"Confess that you killed this Ito!"

"Yes, I confess."

"Then, sign the confession."

With the triumphant air of a sportsman who has landed his fish after a long and bitter struggle, the procurator held out a sheet of paper prepared beforehand, on which something was written in j.a.panese characters.

Asako tried to move towards the desk that she might write her name; but this time, her legs gave way altogether. The warder caught her by the neck of her kimono, and shook her as a terrier shakes a rat. But the body remained limp. He twisted her arm behind her with a savage wrench. His victim groaned with pain, but spoke no distinguishable word. Then he laid her out on the benches, and felt her chest.

"The body is very hot," he said; "perhaps she is indeed sick."

"Obstinate," grunted the procurator; "I am certain that she is guilty.

Are you not?" he added, addressing the clerk.

The clerk was busy filling up some of the blanks in the back evidence, extemporising where he could not remember.

"a.s.suredly," he said, "the opinion of the procurator is always correct."

However, the doctor was summoned. He p.r.o.nounced that the patient was in a high fever, and must at once be removed to the infirmary.

So the preliminary examination of Asako Fujinami came to an abrupt end.

CHAPTER XXVII

LADY BRANDAN

_Haru no hi no Nagaki omoi wa Wasureji wo, Hito no kokoro ni Aki ya tatsuramu._

The long thoughts Of the spring days Will never be forgotten Even when autumn comes To the hearts of the people.

The low-flying clouds of hallucination had fallen so close to Asako's brain, that her thoughts seemed to be caught up into the dizzy whirlwind and to be skimming around and round the world at the speed of an express aeroplane. Like a clock whose regulation is out of order, the hour-hand of her life seemed to be racing the minute-hand, and the minute-hand to be covering the face of the dial in sixty seconds or less, returning incessantly to the same well-known figures, pausing awhile, then jerking away again at an insane rate. From time to time the haze over the mind began to clear; and Asako seemed to look down upon the scene around her from a great height. There was a long room, so long that she could not see the end of it, and rows of narrow beds, and nurses, dressed in white with high caps like bishops'

mitres, who appeared and disappeared. Sometimes they would speak to her and she would answer. But she did not know what they said, nor what she said to them.

A gentle j.a.panese lady with a very long, pock-marked face, sat on her bed and talked to her in English. Asako noticed that the nurses and doctors were most deferential to this lady; and that, after her departure, she was treated much more kindly than before. A name kept peeping out of her memory, like a shy lizard out of its hole; but the moment her brain tried to grab at it, it slipped back again into oblivion.

Two English ladies called together, one older and one younger. They talked about Geoffrey. Geoffrey was one of the roman figures on the clock dial of her mind. They said good things about Geoffrey; but she could not remember what they were.

One day, the j.a.panese lady with the marked face and one of the nurses helped her to get out of bed. Her legs were trembling, and her feet were sorely plagued by pins and needles; but she held together somehow. Together they dressed her. The lady wrapped a big fur cloak round her; and with a supporter on either side she was led into the open air, where a beautiful motor-car was waiting. There was a crowd gathered round it. But the police kept them back. As Asako stepped in, she heard the click of cameras.

"Asa Chan," said the lady, "don't you remember me? I am Countess Saito."

Of course, Asako remembered now--a spring morning with Geoffrey and the little dwarf trees.

The notoriety of the Ito murder case did Asako a good turn. Her friends in j.a.pan had forgotten her. They had imagined that she had returned to England with Geoffrey. Reggie Forsyth, who alone knew the details of her position, had thrown up his secretaryship the day that war was declared, and had gone home to join the army.

The morning papers of January 3rd, with their high-flown account of the mysterious house by the river-side and the j.a.panese lady who could talk no j.a.panese, brought an unexpected shock to acquaintances of the Barringtons, and especially to Lady Cynthia Cairns and to Countess Saito. These ladies both made inquiries, and learned that Asako was lying dangerously ill in the prison infirmary. A few days later, when Tanaka was arrested and had made a full confession of the crime, Count Saito, who knew how suspects fare at the hands of a zealous procurator, called in person on the Minister of Justice, and secured Asako's speedy liberation.

"This girl is a valuable a.s.set to our country," he had explained to the Minister. "She is married to an Englishman, who will one day be a peer in England. This was a marriage of political importance. It was a proof of the equal civilisation of our j.a.pan with the great countries of Europe. It is most important that this Asako should be sent back to England as soon as possible, and that she should speak good things about j.a.pan."

So Asako was released from the procurator's clutches; and she was given a charming little bedroom of her own in the European wing of the Saito mansion. The house stood on a high hill; and Asako, seated at the window, could watch the multiplex activity of the streets below, the jolting tramcars, the wagons, the barrows and the rickshaws. To the left was a labyrinth of little houses of clean white wood, bright and new, like toys, with toy evergreens and pine-trees bursting out of their narrow gardens. This was a _geisha_ quarter, whence the sound of _samisen_ music and quavering songs resounded all day long. To the right was a big grey-boarded primary school, which, with the regular movement of tides, sucked in and belched out its flood of blue-cloaked boys and magenta-skirted maidens.

