Summary
A crimson-sailed steamer slices through a cobalt Pacific, ferrying exiled aristocrat Hung Chin Chung from fragrant Honolulu plumeria to the gallows-scented mists of Imperial China—until Henry Drew, American titan of sugar and steel, purchases the philosopher’s remaining breaths like a sack of rice, chaining him to twenty velvet-and-iron years of servitude. Rage ferments beneath silken cuffs; each sunset drips molten indignity onto the ledger of his life. On the eve of emancipation the same steamer, now a floating powder-keg of tuxedos and secrets, bears Drew, his restless wife, stenographer Mary-Will Tellfair, and lovelorn Ralph Coolidge toward a fog-choked San Francisco. A jade-handled dagger, once an objet d’art, becomes the exclamation point that ends Drew’s heartbeats in a candlelit stateroom. Suspicion ricochets like stray bullets: the white man’s love, the yellow man’s vengeance, the woman’s unreadable gaze. When the smoke clears, only the candles know whose fingers truly curled around the hilt, their fifty guttering tongues spelling out a confession written in smoke and blood.
Synopsis
Hung Chin Chung, a philosopher of noble birth, is deported from Hawaii to his native China, where he faces certain death at the hands of his enemies. American millionaire Henry Drew offers to reprieve Hung, if the young philosopher becomes his indentured servant for the next twenty years. Rage at his humiliation and inability to marry as a free man smolders in Hung throughout his servitude. Toward the end of his indenture, Hung sails to San Francisco, California, with Drew and his wife. Also on board is Drew's business associate, Ralph Coolidge, who is in love with Mary-Will Tellfair, the millionaire's stenographer. Shortly after their arrival, Drew is stabbed to death, and suspicion falls on Ralph, the owner of the curious Chinese dagger that is identified as the murder weapon. However, subsequent events lead Hung to confess to the crime.
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