“Oh!” I said. “Is there treasure, then, in your ancestral halls?”
He smiled.
“More than half the wealth of China—the accumulated wealth of centuries—is tied up forever in this absurd manner,” he replied. “My family was old at the time of the Tartar invasion, and it has always been wealthy. In my ancestral halls, in my province of Kwang-Kai-Nong, lies a mass of treasure that would startle the world if it were to be unearthed and publicly displayed. Yet no one has ever seen it in my generation but myself.”
“I do not quite understand this system,” I said, much interested in these statements.
“It is our immemorial custom,” explained the Prince, “to bury with each head of a family one-half the wealth he possesses, to be used by him when his resurrection occurs at the end of the world. The remaining half is inherited by his eldest son, his successor. A daughter never inherits, you know. When the son dies, one-half his wealth is laid with his body in the tombs of the ancestral halls, and so this accumulation goes on from century to century, and half the wealth of the nation is continually abstracted from its resources.”
“But suppose there is no son,” said I. “What happens then?”
“Then the line ends. In the case of a noble family, such as ours, the confidential servant secretly seals up the ancestral halls and then commits suicide, so that no one may ever discover where they are located. If he hesitates to kill himself by the ninth day the other servants promptly kill him; so his fate is really sealed in case his lord dies without an heir.”
“And is Mai Lo your confidential servant in this case?” I asked curiously.
“You have guessed it,” replied the Prince, smiling. “If I were sure he would do his duty it would deprive death of half its sting; but I suspect, Sam, that Mai Lo has as little respect for ancestor worship as I myself, and it is my impression that he will rob the tombs of my forefathers very freely before he seals them up forever.”
“But won’t his fellow-servants kill him if he fails to commit suicide?” I asked.