien had been famous all over the Empire. He had been an exceptionally able and scrupulously honest official; devoted to the state and the people, he had earned fame both as a benevolentadministrator and a wise statesman. Then, when the Throne appointed him Grand Secretary of State, Yoo Shou-chien had suddenly resigned from all his offices; pleading poor health he had buried himself in some obscure border district. The Emperor himself had urged him to reconsider his decision but Yoo Shou-chien had steadfastly refused. Judge Dee remembered that at that time this sudden resignation had created quite a sensation in the capital.
    So Lan-fang had been the place where Yoo Shou-chien lived his last years.
    Slowly Judge Dee unrolled the document once more, and read it carefully from beginning to end.
    He found that when Yoo Shou-chien settled down to a life of retirement in Lan-fang, he was a widower of over sixty. He had an only son called Yoo Kee, then thirty years old. Shortly after his arrival in Lan-fang the old governor had remarried. He chose as his bride a young peasant girl of barely eighteen, of the surname Mei. Out of this unequal marriage there was born a second son, called Yoo Shan.
    When the old governor fell ill and felt that his end was drawing near, he called his son Yoo Kee and his young wife with her infant son to his deathbed. He told them that he bequeathed a scroll picture he had painted himself to his wife and his second son Yoo Shan; all the rest of his possessions was to go to Yoo Kee. He added that he trusted that Yoo Kee would see to it that his stepmother and his half-brother would receive what was due to them. Having made this statement the old governor breathed his last.
    Judge Dee looked at the date of the document and reflected that now Yoo Kee must be about forty, the widow nearly thirty,