Count and Countess Saito, despite their immense wealth and their political importance, were simple, unostentatious people, who seemed to devote most of their thoughts to their children, their garden, their dwarf trees, and their breed of c.o.c.ker spaniels. They took their social duties lightly, though their home was a Mecca for needy relatives on the search for jobs. They gave generously; they entertained hospitably. Good-humour ruled the household; for husband and wife were old partners and devoted friends.

Count Saito brought his nephew and secretary, a most agreeable young man, to see Asako. The Count said,--

"Asa Chan, I want you to tell Mr. Sakabe all about the Fujinami house and the way of life there."

So Asako told her story to this interested listener. Fortunately, perhaps, she could not read the j.a.panese newspapers; for most of her adventures reappeared in the daily issues almost word for word. From behind the scenes, Count Saito was directing the course of the famous trial which had come to be known as the Fujinami Affair. For the Count had certain political scores of his own to pay off; and Asako proved to be a G.o.dsend.

Tanaka was tried for murder; but it was established that he had killed Ito in defending his mistress's honour; and the court let him off with a year's hard labour. But the great Fujinami bribery case which developed out of the murder trial, ruined a Cabinet Minister, a local governor, and a host of minor officials. It reacted on the Yoshiwara regulations. The notoriety of the case has gone far towards putting an end to public processions of _oiran_, and to the display of prost.i.tutes in the windows of their houses. Indeed, it is probably only a question of time for the great pleasure quarters to be closed down, and for vice to be driven into secrecy. Mr. Fujinami Gentaro was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for causing bribes to be distributed.

Meanwhile Countess Saito had been in correspondence with Lady Everington in England. On one bright March morning, she came into Asako's room with a small flowerpot in her hands.

"See, Asa Chan," she said in her strange hoa.r.s.e voice, "the first flower of the New Year, the plum-blossom. It is the flower of hope and patience. It blooms when the snow is still on the ground, and before it has any green leaves to protect it."

"It smells sweet," said Asako.

Her hostess quoted the famous poem of the exiled j.a.panese statesman, Sukawara no Michizane,--

"When the East wind blows, Send your perfume to me, Flower of the plum; Even if your master is absent, Do not forget the spring."

"Asako dear," Countess Saito continued, "would you like to go to England?"

Asako's heart leaped.

"Oh yes!" she answered gladly.

Her hostess sighed reproachfully. She had tried to make life so agreeable for her little visitor; yet from the tone of her voice it was clear that j.a.pan would never be home for her.

"Marchioness Samejima and I," continued the j.a.panese lady, "have been arranging for a party of about twenty-five Red Cross nurses to visit England and France. They are all very good, clever girls from n.o.ble families. We wish to show sympathy of j.a.pan for the poor soldiers who are suffering so much; and we wish to teach our girls true facts about war and how to manage a hospital in war-time. We thought you might like to go as guide and interpreter."

It needed no words to show how joyfully Asako accepted this proposal.

Besides, she had heard from Geoffrey. A letter had arrived thanking her for her Christmas gift.

"Little darling Asako," her husband had written, "It was so sweet of you and so like you to think of me at Christmas time. I hope that you are very happy and having a jolly good time. It is very rotten in England just now with the war going on. It had broken out before I reached home; and I joined up at once with my old regiment. We have had a very lively time. About half of my brother officers have been killed; and I am a colonel now. Also, incidentally, I have become Lord Brandan. My father died at the end of last year. Poor old father! This war is a ghastly business; but we have got them beat now. I shall be sorry in a way when it is over; for it gives me plenty to do and to think about. Reggie Forsyth is with his regiment in Egypt. Lady Everington is writing to you. I am in the north of France, and doing quite a lot of _parley-voo_. Is there any chance of your coming to England? G.o.d bless you, Asako darling. Write to me soon.

"Your loving Geoffrey."

With this letter folded near her heart, Asako was hardly in a mood to admire plum-blossoms. It was with difficulty that she could summon sufficient attention for give the little Saito children their daily lessons in English and French.

Long rides in the motor-car through the reviving country-side to the splendid gorge of Miyanos.h.i.ta or to the beaches of Oiso, where Count Saito had his summer villa, long days of play with the children in the hanging garden, the fascinating companionship of the dwarf trees and the black spaniels, and the welcome absence of espionage and innuendo, had soon restored Asako to health again.

"Little Asa Chan," Count Saito said one day, beckoning his guest to sit down beside him in the sunlight on the terrace, "you will be happy to go back to England?"