Murder In Chinatown Read Free Page B

his mother and hoisted his tiny body up to her shoulder with practiced ease. Settling him there, she began to pat his back and murmur sweet nothings to him. Sarah busied herself with straightening up the room, while Cora leaned back against a bank of feather pillows and sighed with satisfaction.
    “Ma!” a voice called from the front room. “Ma! Come quick!”
    “That boy,” Minnie muttered, making her way to the bedroom door without missing a pat on the baby’s back. “What is it, Harry? Couldn’t you find George and your pa?” She shifted the baby to the crook of her arm and opened the door with her free hand.
    On the other side of the door stood a gangly boy of about seventeen. To Sarah’s surprise, he was dressed in the loose-fitting silk shirt and linen trousers that Chinese men wore. They looked odd on him, because his features were even less Oriental than his sister’s.
    “It’s Angel,” he said with a worried frown. “I can’t find her.”
    Minnie didn’t seem too concerned. “What do you mean, you can’t find her?”
    “I mean, after I told Papa and George about the baby, I went back up to tell Angel. She went into her room after she got home from school, but when I looked in just now, she wasn’t there.”
    “She probably went out to play with her friends while you were gone,” Minnie said reasonably.
    “That’s what I would’ve thought, too, except…” His young face creased into a frown, and he wrung his hands nervously.
    Sarah noticed Cora had sat up straight again. She was listening attentively to every word, her face creased in a worried frown.
    “Except what?” Minnie prodded.
    “Her wardrobe door was hanging open.”
    “What of it?” his mother asked impatiently.
    “All her clothes are gone!” Harry nearly wailed.
    Cora gasped, but Minnie just made a sound of annoyance.
    “All her clothes can’t be gone. That’s impossible.”
    “See for yourself,” Harry said. “Her clothes are gone, and so is she!”
    Minnie muttered something and started to push past Harry.
    “The baby!” Cora cried, and Minnie stopped abruptly, remembering she still held him. She passed him to Sarah and then hurried out of the room, with Harry close behind her.
    As soon as they were gone, Cora moaned. “She’s run away. I was afraid of this. I tried to tell Minnie, but she wouldn’t listen.”
    Sarah looked down at the infant in her arms. He really was fast asleep. She took him over to the elaborately carved cradle his parents had provided for him and laid him gently down in it.
    “Surely, she wouldn’t have really run away,” Sarah offered by way of comfort.
    “Oh, yes, she would,” Cora said in dismay. “She’s a stubborn girl, too much like her mother, and she had a good reason. Or at least she thought she did.”
    “I know she was upset the last time I was here,” Sarah said diplomatically, wanting to ask outright about the forced marriage Angel had been protesting but not wanting to offend.
    “Oh, I forgot you heard all that,” Cora said. “Yes, Charlie wants her to marry his friend, John Wong. He’s a good man and very rich, but Angel is just a girl. She’s got all these romantic notions about falling in love.”
    “She seems a bit young for marriage,” Sarah observed.
    “She’ll be sixteen next month,” Cora said. “In China that’s plenty old enough, and Charlie’s still Chinese, even if he’s been in America over twenty-five years.”
    Sarah didn’t know what to say to that, so she held her tongue.
    “Silly girl! I told her I’d help her,” Cora said, half to herself.
    “I’m sure she won’t get far,” Sarah assured her. “Someone will see her and send word to her family.”
    “She won’t go near anybody who knows her,” Cora said, a tear running down her cheek. She brushed it away absently. “She’ll know they’d send her home again. But where else could she have gone?”
    Sarah shared her concern. The New York City streets were no place for a