“Opium addict,” I said. “Lee Sing Tai was blackmailing him and threatening to tell Sarah’s family.”
“He told you all this?”
“I figured most of it out for myself,” I said. “I actually found the piece of paper with his signature on it, but I suppose he must have taken it when I was unconscious.”
“He knocked you out?”
“I think he tried to kill me, but then someone was coming or his conscience got the better of him, and he dumped me in an opium den instead,” I said. “You must stop him, Daniel. He said he was going to the border. That must mean Canada, I suppose.”
“How long ago was this?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know how long I was asleep, but it must be several hours. The Chius found me in the street and brought me home with them. I wanted to tell them to find you, but I was so drugged that I couldn’t form any words.”
“I’ll tell the constable outside to get things moving, and I’ll arrange for someone to take you home,” Daniel said. He was gone for a moment, then came striding up to me. “Just a minute. You found the piece of paper with his signature on it? Where did you find this paper?”
“In Lee’s cabinet,” I answered, realizing that I should not have mentioned this fact.
“You went back to Lee’s place?”
“Only because there was a constable standing outside the door, so I knew I’d be safe,” I said. “I hadn’t realized that Monty came in across the roof.”
“Molly, what did I tell you?” Daniel was glaring at me now.
“Two seconds ago you were crying and thanking God I was still alive,” I said. “Now you’re looking at me as if you could kill me.”
“Did it occur to you it’s because I love you?” he said. “If anything happened to you—well, I don’t want to picture life without you. And yet you continue to put yourself in harm’s way.”
“I don’t put myself in harm’s way deliberately,” I said. “Harm’s way just seems to find me.”
“Not any longer,” Daniel said. “If you don’t behave yourself from now on, we’ll go and live with my mother. There. How’s that for a threat.”
“Terrifying,” I said, managing a smile. I took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry about all of this, Daniel. I knew I shouldn’t get involved from the beginning. I thought I was helping, but I wasn’t.”
“I don’t know about that,” Daniel said. “You’ve solved my case for me. We’ll have men watching all border crossings so we’ve a still good chance of catching him.”
“But if he’s taken that signature with him, you’ll have no proof.”
“My dear girl, I told you, I have a nice set of fingerprints on that statue. If Monty’s match—well then. There we are. The courts have never yet allowed us to admit fingerprints as evidence, but they’ll have to soon. And at very least you’ve stopped your friend Sarah from marrying him.”
“Poor Sarah,” I said. “She might really love him. I know how I’d feel it you turned out to be a drug fiend or a murderer.”
Daniel actually laughed. “That’s one thing you can say for me. I’m a straightforward kind of guy. What you see is what you get.”
I looked at him with love in my eyes. “That’s just fine with me,” I said.
* * *
I arrived back at Sid and Gus’s to find a beaming Bo Kei with Frederick beside her. He had been released that afternoon and they were already planning what they should do next.
“I will be forever in gratitude, Missie Molly,” Bo Kei said. “You have given me my life and my happiness.”
Well, at least I’d done something right. They were going to go back to Canada where they felt that Chinese people had a better chance of leading normal lives. This made me think of Monty crossing the border. Had the police been too late to catch him? Would the Canadian authorities return him?
We didn’t learn the truth until a few days later. Monty had been apprehended trying to sail out of Montreal on a ship bound for England. He had died of a drug overdose that night, whether intentionally or accidentally we’d never know. Given his position in society, it would have been unlikely that he would have had to face a harsh punishment for the crime of killing Chinese. He might even have walked away a free man. Sarah was with us when Daniel came to tell us the news.
“I’m glad he’s not going to prison,” Sarah said. She sat staring down at her hands, her face betraying no emotion. “I know that addiction causes people to do all kinds of wicked, reckless things. Poor Monty, I believe he tried to tell me about it once, in a subtle way. He said that he’d fallen from his polo pony in India and broken his ribs. The pain had been so great that they’d fed him a constant supply of morphine. I suppose the addiction started then.”
“I think you’re being too kind,” Sid said. “You’re well rid of him, Sarah. Now that you’re no longer engaged we can tell you that we thought him a selfish, arrogant brute who would have made your life miserable.”
“Why didn’t you say this to me before?”
“Because we know that people fall in love with the most unsuitable types,” Gus added. “And if you really were in love with him, it was not up to us to stop you.”
Sarah gave a sad sort of smile. “I don’t think I ever was truly in love with him. I can’t have been because I felt such a sense of relief when I heard he had fled to Canada. And I’m not heartbroken that he died. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’m sure he didn’t love me either. He was only marrying me for my money.”
“That’s the same with Molly and me.” Daniel patted my hand. “I’m only marrying her for her money.”
“So you’re off back to Westchester tomorrow for the final wedding preparations, are you?” Sarah asked.
I nodded. “Final fittings on my dress, that kind of thing. If you think you could bear it, I’d like you to come to the wedding too.”
“I’d like to, if only to see Sid and Gus dressed as bridesmaids.” Sarah managed a smile.
“I’ll have you know that Gus and I will be the most demure and correct bridesmaids in the history of weddings,” Sid said. “You wait until you see us in lavender.”
“I must be going.” Daniel got to his feet. “I only came to tell you the news and I have paperwork to finish tonight if I want to be free to come with you tomorrow to my mother’s. Ladies, I bid you farewell.” And he bowed correctly.
I walked with him to the door. “How is it that you have time to come with me? I thought you were working on a big case you couldn’t tell me about.”
“I was.” He paused. “It is concluded, satisfactorily as far as the commissioner is concerned, in spite of you, Miss Murphy.”
“What did I do?”
“I was ordered by the commissioner to look into corruption in the New York City police—a task I found most repugnant, as you can imagine. Spying on my fellow officers and turning them in. I can tell you, that goes against the grain; but I had no choice in the matter. I obey orders. As you can imagine, a good deal of my attention was focused on the issue of accepting bribes. I was spying on Kear and Bobby Lee when you barged in on me. They were about to conclude a lucrative deal. Luckily I was able to nail him anyway—something I don’t regret too much, as I couldn’t stand the man. The commissioner hopes that a couple of examples like this will put the fear of God into the rest of the force. We shall see. On a policeman’s pay it’s all too easy to accept bribes and sometimes it’s expedient to work on both sides of the law.”
“But you’ll never do that,” I said.
“If I did, you’d never hear about it.” He laughed. Then he took me into his arms and kissed me.
* * *
The next day when I went back to Mrs. Sullivan’s house I took little Bridie with me. When I went to Cherry Street to deliver the wedding invitation, Seamus had let me know that he wasn’t planning to attend. Had to be near the docks in case the ship decided to sail, was how he put it, but I got the feeling that he’d feel out of place at a fancy wedding in Westchester County. So he said his good-byes to his daughter and she trotted off with me, holding my hand and scarcely a look back at her father and brother.