My eyes, as I muttered this, were on the one shop in my line of vision that was still open and lighted. It was the den of a Chinese laundryman, and through the windows in front I could see him still at work, ironing.
“Ah!” thought I, and made such a start across the street that Lena gasped in dismay and almost fell to the ground in her frightened attempt to follow me.
“Not that way!” she called. “Miss Butterworth, you are going wrong.”
But I kept right on, and only stopped when I reached the laundry.
“I have an errand here,” I explained. “Wait in the doorway, Lena, and don’t act as if you thought me crazy, for I was never saner in my life.”
I don’t think this reassured her much, lunatics not being supposed to be very good judges of their own mental condition, but she was so accustomed to obey, that she drew back as I opened the door before me and entered. The surprise on the face of the poor Chinaman when he turned and saw before him a lady of years and no ordinary appearance, daunted me for an instant. But another look only showed me that his very surprise was inoffensive, and gathering courage from the unexpectedness of my own position, I inquired with all the politeness I could show one of his abominable nationality:
“Didn’t a gentleman and a heavily veiled lady leave a package with you a few days ago at about the same hour of night as this?”
“Some lalee clo’ washee? Yes, ma’am. No done. She tellee me no callee for one week.”
“Then that’s all right; the lady has died very suddenly, and the gentleman gone away; you will have to keep the clothes a long time.”
“Me wantee money, no wantee clo’!”
“I’ll pay you for them; I don’t care about them being ironed.”
“Givee tickee, givee clo’! No givee tickee, no givee clo’!”
This was a poser! But as I did not want the clothes so much as a look at them, I soon got the better of this difficulty.
“I don’t want them tonight,” said I. “I only wanted to make sure you had them. What night were these people here?”
“Tuesday night, velly late; nicee man, nicee lalee. She wantee talk. Nicee man he pullee she; I no hear if muchee stasch. All washee, see!” he went on, dragging a basket out of the corner, “him no ilon.”
I was in such a quiver; so struck with amazement at my own perspicacity in surmising that here was a place where a bundle of underclothing could be lost indefinitely, that I just stared while he turned over the clothes in the basket. For by means of the quality of the articles he was preparing to show me, the question which had been agitating me for hours could be definitely decided. If they proved to be fine and of foreign manufacture, then Howard’s story was true and all my fine-spun theories must fall to the ground. But if, on the contrary, they were such as are usually worn by American women, then my own idea as to the identity of the woman who left them here was established, and I could safely consider her as the victim and Louise Van Burnam as the murderess, unless further facts came to prove that he was the guilty one, after all.
The sight of Lena’s eyes staring at me with great anxiety through the panes of the door distracted my attention for a moment, and when I looked again, he was holding up two or three garments before me. The articles thus revealed told their story in a moment. They were far from fine, and had even less embroidery on them than I expected.