Free Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences by Pip Ballantine Page A

past the flickering gaslights that line the corridor.
    The hold door is open. The screaming has been replaced by ominous silence. I draw my pistol, though firing it could potentially light this place up like a torch. Perhaps the threat of that will be enough to stop whatever is happening.
    I creep down the stairs. There’s a light shimmering like the moon on water, and for a moment I’m filled with the terrible certainty that the hull has been breached and the ship is sinking. My stomach knots in that familiar ache. I’ve not felt this since Peking. I had hoped not to feel it again until we were at least docked.
    I try to keep silent, but among ghosts, the merest breath is a betrayal of the living.
    The woman I saw back in the Old Summer Palace glares at me. She is kneeling over someone. A quick glance tells me he’s already dead.
    “What are you doing?” I say, striding boldly toward her. “Did you kill this man?”
    She is shaking her head softly as if she doesn’t understand, but I know she must. I can tell by her eyes that she recognizes my expression.
    “I don’t know why you’ve followed me, but I will banish you at the first opportunity, I swear it.”
    She understands that, too, because her lips curve in a wicked smile.
    “Try it,” she says in halting English.
    She dissolves into fog.
    The ship’s crew rushes downstairs as I’m approaching the body. It’s a man—one of the crewmembers I’d seen helping load heavy crates when I’d first come on board. His throat is torn out. The large muscles of his arms have been gnawed on.
    A ghost couldn’t possibly have done this. But a tiger or a leopard…
    I’ve seen the damage those creatures can do.
    Three sailors gape in horror. I hear the cabin boy weep into another man’s shoulder.
    “Who would do such a thing?” one of them asks me.
    “Not who,” I say, standing. “What.”
    One of the men has the good sense to come and cover the corpse with a sheet. “What do you mean?” he asks.
    “Gentlemen,” I say, “do you happen to know if anyone has smuggled a leopard on board?”
    I am as incredulous at the words coming out of my mouth as they are.
    “There were lots of large crates packed up in Tianjin. I reckon one could have been smuggled in then,” one sailor says.
    “I suggest you have someone inspect those crates then. Its secret lair is likely to be in one of them.”
    “How do you know so much?” the man who covered the corpse asks.
    “I’ve seen stranger things than you can possibly dream in the wildlands of Asia. I’m telling you—nothing but a cat could do this.”
    They don’t dispute me again.
    “I’ll tell the captain,” one of them growls.
    I nod. “I urge everyone to keep their doors locked,” I say. “Especially at night.” I won’t say anything about the ghost following me. She is mine and I must deal with her in my own way. Any credibility I’ve built just now would be destroyed in an instant if I so much as hinted at anything that smacks of Spiritualism.
    It’s only when I get back to my room that I realise I’d forgotten to search the hold for my crates so I could begin cataloguing them, starting with the ginger jar.
    The murdered man is buried at sea very quietly, so as not to arouse passenger fears on board. I am dubious that this will be the last killing. Once a tiger or leopard develops a taste for human flesh, it can never be sated by anything else.
    I conduct my own investigation, sweeping the ship from stem to stern, but there are places I can’t go.
    When I try to go into the hold, a burly-looking boatswain is standing at the door, his arms crossed over his chest. He shakes his head at me, defying me to protest.
    “But I just need…”
    One eyebrow rises.
    I suppose it’s time to talk with the captain.
    I’ve been avoiding it because the captain is an old warhorse, the sort who will wag his jaw until your ears hurt. He’ll go on about his own bravery and expect you to corroborate until the sun