Sinister Goings-on in Room Seven: A Jane Carter Historical Cozy (Book Two) (Jane Carter Historical Cozy Mysteries 2)

by Alice Simpson

  I stepped into the empty wardrobe and slid the panel open.

  “Flaming eyes,” I said to myself.

  “What are you saying?” demanded Florence.

  “Step inside, and you’ll understand,” I said.

  Florence took my place.

  “There are two small slits cut in the wall which exactly fit my eyes,” she said. “I can see right into room seven of Old Mansion!”

  “No wonder Emma thought that the eyes of those portraits seemed alive,” I said. “They were.”

  Florence emerged from the wardrobe.

  “But why didn’t we discover the trick?” she demanded. “I understand now that Ralph or Violet or some other accomplice could stand here and see exactly what goes on in room seven, but why did we never notice the slits in the paintings?”

  “Because they took care of that little detail. If you’ll step back into the wardrobe again, you’ll notice a pair of painted eyes hanging on a little peg. They were in place, but I removed them.”

  “You mean someone fitted canvas eyes into the paintings during the day time, and then when they wished to use the peepholes, simply removed them?”

  “That’s just what I do mean. And did you notice that flashlight stashed in the corner.”

  “Yes, what significance does it have?”

  “I’m not sure, but I believe that light shown upward on the watcher’s face might produce the effect of flaming eyes when viewed at night in a dark room.”

  “But how did Ralph get Mr. Merriweather’s jewels, and the paintings? He can’t have kidnaped three men through these slits in the canvas!”

  “No,” I said, “but the flaming eyes were part of the scheme. Unless I’m mistaken, we’ll find—”

  I broke off. I could hear voices downstairs. I flipped off the light switch, and Florence extinguished the flashlight.

  “The other room,” I whispered to Flo.

  We felt our way to the opposite wall. I located the latch on the heavy wooden door. The bolt slid back easily.

  CHAPTER 24

  I was not nearly as shocked as Flo by what greeted us when I opened that heavy wooden door on the second floor of Sing Lee’s Laundry.

  As soon as I slid back the bolt and opened the door a crack, light flooded out of the opening. I flung the door open and was faced with two Chinese persons.

  There were two prisoners: a young woman about my age and an older gentleman, huddled up in the corner. I thought at first that the man was sleeping, but then he groaned and turned over, and I could see that he’d been badly beaten.

  “Quick!” said the girl, springing to her feet. “Shut the door.”

  She pulled the door closed by fitting her hand under the crack at the bottom, but there was no way of latching it from the inside.

  The girl didn’t ask who Flo and I were or what we were doing there. She motioned to a pile of thin mattresses and bedding stacked in the corner and said, “You’d better hide.”

  Flo and I arranged ourselves as best we could behind the bedding. The girl switched off the light, lay down on the rug, and pretended to sleep.

  We waited in silence for a minute or two before we heard footsteps ascending the stairs.

  “We’ll have to leave the paintings,” I heard Violet say. “Let’s just get the gold and the jewelry and go.”

  “I don’t see why we should leave the paintings behind,” a man’s voice protested. I was pretty sure it must be Ralph. “It’ll only take a few minutes longer to pack them up.”

  “We’re going to get caught,” Violet said. “I told you we should have just killed them all and dumped their bodies in the river.”

  “How was I to know one of them would get away?”

  There were a few minutes of rattling about while Ralph and Violet worked in silence, then we heard footsteps approaching the door of our hideout.

  “Ralph, how could you be so careless!” Violet said from the other side of the door, before flinging it wide open. Light streamed into the room. Flo and I kept our heads down and, judging by the silence, the Chinese girl on the rug continued to pretend she was sleeping. The beaten man moaned from his corner.

  Violet abruptly slammed the door shut again, apparently satisfied that her chickens had not flown the coop. I heard the bolt slide back into place.

  “Did they get away?” Ralph asked. “And it wasn’t me who left the bolt open.”

