“But why should the Chinaman shoot my sister?” asked Walker Curtis amazed at the turn of events.

“Your sister,” replied Craig, almost reverently, “wrecked though she was by the drug, was at last conscience stricken when she saw the vast plot to debauch thousands of others.  It was from her that the Japanese detective in the revenue service got his information--and both of them have paid the price.  But they have smashed the new opium ring—­we have captured the ring-leaders of the gang.”

Out of the maze of streets, on Chatham Square again, we lost no time in mounting to the safety of the elevated station before some murderous tong member might seek revenge on us.

The celebration in Chinatown was stilled.  It was as though the nerves of the place had been paralysed by our sudden, sharp blow.

A downtown train took me to the office to write a “beat,” for the Star always made a special feature of the picturesque in Chinatown news.  Kennedy went uptown.

Except for a few moments in the morning, I did not see Kennedy again until the following afternoon, for the tong war proved to be such an interesting feature that I had to help lay out and direct the assignments covering its various details.

I managed to get away again as soon as possible, however, for I knew that it would not be long before some one else in trouble would commandeer Kennedy to untangle a mystery, and I wanted to be on the spot when it started.

Sure enough, it turned out that I was right.  Seated with him in our living room, when I came in from my hasty journey uptown in the subway, was a man, tall, thick-set, with a crop of closely curling dark hair, a sharp, pointed nose, ferret eyes, and a reddish moustache, curled at the ends.  I had no difficulty in deciding what he was, if not who he was.  He was the typical detective who, for the very reason that he looked the part, destroyed much of his own usefulness.

“We have lost so much lately at Trimble’s,” he was saying, “that it is long past the stage of being merely interesting.  It is downright serious—­for me, at least.  I’ve got to make good or lose my job.  And I’m up against one of the cleverest shoplifters that ever entered a department-store, apparently.  Only Heaven knows how much she has got away with in various departments so far, but when it comes to lifting valuable things like pieces of jewelry which run into the thousands, that is too much.”

At the mention of the name of the big Trimble store I had recognised at once what the man was, and it did not need Kennedy’s rapid-fire introduction of Michael Donnelly to tell me that he was a department store detective.

“Have you no clue, no suspicions?” inquired Kennedy.