"That's what I say. I was opposed to Ethel having anything to do with that mission from the first, so was father, but mother encouraged her, and Ethel always would have her way. Now she has run off with a Chink, and I suppose it is the last we shall ever see of her. The minister who married them ought to be shot."
It was the old story.
Ed Butler's brief speech tells it. We need not enlarge.
Here was a pretty Albany girl, a mission worker, eloping with one of her Chinese pupils, a man years older than herself, and now her deluded mother sought to get her back again.
The Bradys would hardly have touched the case if it had not been that Mr. Butler occupied a government position at Albany, and they had been particularly requested by the chief of the Secret Service Bureau at Washington to take the matter up.
So far it had been only a matter of correspondence.
Old King Brady knew some things about the business which young Ed Butler did not know, and he was destined to learn still other things from a letter which the boy now delivered.
"When father found he couldn't come he wrote this, Mr. Brady," he said. "My orders were to deliver it to you before we made any talk."
"Ah!" said the old detective. "We will read the letter."
He did so.