Chapter 1405 - The Man on the Pleasure Boat

The madams and proprietors of the pleasure quarters were notorious for their insatiable greed. As long as enough money was paid, they would hide anyone. The pleasure quarters were also relatively closed little worlds—what was said outside stayed out, what was said inside stayed in. Notorious bandits who spent several hundred taels of silver, hid in a courtesan's boudoir, ate and drank and made merry for months without stepping outside, waiting for the authorities to relax their vigilance before escaping—such cases were too numerous to count.

Zhao Tong agreed with his thinking: according to intelligence obtained from further interrogation of Jia Le, the letters sent from Hao Yuan recently all carried a faint scent of face powder.

The scent of face powder was faint, but as a young woman with awakening romantic feelings, she was very sensitive to it.

Although the letters had all been burned, under the relentless pressure of the round-the-clock relay interrogations, Jia Le had been forced to recall many details. For example, these letters were all written on high-quality stationery—not the sort used by ordinary literati, but items from a lady's boudoir. Nor did the ink carry the stench of the cheap, smelly ink Hao Yuan had previously used for bookkeeping.

Clearly, the place where Hao Yuan was hiding had a woman, and this woman's residence was not a poor place. If he was hiding in the pleasure quarters, that would match these details.

Zhuang Haoren, as a "lowlife hanger-on" who had long frequented the pleasure quarters, was very familiar with all the behind-the-scenes dealings there. Thus, from the very beginning of the manhunt for Hao Yuan and the others, Zhuang Haoren had focused all his attention on the pleasure quarters. Having been a hanger-on, he knew the faces of people in the pleasure quarters inside and outside Hangzhou city well. With men at his command and money at his disposal, he quickly brought the pleasure quarters in the city and around West Lake under surveillance.

Yet Hao Yuan was not hiding in the pleasure quarters—not only was he himself not there, but none of his subordinates were hiding there either. Although there were a few suspicious individuals hiding in the pleasure quarters, none of them were the targets they sought.

This put great pressure on Zhuang Haoren—having attached himself to Master Zhao, he had yet to render any service. Let alone being unable to answer to Master Zhao Tong of the Office of Sticky Poles, even within the Black Dragon Society itself, he would be unable to command respect as its leader.

He racked his brains thinking and thinking. Could his deduction have been wrong? He was someone who had spent years in the underworld of Hangzhou city, after all, and understood the world of urban foxes and rats very well. After pondering painfully for several days, he finally discovered a blind spot he had overlooked: the pleasure boats on West Lake.

Though West Lake was outside the city, in fact it was separated from the city by only a wall, and traffic between inside and outside was extremely convenient. The pleasure boats on West Lake had brisk business; every day they sent people in and out of the city gates, coming and going frequently, with heavy flows of people and goods. With just a few informants posted at the city gates to keep watch, they might not detect anything unusual.

If Hao Yuan was hiding on a pleasure boat, drifting amid this scenery of lake and mountains—never mind that being on the water would make it hard to track him, even if he were discovered, capture would not be easy. Once on shore, the hills around West Lake were right there; hide anywhere, and without several hundred men to search the mountains, one would never find a trace.

However, Zhuang Haoren was not entirely confident about this either: although the pleasure boats on West Lake were also a form of the prostitution trade, the people in this business were different from those in the pleasure quarters inside and outside Hangzhou city. The practitioners were mostly Nine-Surname Boat People.

The Nine-Surname Boat People were a pariah class in the Great Ming, an even more closed small community. As long as they paid their taxes on time, the government did not concern itself with their internal affairs. Thus, the outside world knew very little about their inner workings.

Although the Nine-Surname Boat People engaged in lowly trades and would occasionally ask passing guests on the river whether they preferred "wonton noodles or cleaver noodles," they rarely sheltered people outside their group. For them, the distinction between "inside" and "outside" was crystal clear—to "go through fire and water" for an outsider and risk "official trouble" was, in Zhuang Haoren's view, very hard to imagine.

But if it was indeed the Nine-Surname Boat People sheltering Hao Yuan, then Zhuang Haoren would be at his wit's end. No matter how wide his reach, he had no means to extract any useful information from the Nine-Surname Boat People.

Unable to think of any clever stratagem, Zhuang Haoren resorted to the clumsy method: he posted men at the various pleasure-boat wharves around West Lake to watch day and night for any unusual activity.

After seven or eight days of continuous surveillance, he finally discovered something unusual. Someone reported that one pleasure boat was behaving strangely: every morning it moored in the Bai Causeway area and sent people ashore to make purchases. Then it drifted on the lake. At dusk, when all the other boats began returning to their berths, it would set sail toward the Yanggong Causeway area. At nightfall, it would moor by the Yanggong Causeway.

Although the Yanggong Causeway area was not exactly a wilderness, apart from the villas of wealthy families, there were only temples and nunneries—very secluded. This pleasure boat was not a private vessel of some wealthy family; such behavior was suspicious.

Zhuang Haoren immediately sent people to investigate the particulars of this pleasure boat. He learned that the boat was called "Fragrant Drizzle Vessel" and belonged to a madam named Mei Niang. Ordinarily, at night or when there was no business, it would moor outside the Yongjin Gate.

