屣看門路 So You Were Casing the Doors
眾官兵攢擁扛擡，須臾間，拿到城裡，徑自解上黃堂報道：「老爺，民快人等，捕獲強盜來了。」那刺史端坐堂上，賞勞了民快，檢看了賊贓，當叫寇家領去。卻將三藏等提近廳前，問道：「你這起和尚，口稱是東土遠來，向西天拜佛，卻原來是些設法屣看門路，打家劫舍之賊。」众官兵攒拥扛抬，须臾间，拿到城里，径自解上黄堂报道：「老爷，民快人等，捕获强盗来了。」那刺史端坐堂上，赏劳了民快，检看了贼赃，当叫寇家领去。却将三藏等提近厅前，问道：「你这起和尚，口称是东土远来，向西天拜佛，却原来是些设法屣看门路，打家劫舍之贼。」
逐句解 Line by line
The soldiers crowded round them, hoisted them up, and in no time had them into the city and delivered straight up to the prefect's hall under guard, reporting, "Your honour! The constables and the rest have taken the robbers."
解上 — delivered up under guard. This is the escort word: to hand a prisoner from one authority to another. It is a different reading of the character from the untie and explain senses, and it appears exactly once in the whole novel. The chapter uses that character thirteen more times and all thirteen are the other senses. 黃堂 — the yellow hall, the prefect's own seat of office, named for the yellow mineral wash on its walls. The reader met it two thousand characters ago in the poem praising the man who sits in it. 攢擁 — crowded in around. The first character is the same one used of the trussing an hour ago, and it means gathered tight together.
The prefect sat squarely on the bench, rewarded the constables for their trouble, examined the stolen goods, and ordered the Kou family sent for to take them away.
端坐堂上 — sat squarely in the hall. He is doing everything correctly again: he pays the men who made the arrest, inspects the evidence, and returns the property to its owners. And the evidence is overwhelming. The goods stolen from the Kou house were carried into his court by four men who had been named in a sworn complaint that morning. There is no reading of that which favours the accused, and the prefect has not yet done a single thing wrong.
Then he had Tripitaka and the others brought up to the front of the hall and asked, "You lot of monks — you claim to have come from far off in the east and to be going west to worship the Buddha. But it turns out you are thieves who contrive ways to tread out the ground and study the entrances, and break into houses to rob them."
打家劫舍 — breaking into houses and robbing them. A four-character legal formula, still current, and it names a specific offence rather than describing a scene. 設法屣看門路 — contriving ways to tread out the ground and study the approaches. The middle character here is the tread word, and its everyday sense is a sandal, which is why it looks wrong. This novel uses it as a verb twenty-eight times across twenty-one chapters — to plant a foot, to trample flat — and the reading is the same at all of them. The prefect is repeating the son's complaint back at the accused, almost word for word. The son said the four had learned the doors and windows and lanes by heart. The prefect has turned that into a charge and put it to them as established fact.
The prefect's conduct in this passage is beyond criticism and that is what makes it frightening. He pays the arresting officers, inspects the evidence, restores the property to the victims, and then puts the charge to the accused in open court. Every step is what a good magistrate does.
The trouble is that the facts in front of him admit only one reading. Four strangers were named that morning in a sworn complaint of robbery and murder. By that afternoon the same four are in his hall carrying the stolen property. A magistrate who acquitted on that evidence would be a bad magistrate.
And the words he uses are not his own. He is reciting the Kou son's complaint — the fortnight's lodging, the study of the doors and passages — as though it were a finding. That is how a false account becomes an official one: not through corruption, but by being repeated in a courtroom by somebody with the authority to repeat it.