The Devil's Disciple by Shiro Hamao Page A

their rooms. As I mentioned before, by that time it was raining cats and dogs.
    Allow me to pause for a moment here to tell you how the Oda house is laid out. It is entirely in the Japanese style, with the master bedroom and a study on the first floor, beneath which there are two open
tatami
rooms. Ōtera was given the room just below the study on that night. A little way down the passageway outside this room stood the maids’ quarters and on the outside near the kitchen was another building where the houseboy slept, an ex-sailor named Jinbei.
    Now the two sleepy maids had been rubbing their eyes for some time by then and having obtained their master’s permission, they went straight to their room, pulled out their futons and immediately fell into the type of sound sleep that is enjoyed by most people in service.
    Before long Otane, the elder of the two, woke up. Feeling that she had been asleep for quite some time and also that she had woken up naturally she looked, as she always did, at the alarm clock next to her pillow which had been put there by her employer. It was still only one-thirty. The rain had not let up. Just as the relieved Otane was about to go back to sleep she heard what she thought was someone screaming. And then she heard what sounded like a sliding partition falling over on the first floor.
    Otane almost let out a scream herself, but instead she pulled her nightgown tight around herself and huddled under the covers holding her breath. After a few moments she timidly raised her head and once again heard the sound of someone groaning. Overcome with fear, Otane began to pummel Oharu awake, who was sprawled out sleeping next to her. When Oharu heard what had happened she began to tremble and the two of them resolved to wake the houseboy.
    In order to accomplish this, however, as you will have gathered from my explanation a moment ago, it was necessary to go outdoors and into the other building – far too daunting a feat for two girls to undertake at such a late hour and in the midst of such a frightful downpour. So they decided instead to go and wake the guest who was staying in the room just down the hall.
    The two crept down the hall shivering with fright and stood outside the door to the room where they called out Ōtera’s name two or three times. But there was no answer. When they gathered up the courage to slide open the door where they believed Ōtera was sleeping, his bed was as empty as a cast-off snake skin. As they stood dumbfounded in the room they heard the sound of someone falling in the room directly overhead. Shrieking with fear they ran out of the room and went straight to wake the houseboy. A strapping ex-sailor in his forties, the houseboy grabbed a large walking stick, told the maids to sit tight, and stormed up the stairs.
    It was then that the scene of the tragedy was witnessed for the first time by an outsider. As Jinbei came upstairs followed by the two frightened maids they were confronted with a horrifying scene.
    The Odas’ bedroom was at the top of the stairs and the
shōji
screen was open in the middle – actually one whole screen had been ripped out – so that the room’s interior was clearly visible. A lamp on a rosewood table in one corner lit the room with a dim light of about five candlepower. The mosquito netting had been ripped off its hooks at two points and stuffed in a corner with the rest of it dangling loosely. Two futons were laid out with their pillows towards the desk. Michiko lay on the futon to the left. She was naked from chest up with a cord like a kimono lashed tightly around her breasts all the way up to her neck. With each groan, bright red blood spilled out from a gash in the vicinity of her full white breasts.
    Seizō was half-way out of the other futon, face-down on the table. Michiko seemed almost dead already but Seizō was in the last agonising throes.
    It has taken me some time to describe all of this but of