The Case of the Petrified Man (25 page)

“Ah!” cried the girl. She laughed & clapped her hands & looked over her shoulder & called out something. Four other Celestials appeared out of nowhere & came up to me & circled around me, looking me up & down, and discussing me in rapid Chinese. When one of them came closer & tried to lift my wig to look under it, I thought, “Enough is enough.”

“Stop!” I cried. “I want to see Martha.”

Ping’s sister or cousin or whoever she was led me through a maze of rooms & corridors. I had been here the day before but I was just as confused by the twists & turns as I had been then.

I felt confident that nobody from outside would ever find Martha in this rabbit warren. This was certainly a Safe Haven.

Finally the Pretty Chinese Girl stood to one side & gave me a little bow. Here was the small wooden shed I had seen yesterday. It was still filled with sheets & tables & steam & the smell of starch. Martha was nestled in her large pile of crumpled sheets in one corner of the laundry. She was wearing pale blue Chinese pajamas & playing with some kind of
Chinese puzzle. Her head was uncovered and I could see that her hair had been washed & plaited. They must have used a different pomade, because she smelt like Chinese incense.

“Who’s that?” She looked up from her puzzle as I came forward.

“It is me,” I said. “P.K. Pinkerton. I am disguised as a Prim and Proper Girl.”

She sat up in her nest & clapped her hands & gave Expression No. 1: a Genuine Smile. “Why, P.K., you look just like a gal! What a pretty dress and bonnet.”

“You seem much recovered,” I observed.

“Yes, sir!” Martha gave me Expression No 1 again: a Genuine Smile. “An old Chinee lady give me some foul-tasting tea but I slept and slept and Doc Pinkerton just left and he says I’m all better now. He says he could not have cured me no better himself. He says I just need to rest.”

I nodded and came a little closer. “Martha,” I said in a low voice. “I think I have found Lieutenant Deforrest Robards.”

“Oh!” she cried, and covered her mouth with both her hands. “You found him?”

“I think so,” I said. “But I want to be sure. Miss Sally called him by his real name, but he is using another one here in Virginia. He may have changed his appearance, too, but my lawyer says that in the heat of passion people usually use their normal voices. So what I am going to ask you now is very important. Can you tell me what kind of accent the Killer had?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was it German? Or Irish? Or English? Or French?” I paused and then said carefully, “Or Southern?”

She frowned. “Why, none of those,” she said. “He didn’t have no accent at all.”

My spirits sank. I had been certain of another reply. “No accent at all?” I said. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “You bet. He sounded just like me and Miss Sally.”

My spirits revived a little. “So he had an accent like yours?”

She laughed. “I don’t have no accent, silly! You are the one with an accent.”

I said, “I have an accent?”

“Course!” she said. “You sound like a Mississippi Yankee!”

“But you do not have an accent?”

She put her hands on her hips and tipped her head to one side. “Course not. I talk normal.”

I nodded, happy again.

“Martha, when Lieutenant Deforrest Robards killed Miss Sally you were in the back room peeking through the latch hole. I know you can’t see faraway things very well, but you heard him clearly, didn’t you?”

She nodded, wide-eyed, and said, “The two of them woke me up with they yelling.”

“When he was yelling,” I said, “did he ever say anything like this?” I leaned in & whispered something in her ear.

“No,” she said. “He never.”

My spirits sank again.

Then Martha said, “It was Miss Sally that said that. Right before he strangulated her.”

Now I knew for sure who the Killer was.

MARTHA, I SAID,
“if I can find Lieutenant Deforrest Robards, would you testify against him in a court of law?”

Martha looked at me & then slumped down in her nest of sheets & dropped her head in her hands. She said something but her reply was muffled. That and her heavy Southern accent made it hard for me to understand.

“What did you say?” I asked, scrouching down beside her.

“I fear he will get me,” she said. “I ain’t even sure what he looks like. But he knows me.”

“He would not dare to hurt you in a public
place,” I said. Then I added, “You have been very brave so far. Fortune favors the brave. All you have to do is face him and point at him and say ‘you done it.’”

She was quiet for a moment, her head still down. Then she shook it. “I just can’t. I ain’t as brave as you.”

I nodded & stood up & looked around the starch-smelling shack full of crumpled snow-white sheets all waiting to be ironed.

I had solved the biggest Mystery in Virginia City but it seemed there was no way to convict the Killer.

“P.K.?” said Martha. She was looking up at me.

“Yes?”

“You are mighty brave. Why don’t you be me?”

“Beg pardon?”

“You look just like a gal in that getup. Why don’t you make your skin a tad darker and pretend to be me? Then
you
point the finger.”

I shook my head. “I have tried lots of disguises,” I said. “But that would be the hardest. The men who dress like that don’t even look real.”

Martha stood up. “Not like one of them minstrels that uses boot polish,” she said. “But if you get some burnt cork and cream you could mix up a natural-looking dark. But it ain’t just skin color. You got to walk and talk like me.” She pointed to her nightdress and sleeping bonnet, lying folded & clean on a tabletop nearby. “Put those things on and I will show you.”

And so began one of the strangest hours of my life. Martha showed me how to walk like her and coached me in saying a
phrase we had devised: “There is Short Sally’s killer. His real name be Deforrest Robards. He is a Reb that froze in a battle and then run off. They are after him.”

