Excerpt from The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee, S.J. Rozan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Lao," said Sergeant Hoong now, interrupting my reverie, "you are lollygagging. Do you intend to take advantage of our time here to learn this skill, or have you so quickly lost interest in improving your fighting technique?"

Jimmy laughed. "Lollygagging! Mr. 'Oong, sir, that's a fine bit o' English yer've picked up there!"

I was less amused. "I am not 'lollygagging,' nor anything like it. I've practiced your one-inch punch until my knuckles bleed, and all I have to show for it is a sore shoulder."

"And bleedin' knuckles, o' course," Jimmy put in helpfully.

"In fact," I said, "I'm beginning to question the value of this vaunted skill. How much force can actually be exerted by a blow of such a short distance?"

Jimmy tilted his head thoughtfully. "A fair question, that."

Hoong, with a disdainful glance at us both, walked through the mist to a small statue of Cupid that stood at the center of the clearing. It was a silly, frilly thing, all curly locks and flower garlands. Pulling his fist back an inch from the sculpture's round belly, Hoong marshalled the energy of his body from the bottoms of his feet up through his torso, focusing it all into his forearm—or so he instructed me every time I attempted this technique. With a low cry (we were, after all, waiting in this place to create an ambush) of "Chuen ging, inch power!" Hoong thrust his fist an inch forward and made contact with the stone.

Cupid toppled to the ground.

"Oh," I said, rather weakly.

"Oh!" marveled Jimmy Fingers, with more strength.

"Oh," snapped Dee. "Hoong, really." He stepped forward from the oak's inky shadow.

Any man unprepared would have been terrified into paralysis by seeing Dee, in this form, appear between ancient trees at midnight. The black of his tapered trousers and tunic was echoed in his leather gloves and tall boots and in the silk cape, scalloped like bat's wings, that billowed behind him. Short, sharp horns protruded from his head, and his face, with features somewhere between a devil's and a dream-fiend's, wore a fierce and evil leer.

However, we three had seen Judge Dee costumed as Springheel Jack, the Terror of London, on previous occasions, and thus—with the exception perhaps of a tiny step back taken by Jimmy—we were not alarmed.

Dee, from behind the monstrous mask, gazed at the prone statue. "I hope you've only dislodged the thing and not damaged it," he said. "What would your father say?" Sergeant Hoong's father had been tutor to Dee and his younger brothers back home in Yantai. "I recognize," Dee went on, "how exasperating it can be to deal with Lao. Still, you must control yourself better."

"Exasperating?" I said. "I must protest! I was in no way the cause of this insult to Eros."

"I've been given to understand," Dee said, walking over the soft grass toward the statue, "that you and the young Lord of Love have parted ways."

I sighed. "We are perhaps more distant than we once were," I conceded. "Women, I fear, continue to bewilder me."

"Ah, Lao, but that in itself may be the difficulty. Women are no different from men except in the obvious respects. If you assume that a woman will behave in an unpredictable manner for abstruse reasons, you may count yourself bewildered not by her but by your own expectations."

"You yourself are so abstruse in your commentary, Dee, that I might almost believe you are mocking me."

I could not see Dee's face behind the mask, but I was sure it wore an entirely false air of wounded innocence.

"I must protest also," Hoong said as he bent to the fallen Cupid. "A rebuke from you, Dee, is almost more than I can bear."

"Yes, I'm quite sure of that," Dee said drily, joining Hoong on Cupid's other side. "Yi! Er! San!" On Dee's count of three, the two men, working seamlessly together, righted the stone image of that most fickle of deities.

Excerpted from The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and S.J. Rozan. Copyright © 2025 by John Shen Yen Nee and S.J. Rozan. Excerpted by permission of Soho Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.