Gold Mountain (14 page)

Looking at the man’s smirking face, I thought that I would rather cut off a finger than turn any of the inhabitants of 920 over to him or his equally disreputable companion, but at the same time, I didn’t want to be the cause of a legal scandal involving the mission. With a reluctance I tried to hide, I ushered the men inside and into the small waiting room immediately off the foyer. Taking the envelope from the lawyer’s hand, I slid out the papers, read the name printed in the heading, and gave a quick cough to cover my gasp.

“Why do you believe this Suey Wah is here at 920?” I asked in a purposely expressionless tone.

I saw a quick glance pass between the two men before Farmer answered, “Mr. Chanyu heard from some of his relatives in Chinatown that his fiancée had been taken away by a white woman and was being held against her will, kept from her loving husband-to-be.”

I eyed the Chinese man with disdain. If he was a loving husband-to-be, then I was the recently deceased Queen of England, and legal scandal or not, I was not about to turn my Suey Wah over to this pair of scoundrels.

“I’m new here, Mr. Farmer, so I’ll have to see if we have a resident by the name of—” I pretended to glance again at the document I was holding “—Suey Wah. Please have a seat while I check.” Quentin Farmer did not sit down.

Instead, he reached and took the paper from my hand, speaking sternly as he did so. “Don’t try any tricks, Miss Hudson. I’ve been here before, and I know what this place is capable of. Turn over Suey Wah without delay or I will summon the two policemen I left waiting outside to conduct a legal search for the girl. When they find her—and they will find her, Miss Hudson—I will have them arrest you for being in contempt of a court order. I can tell you that a refined woman like yourself would not enjoy spending time in jail. I won’t enumerate the unsavory details out of respect, but it’s hardly a place for ladies.”

I wanted to tell this insufferable man that I’d spent several weeks of a summer as hot as Hades surrounded by an army of fanatical Chinese soldiers who shrieked the unrepeatable details of what they planned to do with all foreigners once they got their hands on them. I did not change clothes for over five weeks straight, and I ate roasted rodents with lip-smacking delight. Compared to that experience, the possibility of spending time in a California jail was no more intimidating than breaking a fingernail. I didn’t say any of that, of course. Instead, I tried to look appropriately cowed as I exited the room.

“Lu Chu.” I pulled the girl aside from her classroom lessons and told her about the men in the hallway waiting room.

“They have tried this before, those wicked men.” For a moment Lu Chu’s delicate face took on the look of a gorgon, and I saw what Frances Thompson had meant about the girl being both sturdy and capable. An understatement, really.

“I had a very bad feeling about them from the start,” I replied, “but the document seems legitimate enough, and I have no doubt we’ll have policemen in here in a moment. That Farmer isn’t about to give me time to hide Suey Wah. Suey Wah, come with me.”

My little friend, who had been sitting at the table with the other girls, came to me at once and put her hand in mine trustingly. I pulled her out of the room and into the kitchen. Desperately looking for a hiding place, I saw the big sacks of rice in the pantry at the same time I heard men’s voices at the front door.

“Crawl under the shelf behind those sacks,” I directed, “and be very small and quiet. Do not show yourself, even if someone calls your name. I will come and get you when the time is right. Trust me, Suey Wah.”

She smiled, said quietly in Chinese, “I know how to be very small and quiet, Qing,” and quickly disappeared into the pantry. I pulled its door shut, then went out the rear door of the kitchen and up the back steps to the second floor. I quickly crossed the second floor hallway and descended the front staircase to the foyer where two police officers with passive expressions stood listening to Quentin Farmer order them to search the house for a Chinese girl named Suey Wah.

“There is no Suey Wah here,” I told the men indignantly as I descended the steps. “How dare you intrude like this!”

“Of course, she’s here,” Farmer told the officers, ignoring my protests.

One of the policemen asked sensibly, “What does she look like?” which caused Farmer to hesitate. He turned to Lin Chanyu with a questioning look. When the Chinese man shrugged his ignorance, Farmer sputtered, “She’s little. She’s Chinese. Find her.”

