“Oh, I was afraid something dreadful had happened to her,” Mrs. Timms said. “It is all my fault. Why did I allow her to go away with that man?”
“The strange thing is that she would leave willingly.”
I called the Examiner office and told Dad that Mrs. Timms’ had identified Leonard Henderson as the man who’d come to get Clara from our house. Dad said he’d inform the police at once. He was confident that a net would be spread for the missing convict. For once, he was as alarmed over Clara’s welfare as I was.
I ran all the way to the Flo’s. This was the sort of news that needed to be related in person. Florence was shocked by the double piece of bad news, that Leo Silva was missing, and that Clara Jenson had gone away with a man thought to be Leonard Henderson.
“Do you suppose she knew he was an escaped convict?” Florence asked.
“I’m not sure, but I believe she was deathly afraid of someone, and it may have been him. Clara is a nervous wreck these days. It would be easy to influence her by threats.”
“But how did she ever get mixed up in such an affair? Poor Clara!”
“I feel certain she’s in grave danger, Flo. We simply have to find her!”
“But what can we do? We haven’t the faintest idea where she went.”
“One angle of this case has never been investigated. From the very first, Clara was afraid of Mrs. Fitz.”
“She did act that way.”
“Mrs. Fitz did something which terrified Clara,” I said. “I’d like to learn what it was.”
“That woman would never tell us anything.”
“I realize it would be useless to question her, but I have another scheme in mind.”
“What is it?” Florence asked.
“I have a theory Mrs. Fitz may know this man Henderson. Now suppose we hide out and see what goes on in the doll shop. I have a notion she never bought that place because she was interested in building up a doll business!”
“Don’t you think it might prove dangerous to attempt anything like that? If Mrs. Fitz should suspect—”
“We’ll see to it that she doesn’t.”
“I’m willing to take a risk if you are,” Flo said. “Poor Clara.”
Flo came and picked me up in her father’s car, and we speeded to the outskirts of Greenville, slowing only when we came in sight of the doll shop. The blinds were drawn and there was no sign of activity.
“Do you suppose the shop is closed?” Florence asked.
“It looks that way. Perhaps Mrs. Fitz has gone away, too. Disappearances seem to be the vogue just now.”
We parked in the next block, then loitered in front of the grocery store across the street and watched the doll shop for a few minutes from a distance.
A sign, reading: “Out of Business,” had been posted on the door.
“Why should Mrs. Fitz close the shop so soon after she bought it?” I asked.
“Maybe her business fell off so that it wasn’t profitable.”
“With a disposition like hers, I don’t doubt she lost customers, but it isn’t likely she’d give up so soon. No, Florence, Mrs. Fitz never intended to run this place as a doll shop.”
“Then why did she try to buy it?”
“That’s just what I mean to learn! Come along, Flo, let’s go around to the rear of the building.”
The curtains on the alley side of the shop had also been drawn shut.
“We can’t learn anything here,” Florence declared. “The place is closed, all right.”
“It looks like it. I wish we could get inside somehow.”
I tested the door. It was locked. Flo started to walk away.
“Wait,” I said. “I’m not giving up so easily. I have an idea!”
“You and your ideas!” Florence said, but she came back.
“I know how we might get inside. Remember Clara telling us that one of these back windows wouldn’t lock. She complained several times to the building owner but couldn’t get him to do anything about it.”
“Jane, are you aiming to land in jail? I’m not going to force my way into any shop! If we were caught, we’d be arrested!”
“Oh, Dad could bail us out.”
I grinned. Flo scowled.
“Besides, there is no policeman in this district,” I said.
“It’s broad daylight,” Florence protested. “Someone would be certain to see us.”
“This alley is deserted, Flo.”
“I don’t see what you expect to gain if we do get inside. Anyway, the window probably has been fixed by this time.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
I moved along the wall, testing each window. Finally, I came to one which could be pushed up. I stuck my head through the opening and listened. All was quiet within.
