Jane Carter Investigates: Episode Ten
While I ran for a cloth to wipe up the spot on the floor boards,
Emma plunged the shirt into a pan of cold water under the spigot at the sink.
“Only part of the stain is coming out!” she wailed. “What shall I
do?”
“Let it soak for a while,” Florence suggested.
“Perhaps Mrs. Conrad has some stain remover fluid in the house,” I
said.
I searched through the cupboards and the shelves by the cellarway
but could find nothing which would serve the purpose. Emma continued to scrub
at the shirt.
“Well, it’s not coming out,” Emma said. “I may as well start
packing my things.”
“Mrs. Conrad might not say anything about it,” Florence ventured.
“She’ll say plenty,” Emma replied grimly. “Oh, why must I be so
awkward? It seems luck is just against me.”
“I have an idea!” I said. “There’s a laundry next door. We’ll take
the shirt over there and see if they can remove the stain!”
“You’ll never get it back in time,” Emma protested.
“Maybe we will,” I insisted. “Anyway, there’s nothing to lose by
trying. You keep on with that stupid ironing, Emma, while Florence and I see
what we can do. If Mrs. Conrad returns ahead of us, we’ll try to smuggle the
shirt into the basket without her seeing it.”
I wrapped the stained garment in an old newspaper, and Flo and I
went next door. The laundry—which proclaimed itself to be the establishment of
one Sing Lee— looked fairly new. It was a two-story building which stood so
close to Old Mansion that the walls touched.
We entered the laundry and were immediately greeted by a young
blond woman who would have looked more at home in a cabaret. She wore a long
string of pearls over her silk dress. Her bright-red hair was bobbed, and she’d
rimmed her eyes in kohl. I couldn’t imagine her doing any washing or ironing.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“Bluing was spilled on this garment,” I said, unwrapping the
shirt. “Can you remove the stain?”
The girl looked at the shirt.
“Ralph?” She yelled toward the back room.
“What do ya want now, Violet?” Ralph grumbled as he emerged.
Ralph looked even less like he belonged in a laundry than Violet.
He was a large, well-built man, dressed in a blue pinstriped suit. I had never
before seen a man keep his hat on indoors.
If I’d been forced to guess Ralph’s profession based purely on
appearance, I’d have gone for a bouncer at a better class of speakeasy. I
wondered how the apparently absent Mr. Lee had come to entrust his
establishment to the care of these two.
“It’s a very bad stain,” Ralph said, turning the garment over in
his hands, but barely looking at it. He seemed far more interested in examining
Flo and me.
Flo was drinking him in, her mouth gapping open. I gave her what I
hoped was a surreptitious jab to the ribcage. Flo can be a bit man-crazy, and
even I had to admit that Ralph was quite a fine specimen of manhood.
“Can you get the stain out?” I asked.
“I can get it out,” said Ralph. “Can you come back for it
tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow! We need it done right away. Say in fifteen minutes.”
Ralph shook his head and thrust the shirt back into my hands.
“You wouldn’t need to iron it,” I urged. “Just remove the stain
for us. That shouldn’t take long.”
“Fifty cents, cash up front,” Ralph said.
I was pretty sure that was many times the going rate for laundering
shirts, but I handed him the money, trying not to think how many gallons of gas
I could put in Bouncing Betsy for that princely sum.
Flo and I sat down on a hard, wooden bench to wait.
“He’s a Sheik,” Flo whispered as Ralph vanished into the rear room
and closed the door behind him. I heard a key turn in the lock after he entered
the room, then, behind the locked door, I heard him carrying on an indistinct
conversation with some other person who spoke so low I could not even tell if
it was a man or a woman.
The girl, Violet—and ostensibly, Ralph’s Sheba—remained at the
counter, examining her manicure and keeping watch on us out of the corner of
her eye. Ralph returned shortly and announced to the girl that he was going
out. He didn’t say where. Violet just nodded and went back to examining her
manicure.
“I hope whoever they’ve got back there does a good job on that
shirt,” Flo whispered.
I tilted my head backwards to look at the ceiling.
“Did you notice what you’re sitting under, Flo?”
Florence glanced up, and with a little cry of alarm, sprang to her
feet. A heavy silver sword with an intricately molded handle and a wicked
looking blade had been suspended over her head.
“Oh, it won’t bite you,” I said. ‘It looks quite secure.”
“I might be decapitated if it should fall from its support! You
don’t catch me sitting under that thing!”
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