Read Return of the Emerald Skull for Free Online Page A

brushed past sooty chimneys at every opportunity, rolled across countless dusty rooftops and dined carelessly on wharfman's stew. Soon I had a suitably impressive bundle of laundry – and I knew just where to deliver it.
    Rising early three days later, I climbed out of my attic window and shinned up onto theroof, eager to renew my acquaintance with the beautiful young laundress.
    A watery, pale sun shone down through an early morning haze, and as I glanced up, I suddenly remembered the remarkable occurrence PB had been talking about excitedly all year. At the end of the summer there was to be an eclipse of the sun.
    ‘A full eclipse, Barnaby,’ he'd informed me, his eyes twinkling. ‘The first for ninety-eight years! Think about it, my boy. The sun completely extinguished. Day turned to night!’
    Gazing up at the sun that morning, I realized that Mei Ling had banished any thought of the eclipse from my head. And just about every other thought, for that matter. As I crossed the rooftops, I could hear the familiar cries of the street vendors and market spielers plying their trade on the roads below.
    ‘What do you lack? What do you lack?’the words echoed up through the smoky air.
    ‘Fresh milk by the ladle! Penny a dip!’ ‘Orchard apples, ripe and cheap!’ I was above the corner of Pettigrew Street and Leinster Lane when I heard the cry I'd been listening out for. Leaping from the gutter I was perched upon, down to the jutting window ledge below me, I performed a move the great Tom Flint had taught me a few years earlier – the Flying Fox, it was called; a tricky manoeuvre which involved a flagpole, an unbuttoned coat and a steady nerve. Seconds later, I landed on the pavement beside a portly pieman, a tray of steaming pies and pasties around his neck.
    ‘Two Stover's Specials,’ I said, and dropped a couple of coppers into his outstretched hand.
    Back up on the rooftops, I paused briefly at the old Guildhall and surveyed the horizonbefore setting off once more. The bell at the top of the Corn Exchange was chiming seven o'clock as I crossed Bowery Road, which marked the northernmost boundary to Chinatown. Fifty yards ahead was the green roof of the Lotus Blossom Laundry, its glazed tiles glistening with raindrops from the previous night's downpour.
    The architecture of the building had been borrowed from the orient. Tall whitewashed walls were topped with a mansard roof, upswept eaves and undulating gables. Adjusting the bulging sack of laundry strapped to my back, I made my way across the rooftop, and was about to select a drainpipe for my descent when a mullioned window beneath the eaves opened and Mei Ling's head poked out.
    ‘Barnaby Grimes,’ she called over to me, her face breaking into a smile. ‘I've been expecting you. The water is just coming to the boil.’
    Expecting me? I wondered. Water coming to the boil? How on earth could she have known I would visit at that moment?
    My confusion must have shown on my face, for the next moment Mei Ling broke into a peal of laughter. ‘Come in, come in,’ she said. ‘And bring that bundle of laundry with you.’
    I jumped across the gap between the two buildings and swung down over the eaves onto the sill of Mei Ling's window. She stepped aside and motioned for me to enter. I took off my coalstack hat, clicked it flat and entered a richly furnished salon.
    The floor was of dark mahogany with intricate inlays of pale silver birch, and strewn with finely woven mats of seagrass. The walls were painted in white, red and gold, with emerald-green dragons writhing across their surface, and the huge attic room was divided into smaller sections with the aid of tall, double-hinged screens. Waist-highvases, each one elegantly painted, stood on either side of the window and at the top of the stairs on black varnished pedestals, their glazed gold and turquoise surfaces glowing in the light cast by the pink and orange paper lanterns overhead.

    I jumped across the gap