  “Well, it seems they were too stupid to know the difference, anyway,” said Violet. “What should we do with them?”

  “Leave them where they are,” said Ralph.

  “But, isn’t it rather cruel to leave them like that?” said Violet.

  “We can’t afford for them to talk,” said Ralph. “You want to shoot them now, and put them out of their misery?”

  Evidently, Violet, despite her loose talk of dumping bodies in the river, was not in the mood for homicide, because they departed without bloodshed.

  We waited in silence for several minutes before the young woman got up, switched on the light, came over to our hiding place, and motioned for us to come out quietly.

  She, Flo and I sat on the rug in the middle of the room and looked at each other. We were all prisoners now.

  “Is that your father?” I asked, motioning to the injured man huddled up in the corner.

  “Yes,” she said listlessly.

  “Mr. Sing Lee?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Did Ralph do that to him?”

  “Ralph and a couple of others,” Miss Lee said. “It was over a week ago, and I’m afraid if I don’t get him out of here soon—”

  “But what happened? How did you come to get mixed up with Ralph and Violet?”

  “My uncle got involved with the opium trade,” said Miss Lee, “and he somehow ended up owing Ralph a large sum of money.”

  “But what did that have to do with your father?”

  “Well, my father and his brother own this laundry together. My Uncle put up most of the money to buy the equipment, and my father and I ran the business.”

  “So, when your uncle didn’t pay up, Ralph came after your father.”

  “Yes. At first, Ralph was intent on collecting on my uncle’s debt. My father didn’t object to continuing to work while Ralph skimmed all the profits, but then Ralph met that man from next door, and they came up with a horrible scheme—"

  “It was you who wrote that note,” I said to Miss Lee.

  “You discovered it?” she asked. “I must have written over fifty of those messages on collar stays, but I guess they were too subtle and no one else noticed.”

  “It was very clever,” I said. “Interspersing an English message asking for help amongst all that Chinese lettering.”

  “What’s that smell?” Flo interrupted.

  Wisps of smoke filtered up through the crack under the door. I suddenly understood the significance of Ralph and Violet’s conversation about the cruelty of leaving Mr. Sing Lee and his daughter locked up in the laundry.

  “They’ve taken the loot and made a run for it,” I said.

  “And they’ve set fire to the building to destroy the evidence!” said Flo, her voice quavering.

  In a few minutes, the entire laundry might become an inferno. I sprang to my feet and dumped water into the basin on the wash stand. I pulled up the small rug which we’d been sitting on and dampened it, then rolled the damp rug up and shoved it into the crack under the door. That would keep out most of the smoke for a while. At least, we wouldn’t suffocate before the flames reached us.

  “Lift me up,” I said to Flo. “Maybe I can get someone’s attention.”

  Flo lifted me up so that I was looking out the room’s single tiny barred window which overlooked the river. Far below, I could see the murky Grassy, flowing tranquilly beneath the stars.

  I distinguished the black outline of a rowboat floating close beside the building. It was Mud Cat Joe—I was almost certain—but could I attract his attention?

&nbs
p; I banged against the window with my fists, so hard I thought the glass might break, but Mud Cat Joe did not hear me. The boat was slowly drifting away. It drifted further and further, but I continued to pound on the glass until it shattered, and I heard the broken pieces splash as they fell into the river.

  I yelled again, but it was too late, Mud Cat was too far away to hear me.

  CHAPTER 25

  There was only one way out now. The inspiration had come to me while I’d balanced precariously on Flo’s shoulders and battered at the window.

  “We’ll have to break down the wall,” I said.

  Flo and Miss Lee looked at me as if I’d lost my marbles.

  “The wall?” said Flo. “I don’t think that’s possible. Wouldn’t it be more practical to try and break the door down.”

  I went to the door and felt it.

  “It’s already hot,” I said. “They must have started the fire on the second story. Even if we could break down the door, we’d be immediately engulfed by flames. We might be able to break through this wall, however.”

  I tapped the wall speculatively.

