Qin Shang looked at him quizzically. "That is quite an exceptional commitment. Are you sure you can fulfill my request in so short a time?"

"I have already accumulated a detailed description of the treasures over a period of thirty years," explained Zhu Kwan. "It was a labor of love for my own personal satisfaction. I only require a few days to put it in readable order. Then you may have it free of charge."

"That is most gracious of you, but I am not a man who asks for favors without compensation."

"I will accept no money, but there is one provision."

"You have but to name it."

"I humbly ask that you use your enormous resources in an attempt to locate the lost treasures so they can be returned to the people of China."

Qin Shang nodded solemnly. "I promise to use every source at my command. Though I have only spent fifteen years to your thirty on the search, I regret to say I have made little progress. The mystery is as deep as the disappearance of the bones of the Peking man."

"You have found no leads either?" inquired Zhu Kwan.

"The only key to a possible solution my own agents have turned up is a ship called the Princess Dou Wan."

"I remember her well. I sailed on her with my mother and father to Singapore when I was a young boy. She was a fine ship. As I recall, she was owned by Canton Lines. I searched for clues to her disappearance myself some years ago. What is her connection with the lost art treasures?"

"Shortly after Chiang Kai-shek looted the national museums and plundered the private collections of our ancestors' art treasures, the Princess Dou Wan sailed for an unknown destination. She never reached it. My agents have failed to trace any eyewitnesses. It seems many of them also disappeared under mysterious circumstances. No doubt lying in unmarked graves, courtesy of Chiang Kai-shek, who wanted no secrets about the ship to leak to the Communists."

"You think Chiang Kai-shek tried to smuggle the treasures away on the Princess Dou Wan?"

"The coincidence and odd events lead me to believe so."

"That would answer many questions. The only records I could find on the Princess Dou Wan suggested that she was lost on the way to the scrappers at Singapore."

"Actually, her trail ends somewhere in the sea west of Chile, where a distress signal was reported received from a ship calling herself the Princess Dou Wan before she sank with all hands in a violent storm."

"You have done well, Qin Shang," said Zhu Kwan. "Perhaps now you can solve the puzzle?"

Qin Shang shook his head dejectedly. "Easier said than done. She could have gone down anywhere within a four-hundred-square-mile area. An American would compare it to looking for a needle in a field of haystacks."

"This is not a quest to cast aside as too difficult. A search must be conducted. Our most priceless national treasures must be recovered."