It wasn't a very far walk from that house of ill repute, the Pink Lotus, either, which makes a perverse sort of sense. Entering the bar, we were assailed with the stench of old tobacco smoke and a nauseating green wallpaper, accented with dartboards and posters of sighing Sing-Song Girls. A lone barman, a curious mix of native China-man and what I believe may have been European, busily cleaned the bar to a polished shine. There were mainly natives here, although a few were white men, Germans I believe, and there was a rather drunken-looking Japanese soldier in one corner. Something about the latter's behavior struck me as a bit off, something particular... though I couldn't place it.
The bartender looked up as we entered, and smirked gently. "What'll it be, buddy?" he asked n heavily accented English, motioning to the bar stools. "We not have such a group here in long time..."
"How about a Cuba Libre?" Francis replied, smirking right back. "For the whole gang. It's on me."
Drinks flowed freely, except for Mahmoud, who declined for his own odd religious reasons and simply had seltzer water. I would have spoken up, but Sarah ended up dominating the conversation. She began asking questions, particularly about this Brady chap we were seeking out. Of course, such things do not come free in Shanghai, and the bartender (I didn't bother learning his name) was nervous about telling us anything until we produced a large amount of money, some several British Pounds worth. His nervousness was clear, and as we probed him for answers, we soon understood why. Yes, he knew Brady - the man apparently saved his life from an attack in his own bar, something about a man with a sickle trying to extort the bartender. No, he didn't know Brady's location - at least he said he didn't, feeding us some (admittedly well-crafted) line about how the man was in Rangoon with a Mr. Grey.
Some more money quickly changed his tune, and he told us that in actuality, Brady was likely still in Shanghai, but he had no clue exactly where. And furthermore, he knew Clayton's late friend, Jackson Elias - at least in passing, as the American had visited the Stumbling Tiger once and asked similar questions. Then, Mahmoud thought to bring up the photo Clayton and Sarah had given us, the one of the Chinese junk, and the bartender got a cryptic look in his dark, slanted eyes before speaking once more, this time in a whisper.
"That Dark Mistress," he murmured. "Belong to Honorable Ho Fong. His crew have weird look to them, yeah. Like frogs, buddy. Sometimes they go to the islands out east. Very dangerous out there. Many people vanish. You be careful, Ho Fong very dangerous man..."
He would not offer any more information than this, so we resumed looking about the bar and took to enjoying our drinks. That was when we noticed the other patrons in the bar, specifically that Japanese soldier who looked a little too drunk to actually be drunk. Ludwig was the one who confronted him, so I didn't hear much of the conversation, but from what I saw, nothing came of it except for the German being told to mind his own business. Unable to get anything out of the faking drunkard, we left - and walked right into trouble.
You see, the problem with the natives around this area is that they tend towards violent behavior, especially as of late. The country of China is going through a rather curious cultural revolution of sorts, and this has left cities like the crooked Shanghai in even more of an uproar than usual. Riots are apparently commonplace, because we ran into one directly after exiting the Stumbling Tiger. A crowd had gathered around a single man who stood on an overturned wooden crate waving a sickle of some sort, shouting in Chinese. The crowd was becoming more riled by the second, and the local police were beginning to take interest as well.
"Sarah, what are they on about?" I asked, genuinely concerned we'd be in danger. "Do these people normally have sickles on them?"
I got a pale, shocked look from the girl in response, her eyes flicking between me and the sickle. Then she spoke, and I wished she hadn't.
"Supposedly, worker's rights and the deposition of the old warlords," she replied, steadying herself. "They're under a sort of power transition right now, so these things are common, but that's not what worries me. His sickle, Laurent. The Chinese characters on the sickle... That's the mark of that cult that attacked Clayton and I back in Britain, on the Ivory Wind!"
"Well then, we had best not bother him." I turned to look for the police, unaware of how much danger I was in at the time. Sarah grabbed my shoulder, and forced me to look at her, pulling me and the others back into the crowded streets.
"No, you don't understand," she hissed, eyes flicking to the yelling man once more. "That man... that was the same man who was watching me earlier in the hotel, and the same one I swear I just saw in the bar..."
Now it was my turn to be shocked, and as I turned to look at the riot once more, with police swarming it, I saw the man with the sickle step from his impromptu podium, dark eyes filled with malice as they stared directly at me. Then the police opened fire, and chaos burst free. None of us asked questions, we just ran, eventually finding ourselves lost in a sea of people and eyes. So many eyes, watching us, just like those Arabians back in Cairo. What had they called themselves, the Brotherhood? My stomach turned as I realized the danger I was now in. How had this group known? They couldn't have an international network with these savages, could they? Couldn't we trust anyone in this city of neon and smog?