  “Old Mansion and this building are both wood construction,” I continued. “If I’m judging the distance correctly, the upstairs bath in Old Mansion is just beyond this partition.”

  “I suppose anything is worth trying, at this point,” said Flo. “But we can hardly break down lathe and plaster with our bare hands.”

  I’d thought of that myself.

  “That!” I said and pointed to small chimneyless Victorian parlor stove in the corner. It was cast iron, with pointed chrome ornamental piece attached to the top. I walked over and touched it. It was cool.

  “That’s too heavy,” said Flo. “You’ll never be able to lift it.”

  “No,” I said. “But all three of us can.”

  We gave it a try, Miss Lee and I in the front, and Flo holding onto the bottom. We swung it like a battering ram, the pointed ornamental piece making contact with the wall first. Our first attempt was very disappointing. We only managed to break off the ornamental piece and barely made a dent in the plaster.

  “Again,” I said. “Let’s take a run at it this time.”

  The room was too small to get much of a run at it, but even a few feet made all the difference. This time we broke a small hole through the first layer of lathe and plaster.

  “Again!” I cried.

  On our ninth try, we saw a bit of light from the other side. The hole was far too small still to get through, but success spurred us on.

  “Everyone yell,” said Flo. “Every time, just before we hit the wall, shout ‘Help!’”

  I didn’t think anyone who hadn’t already been alerted to the fact that someone was breaking through the wall would notice a bit of yelling, but I followed Flo’s lead anyway.

  The hole was getting bigger, bit by bit, but so were the wisps of smoke leaking in around the door frame.

  From the street below, I heard the bell on the hook and ladder truck. The volunteer fire brigade had arrived. Some passerby must have seen smoke and sounded the alarm.

  “Should we try yelling out the window again?” suggested Miss Lee.

  “No time,” I said. “Besides, we’ve almost broken through.”

  It took three more rams before we finally had a hole big enough to crawl through.

  Flo went through first, and Miss Lee coaxed her injured father into crawling to the opening. He was badly hurt, but we had no option of leaving him behind. I feared we had only a few minutes before the flames burned through the stout wooden door, and the room we’d been imprisoned in was engulfed.

  We’d broken through the wall directly above the bathtub in the upstairs’ bath.

  I yelled as loud as I could, but no one came. Emma and Mrs. Fairchild must have wisely left the house and gone out to the street when the hook and ladder arrived. I was worried now, not just about the laundry going up in smoke, but that it would take Old Mansion down with it.

  “I’m sorry to have to do it, but we’ll have to pull your father through by force,” I said to Miss Lee before clambering through the opening.

  “Even if we ran down to the street to get help,” I told Flo, as I emerged into the bathroom, “no one’s going to be able to enter this room through the attic. The flames have spread too far. The only way out is through this hole.”

  Flo was the strongest of the three of us, so she stood in the bathtub, inserted her upper body back into the hole and extended her arms.

  “He’s passed out completely, now, ” Miss Lee said.

  “Give me his arms!” Flo instructed.

  Flo took ahold of Mr. Lee’s arms, and I wrapped my arms around Flo’s waist. On Flo’s command, I pulled. It took three tugs, but after the third attempt, the mercifully unconscious Sing Lee lay in the upstairs bathtub.

  I rushed down the stairs and into the street, blessedly free.

  “We’ve got an injured man in here!” I yelled at a group of volunteers pumping water from the river and squirting it onto the roof of the laundry.

  Twenty minutes later, Flo and I were standing in the street with Emma and Mrs. Fairchild looking up at the blackened carcass of the laundry. The fire still was not out, but well under control. Old Mansion would sustain some smoke damage, certainly in the bathroom, but the structure itself appeared safe.

  Just a few minutes before, Mr. Lee had been taken away to Doctor Hamsted’s. Miss Lee had gone with him. I hoped the unfortunate man would not suffer any permanent damage from the beating he’d received from Ralph and his minions.

  I wondered how far Ralph and Violet had gotten.