“Here goes!” I said.
I swung myself up to the ledge and over the sill. Florence had a little struggle with herself and then decided to follow. Flo’s shorter and a bit on the stout side, so I grabbed her by the wrists and pulled. Florence squirmed through the opening, landing in an ungainly heap on the floor.
“It’s lucky the place is deserted.” I laughed. “You arrived with more noise than a fire engine!”
“Pull down that window before someone catches us. I don’t enjoy this business even a little bit.”
I closed the window and looked around the room. The showcases were still filled with dolls, just as Clara had left them, but everything was covered with a layer of dust. It looked as if the shop had not been swept out since Mrs. Fitz had taken over the business.
“Let’s have a look at the back room,” I said.
The living quarters were in an even worse state of disarray. The floor was strewn with clothing. The sink was filled with an accumulation of dirty dishes, and pots of molding food stood on the kitchen range.
“Such a mess!” Flo said. “How could any person be so untidy?”
I opened a closet. Clara’s neatly pressed dresses hung in an orderly row, a distinct contrast to the remainder of the room. However, one frock lay on the floor. I picked it up. It appeared to have been slashed with a knife.
“Mrs. Fitz probably did that when Clara ran away,” I said. “She has a violent temper, as I’m willing to testify.”
Flo picked up a folded newspaper from the table.
“This is yesterday’s paper, Jane!”
I took the paper from Flo’s hand and looked at the front page. The headline story was an account of the second robbery at Silva’s séance parlor. It had been marked with a heavy black pencil.
“Look at this, Flo!” I said. “Mrs. Fitz evidently was interested in this story. I wonder why?”
I put the paper back exactly as Flo had found it and continued my survey of the room. Underneath the table was a pair of men’s shoes.
“Notice anything peculiar about these shoes, Flo?”
“Only that it’s very strange that Mrs. Fitz should have men’s shoes.”
“I mean the size. These shoes look as if they might just about fit the footprints we discovered at the Smith cottage.”
“I don’t see how you can remember that well, Jane.”
“I measured them with my hand. Not terribly accurately, of course, but these shoes are just about the same size.”
“You should be a detective—”
Flo grasped my hand. A key was turning in a lock.
I pulled Flo toward the door leading into the showroom.
“Down behind the counter!” I whispered.
Scarcely had we dropped out of sight, when Mrs. Fitz entered through the front door of the shop. She did not bother to turn the key again in the lock. Our escape had not been cut off. It would be much easier to get out through the door than to reattempt the window.
Previously, whenever we’d seen Mrs. Fitz, she’d hobbled along. She now had a surprisingly youthful tread. She walked past the counter into the back room. Apparently, she had not noticed anything amiss.
“Now!” Flo whispere
d.
I nodded, and we crept noiselessly from our hiding place. An unexpected sound from the next room caused us to freeze against the wall. Mrs. Fitz had emerged into plain view. For one terrifying second, it seemed inevitable that she would see us, but she did not even glance in our direction. She went to a cupboard and took out a large pasteboard box.
Flo tugged at my hand, but I had forgotten all about escaping. I was too curious about what Mrs. Fitz would do next.
Mrs. Fitz opened the pasteboard box. She removed several weird looking objects. Witch dolls. Six of them. Mrs. Fitz sat down on the floor, lined up all six in her lap and crooned over them.
“Little dears,” she muttered in a weird rough voice. “Little imps of evil, you will yet accomplish your work—you will avenge the great injustice done Leonard Henderson!”
CHAPTER 24
We crept back to our hiding place behind the counter. From our vantage point, we had a clear view through the glass case into the workroom.
After a few minutes, we could hear Mrs. Fitz moving about. She carried the pasteboard box—containing the dolls, I assumed—and pushed it out of sight under the cot in the workroom. She then brewed herself a cup of coffee and ate a lunch of canned beans and cold meat.
“Let’s go,” Flo whispered. “We’ve learned all we can.”
