to hear the story. Dolly shifted over on the settee to allow more room for Lonnie to sit on her other side. The children became equally entranced with Lonnie’s rendition, and after she finished, another little girl wanted to read next. Dolly obliged, wondering how many more times she would hear the story read before the dinner hour. Then Anna arrived in the doorway.
Dolly extracted herself from the children and went to meet Anna in the hall, passing by Tien, who merely watched her walk out.
“We’ve had a message,” Anna said in a hushed voice as she handed over a folded piece of paper.
Dolly’s heart dropped like a stone to her stomach as she read the scrawled address on the piece of paper. It was a street several neighborhoods away in the heart of Chinatown.
“This came with it.” Anna handed over a torn piece of red fabric.
Dolly grasped the fabric remnant. It might once have been a scarf or handkerchief.
“The girl you need to rescue will have the other half of this cloth,” Anna whispered. “Ah Cheng will go with you, and I’ve already notified the Chinatown squad. They’ll meet you at the bottom of the hill in a few hours.”
“Tonight?” Dolly said. “Is Officer Cook coming too?” The rescue couldn’t wait—she knew it couldn’t. Miss Culbertson was still ill, so this rescue would be up to Dolly.
“I don’t know which officers will be there,” Anna said.
Dolly returned to the children and the storybooks, but her mind was no longer engaged in the entertainment. Thankfully, dinner was ready soon, and Dolly ushered the young ones to their places at one of the dining tables to eat dumplings and stew. Tien never had a problem eating, so she sped past Dolly to join others at the table.
During the meal, Dolly took small glances at Tien, then the other rescued girls. All of them had been in deplorable situations before. If it weren’t for Miss Culbertson, who knows what their fate might have been? Confidence renewed, Dolly returned to her bedroom to quickly change. Then she headed downstairs to find Miss Culbertson and Ah Cheng waiting for her.
“Thank you for doing this,” Miss Culbertson said. Her complexion was wan, and she was wearing a thick shawl, as if she were cold. “I wish I could—”
Dolly placed a hand on the woman’s arm. “We will be fine. Ah Cheng will be of great help. Just give me the directions.”
The director’s relief was palpable, and she showed the note to Dolly that contained the number of the place. “The girl is at the end of Bartlett Alley in one of the cribs.”
When Dolly had gone with the director on that first rescue, they had gone to Bartlett Alley as well. But they had not ventured as far as the cribs: a place of the vilest depravity where girls and women were kept in cagelike rooms and forced to peddle their services. Dolly’s stomach felt leaden at the thought of facing such a place without the guidance of the director, but the wan pallor of the director’s face told Dolly that she was needed more than ever. “We will return as soon as possible.”
Dolly and Ah Cheng left 920 and met Officers Cook and Riordan at the bottom of the hill. Dolly was relieved to be accompanied by men she knew already, but needles of anticipation pricked the back of her neck at the sight of their sledgehammers and crowbars. Hardly a breeze stirred the trees above, and the air felt warm, nearly stifling. The brightness of the moon, and the thought of saving another woman from her life of abuse, sent a shiver through Dolly.
She could do this, taking over Miss Culbertson’s duty yet again.
“You’ll be fine,” Officer Cook told Dolly, moving by her side as they strode toward Bartlett Alley.
“Is my nervousness that obvious?” Dolly asked.
“I’ve never seen you walk so fast.”
She was too anxious to laugh. “Are these rescue missions why you smoke?”
Cook glanced at the cigarette in his hand. “One of many reasons.”
Once they entered the alley, they continued past the area where Dolly’s first rescue outing had been. The window grate had been repaired and replaced. The scents of rotting vegetables and urine, combined with the now recognizable sickly-sweet smell of opium, made Dolly want to cover her nose and breathe through her fingers. But she continued, ignoring her rebelling senses and cramping stomach as best as she could.
The sound of desperate crying came from a second-story window. In the