He shrugged. “It is my fate. There’s not much I can do about it.”
We reached the storefront of the Golden Dragon Emporium. I noticed that it was next door to a building that proclaimed itself as the On Leong headquarters. So my employer must be heavily involved with the tong to have set up shop beside them. Again I waited until Frederick Lee informed me that we could go up to Lee Sing Tai’s apartment. It was a complete reenactment of the day before. Waiting until the boy admitted us. Waiting in front of the screen until we were told to enter and the man himself sitting as before, in the high-backed carved chair. The drapes were half drawn and shadows hovered in the far corners. I glanced back at that curtain from which someone had observed me yesterday. I wondered who that person had been and whether he was there again, but I decided it wouldn’t be wise to ask questions. Instead I stood in the doorway until my employer waved an elegant hand, directing me to sit on the bench and at the same time dismissing Frederick Lee from his presence.
“Miss Murphy,” he said, nodding civilly. “You will take tea with me?”
He clapped his hands and the tea tray appeared. He waited until the leaves had settled, then poured it with ceremony, handing me the cup with two hands. I noticed the length of his fingernails—they stuck out a good inch or so, like claws. Again the tea was too hot to drink immediately, but I’d learned to be silent until I was spoken to.
“Is it a fine day outside?” Lee Sing Tai asked at last.
“Very fine.”
“Not too hot?”
“Not as yet.”
“That is good. I may venture forth. My songbird needs more fresh air than he receives on the balcony.”
He lifted his teacup to his lips and took a sip. I followed suit, almost bursting with impatience to get this interview over. There was a strange feeling of unreality and foreboding that hovered over me in the half-light of the room. At last he put down his teacup. “You had a successful day yesterday?” he asked.
“If you mean did I find your missing jade piece, the answer is no, I’m afraid,” I said. “I did my best, I can assure you. I visited every pawnshop, every jeweler within a mile or so of here. The pawnshop owners all told me that they never saw Chinese jewelry and they would have remembered if a Chinese person had come into their stores. The jewelers told me that jade was not worth much and they would only buy gold or silver.” I paused, taking a deep breath. “So I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help to you. I could go on looking further afield, of course. There are hundreds more pawnshops and jewelers in the rest of Manhattan, and hundreds more across the bridge in Brooklyn and up in the Bronx and on Staten Island—but I can’t see that it would be worth paying me for what would surely be several days’ work after which I could well come up empty.”
He sat there, staring across the room as if I didn’t exist. The silence was overpowering and I began to feel uneasy. If he came from a country where men were beheaded for not wearing their hair a certain way, was he about to punish me for my failure? I decided to take the initiative.
“Mr. Lee,” I said, “something about this doesn’t make sense to me. You could have employed anybody to ask questions in pawnshops. If the piece has been stolen, isn’t it likely that it’s gone to an underworld fence? I’d have no way of knowing how to contact such people. I’m a private investigator, not a police detective.”
“It will not have gone to a fence,” he said.
I wanted to tell him that we were wasting each other’s time and walk out of there. But I hate to give up on anything. “You haven’t made clear to me why this particular piece of jade is worth so much to you,” I said. “It must have some special significance or you would merely have had a copy made to replace it.”
“You are a shrewd young woman,” he said. “I knew this when I hired you.”
“So why did you hire me?”
“To find a missing prized possession, I told you.”
“Of course it’s possible that the person who stole it intends to keep it, in which case I can be of no further use to you.”
“I did not say it was stolen,” he said. “It was taken. That is not the same thing.”
“You have an idea who took it?”
He nodded.
“By a member of your household?”
It was a stab in the dark but I saw a flash of reaction. Then his eyes narrowed. “The situation is delicate.”
“Mr. Lee. I don’t see how I can help you unless you tell me all the facts. I think you have hired the wrong person. Surely one of your employees could go after a member of your household. He wouldn’t have gone far from Chinatown, would he?”