I went on my way toward the Golden Dragon Emporium. The sight of that man had unsettled me even further and I wanted to get this over with. I reached the store and saw that shutters covered the windows and the front door was firmly locked. I hadn’t expected the Chinese to follow the laws of the Sabbath, and it now occurred to me that perhaps it would stay shut on the coming holiday. I just hoped that the mail slot on the front door to Mr. Lee’s residence would be big enough to take my package, because I wasn’t going to risk coming back here a third time.
I went up the steps slowly. Before I reached the top several Chinamen ran past, shouting to each other in animated fashion. My thoughts turned to tong wars and I shrank into the shadow of the building, half expecting shots to ring out. But they didn’t seem to notice me and disappeared into the On Leong headquarters next door. When I reached the top of the steps I was surprised to find the front door was open. I was just leaning inside to put the package on one of the stairs when I heard the most extraordinary sound—it was the wailing of a soul in torment, the sound of a wounded animal, unearthly and frightening. And it was coming from the top of those stairs.
I looked up and saw that the upper door was open, which was also strange, considering that it had been locked on the other occasions I had been here. Telling myself I was being a fool I crept up the stairs toward the sound. There was no houseboy in the hallway and the sound came from just behind the screen into the living room, so loud that it now echoed through the high ceiling of the hallway. My thoughts went to the Chinese demons that screen was supposed to keep out, but I had to find out what it was. I crept toward the screen and peeked around it—and reeled in surprise: a tiny old Chinese woman sat on the sofa, rocking back and forth. What drew my attention immediately were her feet. Her little legs stuck out like a china doll’s, too short to reach the floor, and peeping through from the hem of her shiny black trousers were tiny little stumps instead of normal feet. Each stump had a red brocade shoe on it, no bigger than a baby’s slipper. I recoiled, thinking she had had both feet amputated until I remembered what had been said about small-foot wives. I was actually looking at a small-foot wife.
All this passed through my head in an instant until the intensity of the sound obliterated any rational thought. Her mouth was open and from it came a continuous wave of horrific wailing. Her eyes were wide open and staring and I wondered if she was having some kind of fit, and should I perhaps go to help her. I also wondered where Lee Sing Tai and the servants were that they didn’t hear her and let her carry on like this.
At that moment I was conscious of another sound over the wailing—heavy footsteps. Someone was coming down the flight of stairs from the floor above. I tried to dart back into the stairwell, but I was too late. I saw big boots, dark blue trouser legs.
“For pete’s sake stop that row, woman,” a deep voice boomed in English. “It gives me the willies.” Then a burly New York police officer came into view. I had nowhere to hide. He saw me and reacted with surprise.
“Who are you? What the devil are you doing here?” he barked. He took in what I was wearing, my neat straw hat and gloves. “Don’t tell me you’re on one of these slumming tours, poking your nose into other people’s business?”
If I’d been smart I would have said yes. But I didn’t want to be seen as a nosy parker with no right to be in the house. “I’m delivering this package to Mr. Lee,” I said.
“What kind of package?”
“A photograph that he lent me.”
Without warning he took it from me and ripped it open.
“Hey,” I said angrily. “That is private business between Mr. Lee and me.”
“Is that so?” He glanced at the photograph, put it on the hall table, then proceeded to open the letter.
“You have no right to do that,” I said indignantly. “It’s personal correspondence. What do you think you’re doing?” I tried to snatch it back from him, but he fended me off.
“Oh, I have every right,” he said, something akin to a smirk crossing his face. His eyes scanned down the letter. “He hired you? What for exactly?”
“If you really must know, he’d lost a piece of jade and he wanted me to find it for him.”
“That’s not what it says here.” He was staring hard at me with cold blue eyes. “You no longer wish to handle this case since the buying and selling of humans goes against your conscience?” he read, raised an eyebrow, and then waved the letter at me.
“This is not what you might think,” I said hastily. “He arranged to have a young bride shipped over from China and—somehow she has gone missing. Naturally Mr. Lee is most worried and hired me to find her. Nothing criminal and therefore nothing of interest to the police.”
“Really?” He was still staring hard at me. “A bride shipped over from China?”
“That’s how the Chinese arrange marriages, apparently.”
“Then who’s the old broad on the sofa if he’s just marrying a young bride?”
“I gather she’s his first wife. They can take more than one in China.”
“But not here in the States. It’s called bigamy.”
I lowered my voice. “Look, Officer, between you and me, I don’t think he actually intended to go through a proper marriage ceremony over here with the new one. She’d be called wife number two, but really just a concubine.”
“And now she’s run away, has she?”
I could feel my cheeks getting hotter. When I am being backed into a corner I start to defend myself. “Look, I just told you—this has nothing to do with the police,” I said. “I don’t know why you are grilling me. It’s a missing persons case, not a crime. And besides, if you’re trying to pin some kind of criminal activity on Mr. Lee, I thought he had an understanding with the police and they left him alone.”
“I don’t know who told you that!” the policeman snapped. “But perhaps it would have been better for him if we hadn’t left him alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Which way did you come down Mott Street this morning?”
“From Chatham Square. Why?”
“Because had you come from the other direction, you might have noticed a commotion around the corner on Pell Street—you’d have spotted a crowd, including some of my men. It appears that Mr. Lee Sing Tai fell off the roof of his building during the night.” He paused to watch my expression, a rather satisfied one on his own face.
“Fell off the roof? You mean he’s dead?”
I have to confess that the wave of emotion that shot through me was not of horror but of relief. Now I would never have to face him. Now Bo Kei would be free of him.