  “I hope all the evidence against Ralph and his confederates didn’t get destroyed,” Flo said, echoing my thoughts.

  Before I could answer, I saw an automobile draw up at the curbing.

  “There’s Dad!” I said and ran across the street.

  “Jane!” he cried. “This building must be saved! I’ve just learned that a gangster by the name of Ralph Zantello is the one behind everything! He’s been hiding out right next door. Valuable evidence will be found in that laundry!”

  “You’re telling me!” I said.

  Dad obviously had no suspicion that his daughter had just escaped death. He and Clarence Emerson ran to help the fire fighters, but their services were not required. In a few minutes, they came back, satisfied that the blaze was under control.

  “Dad, how did you learn about Ralph?” I asked.

  “From Jack,” replied my father. “Clarence and I just came from the hospital.”

  “Is he better?”

  “Yes, perfectly rational again. He told us what happened. It’s a fantastic story, and it may not be true in every particular, although Jack seemed to realize what he was saying.”

  “After tonight, I’d believe anything,” I said.

  “Jack learned everything while he was being held a prisoner. Mr. Zantello induced Glen Conrad to go in with him on a scheme to steal Mrs. Fairchild’s paintings. Mrs. Conrad, however, had nothing to do with the plot, although she realized what was afoot when cheap paintings were substituted for the originals.”

  “It was a crude scheme.”

  “From Glen Conrad’s standpoint, yes. But he was a weak character, and he felt confident Mrs. Fairchild never would return to discover the deception. Of course, unwittingly, Conrad played into Zantello’s hands. By threatening him with exposure, Glen could be induced to agree to anything.”

  “Then he had a part in those mysterious disappearances?”

  “No active part, Jack says, but he had a very good idea of what had occurred. Ralph Zantello was the one who placed those four portraits in room seven, all against the east wall.”

  “I could tell you something about those pictures,” I said, but my father did not even notice the interruption.

  “This is the part I can’t believe,” Dad went on. “I fear Jack is still a bit mixed up. Anyway, he claims that after he retired to room seven that night of th
e party, all was quiet for nearly two hours. He was just dozing when he became aware of a strange scent in the room.”

  “Floral,” I said. “I remember that.”

  “Jacks says the smell grew overpowering and the effects of whatever it was—”

  “Opium,” I said. “I bet it was opium. Having never smoked the stuff, Jack was probably sensitive—as were both Harwood and Merriweather.”

  “What do you know about opium?” Dad demanded.

  “Don’t worry, Dad,” I said. “All my research has been purely of the academic variety.”

  “Anyway, the effects of the opium—if that’s what it was—must have been already impeding his judgment,” Dad continued his story, “because instead of sticking his head out into the hall and yelling for help, Jack went to the window, drew up the sash and opened the shutters. He breathed in some fresh air, but he was still feeling dizzy, so he remained by the window until a noise drew his attention toward the paintings on the east wall. Then the eyes of those paintings, four pairs of them, focused upon him. The way Jack described it made chills run down my spine.”

  “Then what happened, Dad?”

  “The sight of those eyes staring at him was terrifying. Even in his altered state of mind, he realized that something was afoot, so he snapped the photograph, and moved to the door. It was locked—probably from some trick mechanism. Jack insists that he had not locked it himself. He tried frantically to open the door, but he was a prisoner in the room.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Jack says one of the paintings swung away from the wall, as if on hinges. Then a ghostly figure swathed in black and wearing the hideous mask depicting the face of a raven, emerged from the opening. The figure was brandishing a sword, and Jack says he tried to cry out, but in his terror, he barely made a squeak. The sword-wielding figure advanced toward him, and Jack’s one thought was to get out of that room. He was frightened out of his wits at that point, and took the only way of escape available to him.”

  “The window,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Which dropped him straight into the river.”

  “Yes, the cold plunge brought him to his senses, but before he could start to swim for shore, a motor boat came alongside, and he was hauled into it by two men. Jack was robbed of his watch and a ring, and taken downstream to a houseboat.”