Was it
Clendenin? The place in Forty-fourth Street, on inquiry, proved to
be really closed as tight as a drum. Where was he?
All the deaths had been mysterious, were still mysterious. Bertha
Curtis had carried her secret with her to the grave to which she
had been borne, willingly it seemed, in the red car with the
unknown companion and the goggled chauffeur. I found myself still
asking what possible connection she could have with smuggling
opium.
Kennedy, however, was indulging in no such speculations. It was
enough for him that the scene had suddenly shifted and in a most
unexpected manner. I found him voraciously reading practically
everything that was being printed in the papers about the revival
of the tong war.
"They say much about the war, but little about the cause," was his
dry comment. "I wish I could make up my mind whether it is due to
the closing of the joints by O'Connor, or the belief that one tong
is informing on the other about opium smuggling."
Kennedy passed over all the picturesque features in the
newspapers, and from it all picked out the one point that was most
important for the case which he was working to clear up.
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