I shook my head.
Mrs. Fitz finished her lunch and dumped the dishes onto the putrid pile in the sink. She then set to work making sandwiches, using plain slabs of meat between unbuttered, moldy bread.
I thought Flo might heave up Jonah.
“How could any creature eat such vile food?” she said.
“I bet she isn’t going to eat those. They must be meant for some other person.”
Mrs. Fitz took a brown earthenware jug and filled it with water from the tap at the sink. She then put the jug beside the sandwiches.
Mrs. Fitz crossed the room again. She took off the brass-rimmed spectacles she always wore and laid them on the table. Then she grasped her hair and wrenched it off. It was a gray wig. Underneath her hair was black and trimmed short.
But she wasn’t a she. Without the wig and the spectacles, it was apparent that Mrs. Fitz had been a man wearing a disguise.
The man moved to the sink and splashed his face with water.
“What is he doing?” Flo whispered.
At first, it looked as if the man’s face was melting, but then I realized that he’d applied theatrical makeup to create the illusion of wrinkled skin. He pulled off the disguise in strips and wiped his face with a dirty towel he’d picked up off the floor.
Only when his makeup was gone, did the man took off the long dark dress he wore. Then he removed the padding which had comprised Mrs. Fitz’s ample bustline and caboose.
Underneath it all, he was dressed in a dingy union suit.
“I wonder if he’s ever washed that horrid thing,” Flo whispered.
The man turned toward us and the overhead bulb over the kitchen sink fully illuminated his face.
“Leonard Henderson!” I whispered to Flo. “Dad showed me his picture!”
Henderson, just as Mrs. Timms had noted, had altered his physic considerably. He resembled the “after” in one of those “Be the Man She’s Always Dreamed Of” ads one runs across in the back of magazines.
He had also dyed his hair and eyebrows coal black.
Henderson placed the discarded dress and padding in a suitcase. He slid the suitcase under the cot next to the pasteboard box containing the witch dolls. He then took a shirt and a black suit of men’s clothing from a pile in the corner and hastily dressed. Last of all, he put on a grey felt hat.
“That looks like what that man in the bushes was wearing,” Flo whispered.
Leonard Henderson turned once more to the stove. He gave the electric range a hard shove, and moved it sideways out of position, revealing a door cut into the flooring underneath. He pulled up the trap. Henderson took a flashlight from under the sink, tucked the jug of water under his right arm and the sandwiches under his left, then cautiously lowered himself down into the hole.
“Good heavens,” Flo whispered.
We waited for several minutes, and when Henderson did not come back, we tiptoed to the gaping hole where the man had vanished. Looking down into the opening, I could see nothing but a rickety ladder descending into pitch black.
“What do you suppose is down there, Jane?”
“A prison, Flo. That fiend is probably holding Leo Silva a captive.”
“Silva? Then that shatters your theory that he was spirited away by Spider.”
I did not answer. Instead, I went to the cot and pulled the suitcase out from beneath it as quietly as I could manage. I removed the dress, the wig and the padding which Henderson had worn while posing as Mrs. Fitz. Something still lay at the bottom of the suitcase.
I smiled at Flo.
“I was right!” I said.
In the bottom of the case, lay another strange padded object, complete with leather straps.
“What in the world is that?” Florence asked.
“I’ll show you.”
I slipped the leather straps over my shoulders so that the pads fell into position on my back. Bending low, I took a few steps across the room. Florence instantly caught the idea.
“Another disguise!”
“Yes, and a very clever one. Henderson pawned himself off as Spider, the hunchback!”
“But how could he change his face and voice?”
“The man is a marvelous actor, and he used theatrical makeup to tremendous effect. All that hideous scarring on Spider’s face had to be just as much of a sham as Mrs. Fitz’s wrinkles.”
I took off the humps and placed them back in the suitcase.
“We have plenty of evidence now, Flo,” I said. “Now the thing to do is to get the police here as quickly as we can.”