It was Mahmoud who found us a rickshaw, and thankfully this one had a cover to it. We jumped in, asked the driver to take us away from Lantern Street, and tried to lay low with the covered rattan lid moved down. We easily lost the riot, but still, those eyes... watching us. Those hateful eyes, wishing us death. My God, this city is a deathtrap... what on earth have I and Ludwig gotten ourselves into in our quest for answers?
-- Laurent Gauthier, Archaeologist (15 May, 1928)
After the impromptu riot, we managed to get ourselves over to the smashed seaman's club, and found precisely what we expected - a smashed seaman's club. Lucky for us, an old drunkard was able to tell us what had happened. Unlucky for us, the guy spun us a fish-tale about a giant, walking octopus that came from the sea and slammed its webbed paw down onto the club, destroying it. We went looking for the manager, of course, and we did find him - crushed beneath several of the beams, with grotesque greenish slime all over him and various surfaces. Ludwig was more than interested in taking a sample of course, but other than that, it looked like we had hit a dead end. So much for that lead.
Our next stop was Ho Fong's warehouse, and lucky for us, he was in his office and able to speak. We found a polite, squat businessman waiting for us, a slight smile on his face and a thin pipe in his mouth. Mr. Ho was rather pleasant company, and was more than happy to answer us about his recent business over cups of fragrant jasmine tea at a low table. Yes, the Dark Mistress was his ship, but it was a shipping vessel chartered to bring fishermen off to the coasts near the easternmost islands. He did not know Elias, or Brady either. He was a man of faith thoroughly, echoing a faith-based life of his own when Mahmoud mentioned his Muslim background. He spoke of the weather, of our comfort and travel to Shanghai, and of the current events.
So at ease were we that we felt more than comfortable explaining we were trying to find out more information concerning the Order of the Bloated Woman, that cult Sarah had warned us about. That was when his demeanor slightly soured, and he took to asking what interest we would have in a dead cult. He knew nothing about it whatsoever, he said, and that it had been decimated and driven from China some hundreds of years ago. Then he turned the discussion back to our travels, except for one sticking point that disturbed me.
"Mr. McCloud, was it?" Ho Fong flicked the ashes from his pipe into a convenient ashtray not far from him, and his eyes met mine. "I must assume such a crash landing as the one you had necessitated some repair work, yes?"
"Of course," I replied, "The engine was alright but the fuselage was scuppered, same for the wing braces. It's undergoing some work right now."
"Well surely, such a large plane as yours would require a hangar." The businessman poured another glass of tea for Sarah as he spoke. "Where on earth are you keeping such a thing as an entire plane?"
That struck a nerve with me as too probing. Why would he care where The Tinman's Heart was stationed? What was he planning on doing? I glanced to Mahmoud, and could tell he thought the same thing of Ho Fong as I did - the man was too slick, too oily, too cool a customer. Certainly, he was not to be trusted... but could he really be behind an entire cult? No... that seemed too far fetched. There's oily, and then there's evil, and Mr. Ho didn't ping as the latter to me. It did, however, spook me enough to decide to check on my plane before we left the warehouse district, and ask the mechanics to move her to another hangar. I just don't trust Ho Fong, and I think the others probably share my sentiment about him...
Now, up to this point I hadn't put any real stock in these folks crazy tales about onyx-skinned pharaohs coming from nowhere, dragons that could move through walls like they were nothing, and bird-beasts as big as a mansion chasing planes. It all sounded like ish-kabibble to me, and I got the feeling Mahmoud felt much the same way. But that rickshaw driver that took us back to the hotel... Oh man, Laurent didn't even mention him yet, did he? Maybe he was in too much of a state of shock?
He never showed his face to us, for one. It was hidden under one of those conical hats so many of the working class in China's rice paddies wear. He wore bright red robes, red as sunset flame and laced with yellow dragons, and spoke with a deep, rich voice in clear, unbroken English. That was what got me, a poor rickshaw driver speaking in anything other than Pidgin was not only unheard of, but remarkable. He spoke with us candidly, making small talk and asking about our investigations, almost knowing too much about us. When he mentioned Mahmoud's name, though... his full name, we knew something was wrong. And when we got off at the warehouse, we saw precisely what. He turned, and looked to us as he drove off... but he looked to us with nothing, for you see, he was entirely faceless!
We all drew back in horror, and poor Mahmoud, well... he was the most frightened. He tried to rationalize it was a mask, as did I, but nothing seemed to work. Not a single explanation any of us came up with made sense. If the man was masked, how could he have seen to drive us? How could anyone make a mask so smooth and flawless, so perfect, so realistic? It shook our core, and as we turned to look back at the driver, we noticed he had almost vanished without us having ever seen or heard him leave. Call me crazy, but I'm beginning to think that the others' lunacy is rubbing off on me. Either that, or I just saw a ghost or something. Either way, I'm starting to doubt my own beliefs about how right my new comrades are. Maybe they're not so crazy after all.
Maybe, however nuts they sound, they're right.
-- Francis McCloud, Pilot (May 15, 1928)