Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [147]
A thin mist was rolling in from the ocean as they approached the docks and Ollie sniffed it eagerly, like a sailor scenting the wind. “You know what, Philip,” he said as they pushed open the shabby wooden door, “one day I’m gonna command my own ship. It’ll be the flagship of our fleet and we’ll call it the Mandarin.”
Philip nodded. “If that is what you wish, Little Brother. I myself will remain in Hong Kong and fill your ships with cargo.”
“When I was just a kid,” Ollie added, “I wanted to be a pirate, but the Mandarin said it was not an honorable profession.” He grinned. “I guess it wasn’t, but it sure sounded fun.”
The warehouse had grown from the first small shed Lai Tsin had bought years ago to a sprawling complex of offices and storage, but it was still just a group of unpretentious tin-roofed wooden buildings on the waterfront, and no one would have suspected it was the headquarters of a multimillion-dollar company, competing successfully for the trade routes of the world.
As usual, Lai Tsin was in his office. He wore the long, plain, dark-blue silk robe he always wore and the simply furnished room was a model of neatness. His plain teak-wood desk held his old wooden abacus and a Chinese inkpad and brushes, as well as a Western-style inkstand and pens. In front of him was a neatly squared-off pile of papers and a large red ledger. He looked up as the boys knocked, bidding them to enter.
Philip bowed and Ollie followed suit. He could never remember the Mandarin ever embracing him, even when he was little. Things were always Chinese style with formal rituals and bows, but the Mandarin’s eyes lit up when he saw him and he knew he was pleased. “Welcome, Ollie,” he said in Chinese. “I hope the pleasure I am gaining from your presence does not mean that you are neglecting your homework?”
Ollie grinned. Shaking his blond hair out of his eyes, he replied, in the same language, “No, sir. I promised Mom I’d do it later.”
The Mandarin nodded. “Then since you are here I will set you a little task.” He handed him the abacus, instructing him to check the columns on the last page of the ledger. Ollie smiled willingly. The columns were written in Chinese and he knew the Mandarin wanted to test his command of the written language. He had been learning Chinese since he was five years old and was almost as proficient at speaking Mandarin and Cantonese as he was English, but he still had trouble with the written characters. He took the ledger and followed Philip to his own tiny annex next door to begin his task.
Half an hour later a ship hooted somewhere in the fogbound bay and he glanced at the window, startled as he glimpsed a face peering in. Dropping his pencil he jumped up and ran to look, but no one was there.
“What is it?” Philip asked, following his gaze.
“Oh, nothing,” Ollie said uneasily, sinking back into his chair. “I just thought I saw someone at the window, but I guess I was wrong.”
Philip went back to his work without comment and Ollie completed his task and then took the ledger back to the Mandarin. He ran an expert eye rapidly down the column of figures and then pointed out his one small mistake. “Your Chinese improves, Ollie,” he told him with a smile. “But your mother is waiting and you must keep your promise.”
Ollie walked from the offices into the tall, raftered warehouse, wandering the narrow aisles breathing in the aromas of the fresh coffee beans piled in hessian sacks and the tea whose fragrance permeated even the wooden chests used to store it. He smelled the fresh peppercorns and the cinnamon, the ginger and cloves, dreaming of the far-off foreign countries they came from and where one day he would sail in his ship as commander of the Lai Tsin fleet. The warehouse was his favorite place, because if he closed his eyes he could almost believe he was sailing the Indian Ocean or the Andaman Sea, in the lee of some exotic island