The two policemen looked at each other with what appeared to be weary resignation before one of them turned toward me to say with apology, “We’re sorry about this, Miss, but his paperwork is in order.”

“Of course, my paperwork is in order. I’m an attorney.” Farmer eyed me with dislike as I stood on the steps. “Try upstairs first. I’ll bet she was up there trying to hide the girl under a bed.” As the men tramped upstairs, I was grateful my ruse was at least initially successful. By coming down the front stairs, Farmer had assumed I’d been on one of the floors above. Perhaps by the time they made it down to the kitchen, they would all have tired of the search.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, I had a hard time not snickering at the look on Quentin Farmer’s face when he stepped into the large room where the older girls sat at long tables sewing. For the first time it dawned on him that finding one single Chinese girl among a bevy of Chinese girls might prove more difficult than he had first thought, especially when he hadn’t the slightest idea what his quarry looked like.

All four men entered the room and stopped abruptly, the police officers turning toward Farmer and asking, “Do you see her here?”

“I don’t know,” Farmer sputtered. “She’s not my bride-to-be. What do you say, Chanyu? Is she here?”

The fat man stepped up to the table and in Chinese asked the first seated child, “What is your name, girl?”

She turned to look at me and when I nodded my permission, she quietly responded, “Xin Tu.”

“And is one of your friends here named Suey Wah?”

“I know of no Suey Wah here,” the girl answered.

“What did she say?” Farmer asked, obviously irritated that he could not follow the conversation.

I interrupted Lin Chanyu’s halting reply. “She said she knows of no Suey Wah here, a fact I shared with you earlier, as you’ll recall.” I turned toward the two policemen standing to the side. “Really, officers, isn’t this a fool’s errand? There’s no Suey Wah here, and all you’re doing is frightening these girls, who have already had more than enough fear in their young lives.”

The older of the two replied, “We’re sorry, Miss, but we have to uphold the law. We’ll just take a look around, and then we’ll be gone.”

In the meanwhile Chanyu had made his way around the table and returned to say to Farmer, “None of these girls is the one we’re looking for.”

“I know there are more girls somewhere.” Farmer glared at me. “Don’t try to hide it.”

The policemen had exited, and I could hear their heavy steps in the hallway as they went from room to room on the floor.

“I’m not trying to hide anything.” I glared back at him. “Our very young girls are at their lessons in the downstairs classroom. Is Mr. Chanyu planning to wed a child?”

“It is our custom—” Chanyu began, and I interrupted sharply, “You don’t need to tell me about your customs, you old fraud. I know more about them than you do about this girl you’re seeking, I can tell you that.”

Farmer, who had apparently taken me into the same dislike I felt for him scolded, “Your tone is offensive, Miss Hudson.”

“You are offensive, Mr. Farmer,” I retorted and flounced out of the room in time to collide with the two policemen, as they returned.

“We’ll take a look at the floors above, Miss, and then meet you downstairs.”

As the officers went up the next flight of stairs, Farmer and Chanyu followed me down the steps to the front foyer. Farmer turned in the direction of the downstairs classroom with a speculative look in his eyes.

“We’ll take a look at these young girls of yours now, Miss Hudson,” and without asking permission, he and Chanyu pushed past me into the room where the little girls sat in subdued quiet. The older girls upstairs had seemed calm about the appearance of hostile strangers in their midst, but the little ones on their floor cushions were not as unaffected. The sight of their pale faces and wide eyes churned up both anger and fear inside me.

“There is nothing to be afraid of,” I told them in Chinese. “These men seek a girl named Suey Wah, and I know none of you in this room is so named. Each of you say your name out loud for our visitors to hear.”

The girls did so, one after the other, and when they were done, Chanyu asked, “And do any of you know of a girl named Suey Wah?”

I held my breath and then in a beautiful chorus of complete and wholehearted deceit, all the girls slowly shook their heads no, their response so unison in timing and motion that Farmer turned to look at me with suspicion, certain I must have somehow cued them to answer.

