"The Emerald Buddha" by "Murray Leinster" (Will F. Jenkins) (first published in Short Stories, February 10, 1930; reprinted in Leinster's collection, The Guns of Achin [London: Wright & Brown, 1936]; reprinted in Adventure Yarns, December 1938; reprinted in Malay Collins, Master Thief of the East [Black Dog Books, 2000]; reprinted in High Adventure #110, January 2010)
Malay Collins appeared in three adventures published in Short Stories in 1930; this is the second.
Collins (in this story, the name "Malay" is omitted) has been hiding out in a sailor's flophouse deep within the native slums of Bangkok, a place that would disgust any Cook tourist looking for local color. Every policeman in Siam is looking for him for the theft of the most treasured jewels of a fat and elderly princess of the royal house. No one knows of his current hideout, and even the police would not think of looking for him there. He is safe, for the time being.
Then, a robed monk drops a note in his lap and walks away. The Abbot Mongku of the Chakkri Monastery begs that the Master /thief Collins will come and speak with him before dawning. There is no danger. There are no threats. there will be no reproaches. But for the honnor of white men and in the name of the Lord Buddha, the Abbot entreats it.
Collins follows the guide to an old monastery, where, in a small cell he meets the Abbott. Also there are to men. The surprisingly tall and elegant Chinese with empty sockets where his eyes once were, and with a small scar on the underside of his chin is Sin Han, a rich merchant who also happens to be a "high mucky muck" in a secret society. The other, a fat and slovenly little white man, is the skipper of one of Sin Han's ship's, the Huang Ho.. The Abbot is reverently holding a Twelve-inch jade statue of Buddha, and tells Collins that this is the true Emerald Buddha, that had been unknowingly stolen several years before and replaced with a fake; the false image still rests on the prachadee in the Wat Phra Keo. The eyes of the true statue had, like those of Sin Han, had been plucked out and removed.
The Emerald Buddha had reportedly fallen from heaven sometime in the distant past and was one of the most revered objects in the East. Over the centuries it had been the object of two wars, had been stolen and recovered, captured and recaptured until "His Late Majesty Chulalungkorn built the Wat Phra Keo to house it fittingly."
"The Wat Phra Keo is very nearly the private chapel of the King of Siam, and the whole temple is really built within the placae walls. The prachadee is the cone of teakwood, covered with golden plates, on whose peak the Emerald Buddha should rest. The Wat Phrea Keo, by the way, is the one temple in Siam in which everything is really what it seems. the golden objects are of gold. The very matting on the floor is woven of silver wire. And if the Emerald Buddha is not actually carved f rom a single emerald, as all pious Siamese believe, it is at least of pure green jade, and its value is incalculable." Although worshipper of every ethnicity are freely allowed to worship in the temple, it remains heavily guarded at all times.
Statues of Buddha are hollow and are often used to hide jewelry and other valuables within.. This is also true of both the true Emerald Buddha and its sacrilegious copy, which brought about a question from Collins:
" 'What is in the false image before which men worshuip?' He said soberly.
"The Abbot Monglu, with his features twisted bitterly. told him what the abomination was. It was not pleasant to think of. And Collins felt a surge of anger."
The mere fact that the false image -- the abomination -- was in the Wat Phra Keo and that worshippers idolized it was anathema to the old Abbot. Collins, as the most talented thief in the East, was probably the only man who could steal the false image and replace it with the true one without the worshippers knowing.. If the faithful discovered they had been fooled, there was no telling what violence might erupt, and that, in turn, could lead to incursions from the French or the English and jeopardize the entire kingdom.
So all Collins had to do was perform an impossible theft, thereby avoiding a possible religious riot. and what was so vile about the contents of the false Buddha? And what about the powerful Chinese Sin Han? Collins is very disturbed by the small scar on the underside of the man's chin. Why? It turns out that Collins had a similar scar once in a similar place, and he had paid thousands to have it surgically removed. Why?
A neat little adventure story from a master of the genre.
All three Malay Collins stories were reprinted in Leinster's first short story collection, The Guns of Achin, which has never been reprinted. The three stories were lifted for the small press edition Malay Collins, Master Thief of the East. The first two stories were reprinted in John P. Gunnison's High Adventure #110; Gunnison reprinted the third tale in High Adventure #140 (January 2015). For the curious, the three stories are:
- "The Eye of Black A'Wang" - Short Stories, January 10, 1930
- "The Emerald Buddha" - Short Stories, February 10, 1930
- "The Black Stone of Agharti" - Short Stories, September 1=0, 1930
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