Slaves Of Xi Ling

*** Thanks to S.C. for the idea of setting a tale in those times and for calling Sax Romer to mind.

Dear Reader!

This is an extract from a document found in a second-hand bookshop in Tottenham Court Road, London. It lay inside an editor’s proof copy of Sax Romer’s unpublished novel, ‘The Whores Of Fu Manchu’. Take it as it stands, there is no way to prove that the events written here ever occurred as written.

The style is, as one would expect, a little Edwardian or Victorian and the author is indeed inclined to use over-purple prose. So have a little patience with the writer, who I believe, is reliving his terrible experiences as his pen writes the words!

My research has showed no certain link between manuscript and Romer, also known by his birth name of Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward. And I have means beyond the normal scholar to find out that which I want to know!

On the other hand the internal evidence suggests a date of between 1911 when he wrote ‘Little Tich’ and the first of the famous ‘Fu Manchu’ books in 1913, ‘The Mystery of Fu Manchu’. I tend to think that this undocumented trip really happened, just at the time when the Manchu Emperors fell and the Warlords came into their power...

You decide... , Irene xxx

*** The Slaves Of Xi Ling. Preface & Disclaimer.

****

I would never admit that I am the under-mentioned person in fictional form. That would not do! It is just not the way I write this type of literature. No I will leave it to you, the reader, to decide. Was that really Adam Willis Farthing Perkins who went to Shanghai and could not decide if he regretted the experience or was it your writer Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward?

In my time I have written a deal of books, some good some perhaps not so good. People have copied my writing style so readily. Like that insufferable Burroughs chap whose twitterings and scratchings of the pen mimic my own carefully crafted words in style if not in my depth of fantasy.

My books have been filmed and shown in cinemas all over the American continent. Best of all I have become modestly rich and a high practitioner of the arts hermetical.

Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie are not the centre of this little fanciful outing, here are their real predecessors Adam Willis Farthing Perkins and the gross American, Garry Mercyfield Virginia the third.

*** Part the First

Arrival on the docks of Shanghai.

Shanghai is a good place to start.

Why?

Because a tale that sinks to the lows that this one does need start in a place that has been described as the City Of Sin! One commentator even wrote that God should be ashamed that he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and left the city of Shanghai to fester as the premier centre of lust and sin in the world!

Even though Shanghai is an oriental sink, at least there is a junction with our world of European chastity and continence, morality and rectitude. Some small common ground exists that allows the contrast between darkness of evil lust, sexual predation and female duplicity to be held up to inspection with a light of virtuous and moral might.

******

Adam Willis Farthing Perkins found himself amongst the sights, sounds and noxious perfumes of the Nanking Road jetty. The steam packet had discharged him, naked of all experience in Shanghai, China.

Lack of languages and low birth in Birmingham left him bereft of ideas of how to earn his way in the world, but he had decided upon a literary career of letters.

So it was, in response to an offer as a sub-editor on the ‘Shanghai Morning, Noon and Evening China Gazetteer’ that he found himself looking for some way to get to the Nanking Road by the old French quarter. Adam turned this way and that, trying to make out the road signs but all the script was that confusing muddle of broken chopsticks that is known more kindly as Chinese characters.

That callow innocent inspection of the district immediately earned him a crowd of Chinese coolies that knew a green mark when they saw one. A gabble of Chinese and pigeon surrounded him with its uproar, bewildering and confusing him, as he tried to push his way through the press of rough clad Asiatics to escape their attention.

Then he was rescued by a big bustling European man in a worn suit who grabbed his hand and pulled Adam from the insistent crowd with a firm grip.

“Garry Mercyfield Virginia the third at your service, sir,” said Adam’s new acquaintance as soon as the temporary crowd had dispersed. As he spoke he brushed down the man that he had saved, with the back of his hand.

“Damn importunate these Orientals! Make a white man ashamed to a member of the same human race!” he continued.

“Well I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” said Adam. “I am new to Shanghai and I am most grateful for your intervention.”

Adam was almost panting with the strain of holding his bag amongst all those who had been so eager to relieve him of its weight and gain a few groats or the bag itself, in the process.

******

So that was how Adam met Garry. A chance meeting at best, and one that at least one would rue in time, but fate has a way of allowing the cards to fall with the faces up and it is to no one’s advantage to moan about fate.

As I said at the beginning, Shanghai is a metropolis that offers the soul, flesh and spirit enough amusement to satisfy the most gluttonous epicure of sex and drugs.

Opium dens litter the town especially the dense area of the Chinese City. Not just opium dens but, brothels, cathouses, Turkish steam baths, bordellos, prostitutes, whores, pimps, paedophiles and panderers fill the narrow streets in a riot of noise, smell and human detritus that spills into the French Quarter and the over the docks like a perverse fungus.

All of this enterprise is driven by the American Dollars, Sterling Pounds, Francs Français and Gold Marks that arrive everyday in the massive trade that sucks in opiates, silk, gold and tea. Yes, it is we Europeans that contrive and feed this centre of every vice.

The Chinese Hong merchants earn millions of the silver dollars, that are China’s currency, and the foreigners, or ‘gwailo’, retire after just a few years smuggling and trading.