Judge Dee caressed his side whiskers. Then he asked curtly:

"Do you confess having kidnaped and maltreated that young man!"

"I couldn't let him get away from your constables, could I?" the monk asked sullenly. "And you can't expect a man to hand out food and lodging for nothing. He refused to work, so naturally I had to encourage him a bit."

"Don't prevaricate!" the judge barked. "Do you admit having abducted him to your cave by force and beaten him repeatedly with a willow wand?"

The monk shot a sidelong glance at the headman, who was fingering his whip. He shrugged his shoulders and muttered: "All right, I confess!"

The judge gave a sign to the clerk, who read out his record of the monk's statement. The part about Candidate Djang was phrased more positively than the monk had expressed himself, but he agreed that it was correct and affixed his thumbmark to the document. Then the judge said:

"I can have you punished severely on more than one count. I shall defer my verdict, however, till I have verified your statement as to your meeting with Mao Loo. You'll now be put in jail to meditate on what will happen to you if I find that you have lied!"

When the monk was being led away, Sergeant Hoong came in and reported that Candidate Djang had somewhat recovered. Two constables led him in front of the bench. He was now clad in a neat blue robe, and wore a black cap that concealed his shaven head. Despite his haggard appearance one could still see that he was a handsome young man.

He listened carefully to the scribe reading out the record of his statement, then impressed his thumbmark on it. Judge Dee looked at him gravely. He spoke.

"As you have stated yourself, Candidate Djang, you have behaved very foolishly, and thereby seriously impeded the course of justice. However, I deem your harrowing experiences of the past few days sufficient punishment for that. Now I have good tidings for you. Your father is alive and he doesn't blame you. On the contrary, he was deeply shocked when he thought you were dead. He was accused in this tribunal of having been involved in your bride's death; that's why you saw the constables at your house. The apparition you saw in your room was I. In your confused state of mind I must have appeared somewhat forbidding to you.

"I regret to inform you that the corpse of your bride has unaccountably disappeared. This court is doing everything in its power to have it recovered so that it can be given a proper burial."

Candidate Djang covered his face with his hands and started to cry softly. Judge Dee waited a little, then pursued:

"Before I let you return home, I want to ask you one question. Were there, besides your father, other persons who knew that you used the pen name Student of the Bamboo Grove?"

Djang replied in a toneless voice:

"Only my bride, Your Honor. I only started to use that pen name after I had met her, and I therewith signed the poems I sent her."

Judge Dee sat back in his chair.

"That's all!" he said. "Your tormentor has been thrown into jail; in due time he'll receive adequate punishment. You can go now, Candidate Djang."

The judge ordered Ma Joong to bring the youngster home in a closed palanquin, to recall the constables on guard in his father's house and to tell him that the house arrest had been canceled.

Then he rapped his gavel and closed the session.

When Judge Dee was sitting again in his private office, he smiled bleakly and said to Tao Gan, who was sitting opposite him together with Sergeant Hoong and Chiao Tai:

"You did your job very well, Tap Gan! The case Liu versus Djang is now solved, save for the problem of the vanished corpse!"

"Mao Loo shall tell us all about that, Your Honor!" the sergeant said. "Evidently Mao Loo killed his cousin for his money. When we have arrested him, he'll tell us what he did with the corpse of Mrs. Djang!"

Judge Dee didn't seem to agree. He said slowly:

"Why would Mao Loo have removed the corpse? I could imagine that Mao Loo, after he had murdered his cousin somewhere near the temple, went to look inside for a place to hide the corpse, and then found the coffin in the side hall. To open it was easy; he had his cousin's toolbox. But why didn't he then simply put the carpenter's body inside on top of that of the woman? Why remove her body-which left him with exactly the same problem as before, namely how to dispose of a dead body?"

Tao Gan, who had been listening silently, playing with the three long hairs sprouting from his cheek, now suddenly said:

"Perhaps a third person, as yet unknown to us, had removed the bride's body before Mao Loo found the coffin. That must have been a person who for some reason or other wanted to prevent at all cost that the corpse would be examined. The dead woman can't very well have walked off by herself!"

Judge Dee shot him a sharp look. He folded his arms in his sleeves and, huddled in his armchair, remained deep in thought for some time.

Suddenly he straightened himself. He hit his fist on the table and exclaimed:

"That's exactly what she did, Tao Gan! For that woman wasn't dead!"

His lieutenants looked at him in utter astonishment.

"How could that be, Your Honor?" Sergeant Hoong asked. "A professional physician pronounced her dead; an experienced undertaker washed her body. Then she was lying in a closed coffin for more than half a day!"

"No!" the judge said excitedly. "Listen to me! Don't you remember the coroner's saying that in such cases the girl would often faint, but that death was rare! Well, suppose she fainted and that the nervous shock caused her to fall into a condition of suspended animation! Our medical books record cases of persons who were in that state. There is complete cessation of breathing, no pulse of the wrist, the eyes lose their luster and sometimes the face will even show cadaveric characteristics. This state has been known to last for several hours.

"Now we know that she was encoffined in a great hurry, then carried at once to the Buddhist Temple. Fortunately, the coffin was only a temporary one of thin boards; I myself noticed the crevices. Else she would have died from suffocation. Then, when the coffin had been placed in the temple, and everybody gone, she must have regained consciousness. She'll have shouted and beaten against the walls of her wooden prison, but she was in a side hall of a deserted temple, and the caretaker was deaf!

"The following is just a theory. Mao Loo kills his cousin and steals his money. He searches the temple for a place to hide the body, and hears the sounds from the coffin!"

"That must have given him a bad fright!" Tao Gan remarked. "Wouldn't he have run away as fast as he could?"

"We must assume he didn't," Judge Dee said. "He took his cousin's tools, and opened the coffin. The woman must have told him what had happened and-" His voice trailed off. He frowned, then resumed with annoyance: "No, there we are up against a snag! Wouldn't Mao Loo, upon hearing her story, have realized at once that Dr. Djang would give him a generous reward for having saved his daughter? Why didn't he bring her back immediately?"

"I think she saw the carpenter's corpse, Your Honor," Tao Gan said. "That made her a witness to Mao Loo's crime, and he was afraid she would denounce him."

Judge Dee nodded eagerly.

"That must be it!" he said. "Mao must have decided to take her with him to some distant place, and keep her there till he would have heard that the coffin had been buried. Then he could let her make her own choice: either be sold as a prostitute, or be taken back home, on condition that she promised to tell Dr. Djang some trumped-up story about Mao Loo's saving her. In that manner Mao Loo would in either case earn a couple of gold bars!"

"But where was Mrs. Djang when Mao Loo buried the toolbox!" Hoong asked. "You may be sure that the monk searched the temple thoroughly, and he didn't discover her."