“Yes, that man may take a notion to come back any minute.”
“Go straight to the police station, and bring help as fast as possible,” I told Flo.
“You’re coming with me!” Flo insisted. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you here alone.”
“No, someone should stay here and watch.”
“Jane, I’m afraid to leave you.”
“Hurry!” I gave her a little push. “After you’ve called the police, telephone Dad at the office. I’d hate to have him miss a big story.”
“I’ll take care of everything and get back here just as quickly as I can,” Florence promised.
Left alone in the empty doll shop, I moved quietly over to the hole in the floor. It would be a simple matter to close the trap, swing the range back into place, and keep Leonard Henderson a prisoner. I then rejected the idea. There was bound to be another exit.
I went back to my hiding place behind the counter, expecting Henderson to return, but he did not. I must have been right about the second exit, I decided. There was no way of knowing whether Leonard Henderson was still down in the tunnel, or if he’d slipped out another way.
I had just convinced myself to wait for the cavalry to arrive rather than rushing into the line of fire on my own when I heard a faint scream waft up from the gaping hole in the floor.
In hindsight, I don’t see how it could have been a scream I heard. Perhaps it was the hinges on the screen door creaking in the wind, or perhaps it was the far-off call of a mildly distressed bird. Whatever it was—scream or no scream—I could no longer bring myself to do the sensible thing.
I went back to retrieve my handbag from under the showroom counter and took out the cosh I’d concealed there.
Clutching the cosh in my left hand, I cautiously stepped onto the top rung of the steep ladder.
It was then that I heard the bell on the front door jingle. Someone had entered the shop.
I weighed my options. It was unlikely to be Leonard Henderson. He had gone down into the tunnel, and if there was another entrance to the underground chamber, I could think of no reason he might u
se it for the sole purpose of returning to the shop.
It could be Flo, come back for me, but that too seemed unlikely.
Whoever it was, I wanted to face them in broad daylight, rather than in a dark tunnel. I took a deep breath, climbed back into the workroom and strode purposefully out into the showroom.
“Jane!”
It was Jack, although I hadn’t the foggiest why he’d be patronizing Clara Jensen’s Doll Shop. The man doesn’t even have any nieces.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I met Flo and came straight over.”
“She told you everything?”
“I think so, but she was rather in a hurry.”
“You’re just in time,” I said. “I was hoping for a big six to go ahead of me into that dark tunnel.”
“I’m a big six? And why are you going into dark tunnels?”
“Surely, you’ve heard of how the big strong man is supposed to protect the dainty female when they explore dark tunnels together.”
“I wasn’t aware dainty females carried coshes,” Jack said, staring at the object I gripped in my left hand. “Where did you get that thing?”
“Ordered it out of the back of Pittman’s Weekly. Genuine India Rubber,” I said, as I struck my right palm with the cosh and then pocket it. “Got to keep the advertisers happy; I know where my bread and butter comes from.”
“Couldn’t you have settled for a bottle hair-restorer or one of those pamphlets on ‘How to be Fascinating’?”
“I don’t need my hair restored, and I never fail to fascinate,” I said. “Are you coming with me or not?”
I had counted fourteen steps before we reached the bottom. The air was damp and musty.
I could see nothing, but when I reached out my arms I could touch either wall, so I deduced that I was in a narrow passageway. I groped my way along the cold walls.
I froze when I heard a man’s voice. I could feel Jack only inches behind me in the darkness.
“Are you quite comfortable, my master?” said the man, his voice fairly dripping with sarcasm. “Drink your fill, dear Silva, for this day will be your last!”
We could see a bit of light now, and we crept down the tunnel until we reached an arching doorway opening into a dimly lit room. I shrank back against the wall, just far enough into the darkness to remain hidden, but just close enough to see the prisoner.
Peril at the Pink Lotus: A Jane Carter Historical Cozy (Book One) (Jane Carter Historical Cozy Mysteries 1) Page 13