“To Beatrice Gardner.”

“Who’s that?”

“Yaakov Corens’s granddaughter. She inherited her grandfather’s shop, which was her mother’s before her. She’s a jeweler herself.”

“Oh, Mr. Friedman! Thank you so much! Can you give me her number? But you didn’t have to call all the way to Australia. Let me pay for that call.”

“For you, Ms. Chin, if I had to call Australia, I would call Australia. But for this, it was unnecessary. Yaakov Corens left Sydney and came to New York in 1963. Beatrice Gardner has a shop across the street.”

So there we were, back on Forty-seventh Street.

Nothing much had changed since the day before yesterday. Couples stopped to peer in windows; messengers locked bikes to lampposts. A chain-draped rapper with rings on every finger came out of a store grinning, glinting gold teeth. Hasidim in flat hats went by deep in discussion, pockets full of fortunes in stones they’d exchanged on a handshake. Or so I’ve been told. That all these men really carried riches on their persons struck me as doubtful. But the part I liked wasn’t the value of the stones, anyway. It was the handshakes.

We found Sydney Gems and Gold in a street-level shop near the end of the block. A young woman smiled and asked if she could help us. From the back counter an older woman said, “It’s all right, Shana. I think I’m expecting these people.” Like the younger woman’s, her crisp white blouse had a buttoned neck and long sleeves.

“Beatrice Gardner?”

“That’s correct. Ms. Chin?”

“Lydia. And this is Bill Smith. Thanks for seeing us.”

“You come with the recommendation of Stanley Friedman, quite enough for anyone on this street. What can I do for you?” She smiled warmly and shook my outstretched hand. She gave Bill the same warm smile but didn’t offer her hand, which didn’t seem to surprise him.

“We won’t take much of your time,” I said. “I’d like to ask you some questions about your grandfather.”

“Yes, Mr. Friedman told me that. Zayde Corens, of blessed memory. May I ask why?”

“Mr. Friedman didn’t say? It’s about when he lived in Shanghai. He had a jewelry shop on the Avenue Foch, didn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“We found his name in a letter written by an Austrian refugee girl. Rosalie Gilder. Does that name mean anything to you?”

“So.” She looked somberly at us. “People are still searching for the Shanghai Moon.”

“Then it’s true! Yaakov Corens? He made the Shanghai Moon?”

Beatrice Gardner refolded her hands. “Mr. Friedman says you’re asking questions for an important reason, and it would be a mitzvah to help you. But if all you want is the Shanghai Moon-”

“No, that’s not it,” I said quickly. “We do think the Shanghai Moon might be here in New York, but we don’t want it, not really. Someone we know, another detective, was killed, and the Shanghai Moon may be involved. So we need to know as much about it as we can.”

“Killed?” She paled. “Someone was killed?”

“A friend of ours. Finding who killed him is the reason we’re asking these questions. So you see, it is important.”

She didn’t answer me right away. “And the Shanghai Moon? Why do you think that?”

I told her as much as I thought she needed to know: the find, the fugitive bureaucrat, the letters. She frowned, not at me but into her counter of sparkling gems, as though discussing the situation with them. Finally she looked up and nodded. “I suppose, by now… Yes, all right. Zayde Corens made the Shanghai Moon. But he never spoke about it.”

“He didn’t? He didn’t tell you the story?”

“Oh, the story he told. Rosalie Gilder and… Chen Kai-rong. Did I say that correctly?”

“Better than I said ‘Yaakov Corens,’ I think.”

Smiling, she said, “Zayde Corens was a dreamer, a romantic. He told the story many times. He had only daughters, and his daughters had daughters. And I have daughters.” She threw a proud glance at the young woman across the shop. “Zayde loved the story of Rosalie and Chen Kai-rong and told it over and over. The jade, the necklace, how they asked him to combine them. How in a time of trouble and loss, hunger and fear, these two young people wanted a lasting symbol of love and of family. Some were offended by this match, Zayde said. But in the face of the horrors and uncertainties around them, to be asked to create an emblem of hope was to him a great and humbling honor. My grandfather was more proud of that piece than of anything else he ever made.”

“Then why do you say he never spoke about it?”

“He told the story, but only in the family, and he said it was our family’s secret. And he would never speak about the Shanghai Moon itself.”

“You mean about what it was worth?”

“Even what it looked like. He’d only say, like the moon, round and glowing for children to dream about. Sometimes people, collectors mostly, who knew he’d been a jeweler in Shanghai, would ask him about it, though you’re the first in a long time. He’d say he could tell them nothing about the Shanghai Moon, except that if it existed he didn’t know where it might be.”

“Did they think he did?”

“They were always hoping.”

“They came because they knew he’d made it?”

“No. Just because they knew he’d been in Shanghai. Written records from that time aren’t so good. If anyone said they’d heard he made it, he denied it. What could they do?”

“Didn’t anyone know, anyone who was there?”

“Not so many knew even in the ghetto days who made the Shanghai Moon. Most were too poor, too hungry, too desperate for news of family they’d left behind, to spare attention for such a thing. The story of Rosalie Gilder and Chen Kai-rong was a fairy tale. Or a scandal, depending on who was telling and who was hearing. And to someone looking for the Shanghai Moon years later, what good was the man who made it? Zayde was paid for it and parted with it in 1942.”

I gazed at a tray of unset rubies and sapphires as I mulled this over. Bill spoke up. “Why wouldn’t he talk about it? Did he ever tell you?”

“Oh, yes.” Her smile grew soft. “When I was a child that was my favorite part. He was asked not to.”

“By whom?”

“A Chinese gentleman.”

I looked up. “Who was this gentleman?”

“Zayde wouldn’t say. It was part of the secret. The story went that a mysterious Chinese gentleman came to the shop one afternoon.”

“In Australia or in New York?”

“No, here, into this very shop. He and Zayde had tea and talked for a long time. After that day Zayde never spoke about the Shanghai Moon outside the family again. The gentleman, he said, had asked him not to. More than that, the reason for it, Zayde wouldn’t say.”

“Did the man threaten him? Did he seem frightened?”

“Oh, not at all. Sad, perhaps. Yes, a little sad. When he told us at dinner about the gentleman, his eyes sparkled as usual-he was a romantic, as I said, and a showman, too; he knew the effect of a story like this-but he had that cheery air adults sometimes wear when they’re hiding distressing things from children.”

“And you didn’t see the Chinese gentleman?”

“No, I was just a child, six years old.”

“Around when was that?” Bill asked.

“You’re asking me to tell my age?” Her eyes widened in mock horror. Then she smiled. “It was 1967. Early spring. I remember, because I liked the story so much I wanted to dress like a mysterious Chinese gentleman for Purim. But Zayde said if I did, the gentleman wouldn’t be mysterious anymore, and he was part of our family secret. So I dressed like a pirate, to throw everyone off the scent.” She paused, then added, “I admit the story got more elaborate as my sisters and I got older. So maybe the gentleman wasn’t so mysterious, or maybe he and Zayde didn’t talk for so very long. But without doubt it was after that visit that Zayde started to deny to everyone but us that he’d made the Shanghai Moon at all.”