The Call of the Thunder Dragon by Michael J Wormald

this triggered a nose bleed.
    He snapped at them sending them
away to wash and clean up before commencing their search for Okura.
Okura had been a good agent. His language skills were good. He had
the ability to blend in. Haga-Jin supposed that Okura had gone off
in search of a brothel and was late returning, that had happened
before.
    Haga-Jin’s feet were tapping with
impatience when Takechi returned, rushing with comb in one hand and
hat in the other. Marihito followed breathing hard, neither took
the time for breakfast and were puffing like pair of pigs as they
came running down the stairs.
    Furious Haga-Jin sent Marihito to
the shoreline to find Captain Soujiro. Takechi, he sent to make
enquiries around the brothels in the town.
    Mid-morning the staff tried to
improve Haga-Jin’s temper by bringing him tea and cake. He sat
watching the hotel door while drinking the tea, expecting Okura to
return at any moment. Eventually he became even more angry. No one
came to take away the tea pots. Remains of the cakes that he
detested sat there crushed on the plate.
    “You!” He shouted to a passing
chamber maid. “Take this away!”
    The girl bowed as she passed,
startled by his voice, rushing intent on her current errand, only
to double back to take the tray.
    “Insolence!” Haga-Jin shouted.
“Lazy insolence! Don’t you dare leave dirty pots in my sight!”
    The girl bowed away apologising.
She took the tray into the back rooms. Behind a large desk on a
raised platform sat the hotel Manageress.
    “Ji!” Shouted the woman. Niece,
her mother’s sister’s daughter. ‘Ji,’ she shouted or ‘Sang’, she
called out directing the nieces and nephews who were either
chambermaids or porters. ‘Jai’ and ‘Neui’, she called to the
kitchen, where her sons were the chiefs or to the bathhouse where
her daughters were attendant amah or waitresses. From behind the
desk she ran the hotel. The desk acted as a front to the room,
where a bed and stove completed her living space. From here she
reigned over all. The mama-San was called Song.
    She sucked on a cigarette,
flicking away the ash. “Ji, where’s those tea things from?” She
demanded, pushing a loose hair back into her curlers.
    Her niece ducked her head.
“Please from the strange business man, the one who said he was from
Shanghai! He’s still out there waiting! I’m sure he’s waiting for
someone?” She begged.
    Pun Song slid out from the behind
the desk taking a long drag on the cigarette before she mashed it
into the full ashtray. She pulled on a housecoat and swept her hair
behind the ears.
    “Ji, get Wei, - he was the one
working last night,” Song called out urgently. “Go, go take away
the pots, hurry!”
    The back rooms of the hotel were
already in an uproar, they had found a body in the fire pits under
the water boiler that supplied the big wooden bath tubs. How he’d
stumbled there, they didn’t know. Only the remains of his tattered
over coat was left to be pulled out of the fire. The coat pocket
contained an unusual pocket watch. A square Seiko pocket watch.
    Song was used to strange
occurrences at the hotel. People were strange she deduced.
Travellers coming hundreds of miles to have tragedies, calamities
or misfortunes in her hotel. For instance the pilot and girl from
Bhutan. Their trouble, bed and board more-than paid for in advance
with gold.
    Song would have been tempted to
take the pilot in herself; he was a big strong looking Englishman.
The girl from Bhutan was lucky to find him, she thought jealously.
However, Song also was idealistic at heart, perhaps because she’d
seen so many couples coming together, or coming apart, at her
hotel. Zam was a good strong girl and showed how much she thought
of the pilot. Song hoped they would be happy at her hotel, after
all, that was her aim.
    Wei, the hotel clerk, appeared.
“Yes, gu-ma? The police have arrived and gone straight around the
back to the boilers.”
    Song rolled her eyes. How