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it because it's not what the cult wants. You're supposed to
be fighting the cult, aren't you?"
    He stared, his
mouth opening and closing, and Smith laughed. He had a disturbing,
raspy laugh, and it never quite reached his dark, intense eyes.
"She's got you there, Phil. Stay here if you like. I'm going with
her."
    Carter turned
his glare on Smith, then said "Hmph!" and took out a pocket watch.
"Fine. We'll go to Chinatown. But we'll go by way of the
waterfront. The ferry is coming in."

 
Chapter 4 – Striking Back
    Colleen watched
the rest of Carter's team disembark from the ferry and immediately
felt better. There were four of them, three men and a woman, and
they all exuded a tough, competent confidence. There was a brief
flurry of handshaking. Then Carter said, "This is Colleen. We'll do
introductions on the way. We're going to Chinatown."
    They filled the
convertible with luggage, left it at the docks, and took a pair of
taxi cabs through Victoria. Colleen found herself sandwiched
between two of the new arrivals, a stern-faced woman in her
fifties, and a broad-shouldered young man with a black mustache and
a lantern jaw.
    Carter sat
beside the driver and twisted around in his seat to make
introductions. "Colleen Garman, this is Margaret Nelson and Richard
Dalglish."
    The woman
smiled and said, "You must call me Maggie." She had a distinct
southern drawl.
    "And I'm Rick,"
the man said. "We've already heard about you."
    "Maggie is a
professor of antiquities, now retired from active teaching so she
can work with us," Carter said. "Rick is part of the Canadian team.
He's been seconded from your Dominion Police."
    "It's the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police now, actually," Rick said. "Pleased to meet
you, ma'am."
    "Call me
Colleen."
    "A few things
have changed since our last telegram," Carter interjected. "The
opposition has kidnapped a woman who may have vital information.
We're looking for clues to her whereabouts." He nodded to Colleen
and she described Jimbo's uniform, and the laundry she'd seen in
Chinatown.
    "I'm not sure
exactly where I saw it," she admitted. "I was pretty distracted at
the time."
    Carter chuckled
at the understatement.
    "But it's
fairly distinctive, and it's somewhere in Chinatown, so it
shouldn't be hard to spot. How big can Chinatown be?"
    "Second-largest
Chinatown in North America," Rick said cheerfully. "Only San
Francisco has a bigger one."
    "Show-off,"
Maggie said with a smile.
    Chinatown was
less terrifying on this visit. Even with night falling everything
seemed less strange, less foreboding. In part it was because she
had seen it before, but the biggest reason was that she was back
with friends, and with a purpose.
    They divided
into two groups, agreeing to stay fairly close together. Colleen
walked with Carter and Smith, while the new arrivals worked their
way up a parallel street. She was torn between a desire to rush and
a terror of going too fast and missing something. She racked her
brain, trying to remember landmarks from her first visit, but it
was all a kaleidoscope of fragmented images. Was the kitchen before
the opium den, or after? Did she see the laundry hanging in a
street, or an alley?
    She needn't
have worried. Before they reached the end of the block, Rick and
another man, David Parker of the Bureau of Investigation, came
jogging around the corner. "We found it," Rick said.
    Maggie and the
last team member, a fat, older man named Garson, were standing in
front of a clapboard building with a sign that said "Londry."
Maggie gestured at a gap between buildings. "Is that what you
saw?"
    Colleen looked
where she pointed. Laundry hung in three tiers on closely-spaced
lines. The middle tier was full of dark trousers, neckerchiefs, and
white shirts. The shirt collars and neckerchiefs all bore a
distinctive pattern of white-and-burgundy stripes. Colleen
nodded.
    "The
proprietor," Maggie drawled, "tells me these belong to the SS
Arcadia . They aren't picking up their laundry until