"What luck—I know this boat!" Zhuang Haoren exclaimed when he heard his subordinate's report. He recalled that Master Zhao had chartered this boat many times to entertain guests. But Master Zhao was not much interested in such frivolities, and in the past six months the manor's affairs had been so numerous that he had stopped calling for the boat.

Zhuang Haoren had heard that Master Zhao had once been quite interested in one of Mei Niang's "daughters," Mei Yan'er, but then for some reason had cooled down—so much so that Mei Niang had come to the manor several times to pay her respects, hoping to find out where exactly she had offended Master Zhao that he had "broken off relations." In the traditional business world, this was a very serious matter.

"This Master Zhao of ours—sometimes terrifyingly shrewd, sometimes utterly clueless about how to deal with people. Really can't figure him out..." Zhuang Haoren thought, and decided to first investigate the boat thoroughly.

He spent money to bribe several small sampans that sold goods on West Lake to surveil the "Fragrant Drizzle Vessel." Then he personally went to the vicinity of the Bai Causeway to watch what items the people from the pleasure boat bought when they came ashore each day.

Although the people on the sampans had not spotted any men moving about on the pleasure boat, after several days of surveillance, Zhuang Haoren was quite confident—apart from the boatmen and the male servants, the pleasure boat was hiding other men!

The "Fragrant Drizzle Vessel" had been doing business here for many years; how many people were on the boat, how many men and women, how many adults and children—all this was clear and easily found out. Their daily food expenses, how much rice they consumed—there was a set amount. The pleasure boat was in the entertainment business, not a cargo vessel; the fewer extraneous items on board, the better. Ingredients were bought fresh daily; even everyday necessities like rice, salt, and charcoal were not stored in quantity.

Zhuang Haoren shadowed them for several days and investigated the shops where they bought ingredients and sundries. He obtained detailed purchase quantities, and quickly analyzed that in recent days, more people were eating on the "Fragrant Drizzle Vessel"!

There had been no additions to the crew recently, nor was any guest chartering the boat—if there were guests, there would inevitably be purchases of fine, high-quality ingredients for banquet preparations, not to mention good wine.

Zhuang Haoren felt this was a lead. After further investigation, he became even more certain, and went to report to Zhao Tong.

"...Besides the provisions, I spent money to bribe an old woman who does odd jobs on shore for them and washes their clothes. According to her, the laundry delivered recently seems to include more men's clothing."

"What kind of men's clothing?"

"That's just the strange part." Zhuang Haoren said with relish. "Apart from two boatmen, the boat only has Madam Mei Niang, her two people, and one maidservant who does rough work and runs errands. The extra men's clothing is definitely not the sort the boatmen wear—it's the kind of cheap silk long gowns worn by senior shop clerks or private-school teachers... As Your Honor knows, such people can't afford to frequent pleasure boats." Then Zhuang Haoren produced a slip of paper. "I asked about the approximate sizes of the long gowns and trousers—they're the kind Hao Yuan could wear!"

Zhao Tong nodded. Based on Zhuang Haoren's investigation, it could more or less be confirmed that the "Fragrant Drizzle Vessel" was hiding a man of similar build to Hao Yuan. But whether it was really him was still hard to say; it would be best to verify.

"Should we send someone to call for the boat and probe a little...?" Zhuang Haoren suggested.

"No, that would alert the quarry." Zhao Tong shook his head. He thought for a moment. "Can you get someone from the boat and have them look at the portrait?"

"I'll figure something out." Zhuang Haoren hastily patted his chest.

"We've been posting portraits at all the city gates to catch Hao Yuan for quite some time now. The people on that boat have probably already seen them. If that man really is Hao Yuan, the people on the boat must have received considerable benefits from him..."

"I understand—if soft tactics don't work, we'll use hard ones..."

"Try not to alert the quarry." Zhao Tong said. "If he's willing to offer benefits, so are we. I'll send a few more people to work with you."

For this purpose, he had been squatting at this pleasure-boat wharf for several hours already—the "Fragrant Drizzle Vessel" came to moor here every two or three days recently, letting the maidservant ashore to deliver laundry and purchase provisions.

He was bored and idle when suddenly a vendor on the Bai Causeway waved his fan. Zhuang Haoren immediately perked up—the pleasure boat was coming!

Sure enough, the "Fragrant Drizzle Vessel" was slowly approaching across the lake. A boatman stood at the bow, lightly poling; the pleasure boat swayed gently as it drew toward the wharf. From the outside, there was nothing unusual about the boat.

The boat pulled up to the wharf. As soon as the gangplank was set, a maidservant in a blue-gray dress came off the boat, carrying a large covered rattan basket on her arm. She looked to be about thirty-seven or thirty-eight, her hair loosely pinned in a knot with a coral hairpin. Though her bloom had faded, her gestures and smiles still retained traces of her former allure. Zhuang Haoren knew she had originally been a woman of the pleasure-boat trade; now, grown old and without savings, she could only work as a maidservant on the boats to get by.

Zhuang Haoren tilted his head, signaling to the Office of Sticky Poles men on shore: target has appeared. Several Office men nodded imperceptibly and silently followed.

To guard against anyone nearby watching and leaking the news, although the area had already been quietly cleared beforehand, the Office men still waited until she had dropped off the laundry and was heading into the city before clapping a cloth over her nose and mouth and bundling her directly into a small sedan chair, which headed into the city.