Jane Carter Investigates Episode One-Hundred and Thirty
“All unwittingly, Mr. Pruitt gave me
just the clue I need,” I told Flo. “It will be a gigantic step forward if I
learn the identity of his mysterious customer.”
“What’s to be gained by it?” asked
Florence as she slugged a story and speared it on a hook. “What will be
proven?”
“Well, if I’m ever going to solve the
mystery I must gather every fact I can,” I said. “I aim to learn the meaning of
those strange tattoos and, above all, the reason why Richard Hamsted was pushed
from the bridge.”
“You certainly have your work cut out
for you.”
“But Mr. Pruitt’s information helps.
You remember I told you that Richard Hamsted’s tattoo bore the word All.
Anchor Jim’s was the same except for the word One. And now Ellis Pruitt
has a customer with two words on his back: For One. I believe I have
it!”
“You have what?” asked Florence calmly.
“It came to me like a flash—the meaning
of those tattooed words! If we haven’t been a couple of Dumb Doras!”
“I’ll thank you not to include me in
that remark. Will you kindly stop jumping around and explain?”
“Mr. Pruitt told me he thought several
sailors might have had a sentence incorporated in their tattoo. That is, only a
word or two was used in each design, but, taken as a whole, it would make
sense.”
“And you think you have the phrase?”
“I do, Florence! Why couldn’t it be: All
for one, one for all?”
“If the men were close friends, that
would be fairly logical. But the words we must juggle don’t make such a
sentence, Jane.”
“Obviously there must be a fourth
sailor whose tattoo includes the words, ‘for all,’” I pointed out. “Then it
would fit perfectly.”
“Just because four men were pals, you
think they would have such nonsense tattooed on their backs?”
“That’s my theory.”
“If you’re right, then the mystery is
solved.”
“Far from it,” I said. “I haven’t
learned who pushed Richard Hamsted from the bridge or why. You remember how
Anchor Jim talked about someone who had ratted?
The four of them must have been in on a scheme, and one man betrayed his
comrades.”
“Better bridle that imagination before
it takes you for too wild a ride,” said Florence.
“Then you think there’s nothing to my
theory?”
“I think that if you speculate upon it
much longer we’ll never get any work done,” Florence replied, turning once more
to her typewriter. “If you don’t spend
more time on your editorial duties and less time sticking your nose into other
people’s business, this week’s edition of Carter’s
All-Story Weekly will be nothing but more of Mrs. Dunst’s sentimental
verses. If you have to round out all the remaining pages with full page ads for
the League of Women Voters, I suspect we may not sell a single issue.”
Florence was right. I needed to get to
work. It wasn’t quite as bleak a picture as she was painting, but Mrs. Pruitt’s
latest offering, “Lady Porefield’s Larcenous Landlord,” needed considerable
pruning and paring if the Mrs. Browns of Greenville were not to be further
scandalized. The first thing to go would be a passage where the
impoverished-but-still-genteel Lady Porefield locks the larcenous landlord into
the bell tower of a church and sets the bell to clanging until his eardrums
burst and he is rendered permanently deaf.
I was starting to feel frightened for
Mrs. Pruitt’s husband. That level of dormant rage obvious in Mrs. Pruitt’s
prose was bound to come out in real life sooner or later. It might take as
little as Mr. Pruitt commenting uncharitably on the quality of supper or
leaving an errant dirty sock lying about for Mrs. Pruitt to snap and visit who
knew what horrors upon him.
I was also disappointed that Flo did
not take the matter of the tattoos more seriously.
I shook off my gloom and went to
consult Harry in the composing room. The pressman had proven to be worth many
times the small salary I paid him. Not only had he made the rotary presses
ready for service, but he had cleaned and oiled every usable piece of machinery
in the building. Eagerly, he awaited the day when we would print Carter’s All-Story Weekly in our own plant.
“Everything’s all set,” he told me.
“Whenever you give the word, we can go to press.”
“That’s fine. Florence and I have been
having a few difficulties, financial and otherwise. But I hope it won’t be long
now.”
I talked with Harry about various
technical problems, then returned to my desk. I slipped a sheet of paper into
my typewriter and composed a letter to the well-known steamship, the Darling
Dora.
I put the letter in my pocket and
walked down the hall to Florence’s office.
“Do you mind staying here alone for a
while?” I asked her.
“No, of course not. Where are you
going?”
“To mail an important letter. Then I
want to drive out to Firth’s farm and see Mrs. Timms.”
“I’ll look after everything until you
get back,” Florence promised. She glanced curiously at the letter but did not
ask to whom it was directed.
I dropped the stamped envelope into a
convenient corner mailbox, and then drove to the outskirts of the city. As I
neared Drexel Boulevard, it occurred to me that I never had found time to
revisit Marcus Roberts’s home. Henrietta still owed me an explanation for the
way she’d acted that day I’d seen her on the Flamingo. I decided to stop and see if she was alone.
I spun the wheel and followed the boulevard to the Robertses’ home. The iron gate stood open. I drove through and up the curve of cement to the house.
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