Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [208]
Lysandra noticed quickly he was as short as she was, and slender with a little pencil moustache and narrow slanting eyes. Unlike the soldiers his uniform was perfectly tailored; his brass buttons glittered and his jackboots shone and a long cape lined in scarlet was flung across his shoulders. Behind him were half a dozen guards, rifles at the ready, and a young lieutenant who was to act as his interpreter.
The general swaggered into the room, tapping his stick against his palm; he looked at Philip Chen and at the managers bowing their heads respectfully. He stared at the Mandarin’s portrait. And then he looked at the blond blue-eyed child sitting in the blackwood throne behind the taipan’s desk of one of Hong Kong’s greatest companies. The fawning half-smile he had deigned to bestow was replaced with a glance of such fierce anger, Lysandra closed her eyes so she would not have to see it.
He screamed something and the Japanese interpreter repeated it nervously in the flawless English he had acquired when he was studying at Stanford University in California. “The general asks what kind of joke this is that you are playing on the emissary of His Imperial Majesty? He warns you that the reprisals will be severe and instructs you to bring forward the proper taipan of the House of Lai Tsin immediately.”
Lysandra pulled herself to her tallest, she tilted her chin in the air exactly the way her mother, Francie, did when she was angry, and said, “Tell the general I am the taipan of the Lai Tsin hong. It is I who shall read the documents he has brought and decide whether they shall be signed.”
The general’s angry slitted eyes were fixed on her as the interpreter relayed the news and this time she did not look away. She noted with satisfaction that his face turned from scarlet to purple as he tried to decide whether he was being made a fool of.
He looked murderously at Philip Chen, barking still another question at the interpreter. “The general asks your name and why is it the great Lai Tsin hong has a child at its head?”
Lysandra nodded gravely. “Tell the general I am Lysandra Lai Tsin. On his death my Honorable Grandfather, the Mandarin Lai Tsin, left me in sole charge of his empire. You have already met my comprador, Mr. Chen, and these men are my managers. Tell the general that I am the only person with the power to sign his papers, and that I take sole responsibility for my company and my employees.”
The general listened to the interpreter; his glance was still uneasy, he realized that if this was a trick all of Hong Kong would soon know about it; he would be a laughingstock and his loss of face would be so bad as to possibly demand his death.
“Ask the girl where is the chop, the Great Seal of Lai Tsin?” he demanded.
Lysandra took the red sandlewood box inlaid with gold from the drawer and removed the carved jade seal. “Here it is,” she said, laying it on the desk in front of her. “And now will you tell the general that I wish to see his papers at once.”
Her blackwood throne was high and slippery and she wriggled forward, hoping he would not notice her feet failed to reach the floor. The general stared angrily at her; he ordered the interpreter to ask her who her mother was and where she lived? And when he heard the answers he knew she was who she claimed to be.
Burning at having to do so, he clicked his heels and bowed briefly to her before handing her the document, while the interpreter explained that she was turning over her company to be “managed” by His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Hirohito’s emissaries. She must affix her signature and the chop and then her comprador and all her managers must also add their signatures to the document. The assets of the company, including this building and all the vessels currently at anchor in the harbor, would be annexed from this moment.
Lysandra turned again to the portrait of her grandfather. Then she looked back at the arrogant Japanese general and then at Uncle Philip and the other silent men and she