Free Shadow Play by Katherine Sutcliffe Page B

the bazaar.
    Ducking around a corner, he dragged Sarah up against him, shoved her back against a wall of reeking hemp and chopped cane, and slapped his hand over her mouth as she attempted to speak. He peered cautiously back the way they had come. "Shit," he said, and without bothering to say another word, spun on his heels and struck out once more, ignoring Sarah's cry of dismay as he forced her down one corridor after another.
    Like a maze, each row of stalls melded into another. The faces of the vendors all looked alike, with features worn by sun and heat and hunger, no more interested in why they were running for their lives than if they were beggars pleading for handouts.
    The alleyways had grown foul with human and animal refuse, the fumes rising with those of rotting fruit to draw flies, rats, and dogs that bared their teeth and raised their hackles if approached too closely.
    But it was in the Oriental heart of the bazaar that the air grew the thickest. Here run-down tenements and stalls, stacked one on top of the other and reached only by bamboo ladders blocked out the sunlight completely. Added to the putrid dampness were the cloying odor of burning hashish and the sweet, acrid bite of vaporized opium. The merchandise in Little China was expensive. Men and women sold their bodies for high prices and their narcotics for a fortune.
    Of course, Morgan had seen it all before, had been known to wander Little China's dimly lit streets on occasion.
    Now, finding a deserted shanty, he cast a watchful glimpse over his companion's head, then shoved Sarah in- side. He knew from experience that you did not dally along Pleasure Alley, at least not if you valued your life.
    Only then did he look at Sarah.
    Her neat chignon had long since collapsed. Her hair, honey-gold in the gloominess, tumbled over her shoulders, several loose strands clinging to her moist cheeks and neck. Her eyes, wide with fear, were fixed on the stall directly across from them. A man stood there, totally nude, his dark eyes mere slits in his face, his waist-length black hair braided in a rope that hung over one shoulder. His hand curved around his erection as he waved, laughed^ and said, "You come here, yes?"
    Morgan took Sarah's face in one hand and turned it away, pressed her head against his shoulder, and whispered, "I'm sorry."
    "You!" the Chinaman called. "You want come see me?"
    "No," Morgan called. "The lady is mine."
    "Not lady I want. You! You come see me, yes? I give you much pleasure, mister. You wait and see."
    A woman's catcall joined the voice of the Chinaman, then another and another, until the entire alleyway was alive with men and women crying out their wares.
    "This—this is disgusting!" Sarah finally managed, her voice quavering between horror and fury.
    "You can thank your own countrymen for it," Morgan told her. "Seems the Orientals were brought over by a lot of rich Brits who weren't finding their wives entertaining enough and thought the Indians too ignorant in the ways of pleasure."
    Her head came up and she glared at him with blazing eyes. "My father would never have allowed such heinous behavior!"
    ' 'Chere, your father was probably one of their best patrons."
    She might have clawed his face had he not caught her hands and shoved her back against the wall of the illlit shanty. The structure trembled with their impact. "You filthy animal!" she cried. "How dare you slur my father with your nasty, false innuendos!"
    He smiled at her coldly. "What's so nasty about it? Hmm? Ever think that it might be those small-minded sentiments that are driving your men, and occasionally women, to wander these alleys in search of companionship?"
    "It's degenerate!"
    "How do you know unless you've tried it?"
    "Never! Now I demand that you get me out of this wretched place before your friends murder us both."
    "Saucy little thing, aren't you, love?"
    She shook her head in disbelief.' 'There are men out there trying to kill us and you don't seem to give