Before he could accuse me of anything, however, one of the policemen stepped inside the room long enough to say to the lawyer, “Nothing upstairs. I take it the girl you’re looking for isn’t in here either so we’ll just take a look in the back of the house and then we’ll be done.” His tone clearly communicated his impatience with what he and his partner considered a waste of time and without the words being spoken, also told Quentin Farmer, Esquire, that they held him personally responsible for so pointless a pastime.

I had felt reasonably confident up until the moment I heard the officers step into the kitchen, but until they reappeared empty-handed, my stomach stayed in my throat and I found it strangely difficult to breathe. I couldn’t get the vision of a small girl with two black braids and a smile that could break your heart out of my head.

“It’s our official opinion that the girl you’re seeking is not at 920 Sacramento Street,” the older policemen stated firmly. “And now we’ll be on our way. You’d better get your facts straight next time, Farmer. We don’t appreciate wasting our time on a wild goose chase.” They nodded at me before departing.

Farmer and Chanyu departed, too, but not without the attorney threatening, “This is not the last you’ll hear of this, Miss Hudson. We will be back as often as it takes to find this girl, and you should keep in mind that kidnapping is a serious charge, which I will personally prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”

“Go away, Mr. Farmer, or I’ll call those two officers back and have you arrested for trespassing. From the looks on their faces, I would guess they’d be more than happy to oblige. Take Mr. Chanyu and go back to whatever disreputable hole the two of you crawled from.” I walked past them and held open the front door, repeating, “Go away, Mr. Farmer.”

The two men did leave, albeit unhappily, and when I turned from closing the door behind them, I found myself being stared at from two directions, the older girls crowded onto the landing of the stairs and the younger girls stealthily peering from the doorway of the downstairs classroom.

“Everything is fine,” I told them with a brisk confidence that fooled no one. “Lu Chu, please resume your lessons and girls,—” I looked toward the top of the front stairs—“please finish your sewing projects.” Then with a grin I said in Chinese, “You were all superb, ladies. You acquitted yourselves as the brave girls I know you to be. Miss Cameron will be very proud of you.” My words caused a babble of chatter and giggles to break out as I headed down the hallway toward the kitchen pantry where another brave girl waited quietly and patiently.

Later in the day when Donaldina returned home, I shared all the details of the incident and after listening wordlessly to my narration, Miss Cameron asked the questions I had been thinking all afternoon.

“How did Farmer learn about a girl named Suey Wah, Dinah, and how did he know she was here? And why is anyone interested in her at all?” We sat over tea in Miss Cameron’s office and I leaned toward her, my elbows balanced on my knees and both hands clutching my teacup so firmly I risked breaking the fragile china.

“That’s been troubling me, too. I’ve thought about it all afternoon. Suey Wah had been sick for some time before we found her, and I doubt if she was able to articulate her name for several days before the rescue. She hasn’t been out of the house since she arrived. Could any of the girls have shared the news that 920 had a new resident named Suey Wah?”

“No, they haven’t had an occasion to do so, and who would they have told? Besides, they know better. These are girls who understand only too well the dangers of talking too much. It isn’t that using the law to try to reclaim a girl is a new ploy, Dinah. There are a few judges and attorneys who will—to their shame—sign anything for the right price. They don’t see anything wrong with doing so, and they don’t care that they’ve allowed those who traffic in human beings to take one of our girls back to the degrading life she fled. You have to understand that to the men who engage in these activities, each girl represents hundreds and hundreds of dollars spent to purchase her and transport her to California. If they lose her, they also lose all that money, so, of course, they’ll do anything to get their hands on her again.”

“Lu Chu told me you once followed a snatched girl with such stubbornness that you ended up spending the night in jail.”

“That’s true, I did, and the publicity of my incarceration worked in our favor for quite a while. It’s been wonderfully quiet for months. Which makes me think there must be something especially urgent connected to our Suey Wah. What is there about the child that would motivate old Judge Mackiver to abandon his cigars and whiskey long enough to sign the order Farmer showed you?”