I had thought up the accusation, then Martha had put it in her own words. She told me Miss Sal had taken her to the Melodeon once or twice and that she wanted to be an actress or singer when she grew up.

As we worked together in that small room, Martha became more and more lively. She seemed a different person from the terrified girl I had met two days before.

I said, “You seem very different from the terrified girl I met two days before.”

She said, “That is because I now have friends like you and these nice Chinee people to protect me. And nobody beating on me now.”

“Did Miss Sal used to beat on you?”

“Only a little. But she didn’t mean nothing by it. It was for my own good. She risked her life to save me. She told me that every day.”

I said, “Would you like this here pink calico dress and bonnet? You can have these button-up boots, too. They are too tight for me but I reckon they will fit you.”

Martha looked up at me, her eyes wide in Expression No. 4. Then her mouth spread into a Genuine Smile.

“For keeps?” she breathed. “You ain’t joshing me?”

“For keeps,” I said. “I am not joshing you. I must now climb into another disguise.”

I paid Ping’s pretty cousin $2 to get me my own Chinese boy getup. Ping’s cousin also showed me how to tie up
Martha’s clean nightdress and bonnet—with my curly dark wig hidden inside—so that it looked like clean laundry to be delivered. Wearing my straw plate hat and carrying the parcel, I looked like a Chinese boy delivering laundry.

“Oh, P.K.!” said Martha, when I appeared. “You look just like a Chinee boy. You could be an actor, too.”

She had my pink calico dress on and the second white boot half buttoned.

“You look fine, too,” I said. “Do the boots fit?”

“Yes, sir, they fit like they was made for me.”

I said, “I must go now.”

Before I could stop her, she jumped up and kissed me on the cheek.

I usually do not like to be touched but she did it real quick so I did not mind too much.

“Wish me luck,” I said, straightening my straw plate hat.

“Fortune favors the brave,” she said.

I left her sitting on her pile of clean sheets, doing up the buttons on her left boot.

In my Chinese-laundry-boy disguise I made my way up from F to B, being careful that nobody was shadowing me. It was a fine sunny morning, and almost warm. When I got up to B Street I did not go into my office.

Instead I went across the thoroughfare to the Law Offices of Mr. William Morris Stewart, Attorney at Law. It was 11:20 a.m. on a Saturday morning, but I could see my sagebrush-bearded lawyer through the door window. He was sitting at a desk, going through papers & smoking a cigar.

I tapped on the door, then tried the handle. It was open.

Although he had taken his leave of me just an hour and a half before, he did not recognize me.

“It is me,” I said. “P.K. Pinkerton. I am in disguise.”

He was so astonished that his La Honradez cigar fell out of his mouth onto the desk.

“By Jove!” he said, quickly retrieving the cigar before it set his papers alight. “P.K. the Celestial! You are a veritable Pandora’s Box of surprises. Come in to my private room.”

He led the way into an inner room with a big walnut desk & leather armchair & oil painting & some high-up windows. I guess this was where he received his most important clients.

I quickly explained to him why I was in disguise & I told him I had asked Martha to testify against the man who killed Short Sally. Before I could finish, he interrupted me.

“Even if that little gal had eagle eyes and a memory like a dictionary,” he said, “it wouldn’t wash. Last year they passed a law that no Negro, Mulatto, Chinaman, Indian—or even half Indian like you—can testify against a white man in a court of law.”

“Well then, what if Martha could point out the Killer in a crowded public place?”

He pursed his lips, then nodded slowly. “That might make people sit up and take notice. Maybe force the Law to do something.” He took a long suck of his cigar and slowly blew out the smoke as he shook his head. “But from what you’ve told me about her, that ain’t going to happen. She is too scared.”

“You are a good judge of people,” I said. “You are right. But
Martha and I have come up with a clever plan of making that happen.”

He leaned forward. “Tell me,” he said.

“I am going to bait a trap for him,” I said, “just like you would bait a trap for any sneaking varmint.”

“What will you use as bait?” said Mr. William Morris Stewart.

“Me,” I said. “I will use me as bait.”

A QUARTER OF AN HOUR LATER,
at 11:45 a.m., I was knocking on the stage door of Topliffe’s Theatre. When it opened, who should look out but Miss Belle Donne! She was yawning and her light brown hair was coming unpinned here and there.

Seeing what she thought was a Chinese boy in blue pajamas and a straw plate hat, she spoke in Pidgin English. “What you want?” she said. “You deliver laundry?”

“Let me in, Belle,” I said. “It is me, P.K. Pinkerton. I am in disguise.”

Her eyes went wide, then narrowed into Expression No. 5. “Go away, P.K.,” she said.

“Did you sleep here last night?” I asked, using my Detective Skills.

“Yes,” she said. “Isaiah and I had a bad fight and it is all your fault. Now go
away
!”

“Belle!” I put my Chinese clog between the door & the doorjamb. Then I leaned my weight against the door, to push it open. “You have got to help me.”

“I don’t
got
to do anything,” she said, pushing the door from her side.

“He only visited Sally because he was making little photographs of her,” I said.

She continued to resist.

“And he only visited Miss Zoe Brown to buy you a new bonnet.”

She suddenly stopped pushing, so that the door flew open & I tumbled into the room.

“Oh, Pinky!” she cried, wringing her hands together. “I have been so miserable without him. I almost went and smoked a pipe. But I resisted Temptation and only had a few glasses of whiskey instead.”

I got to my feet & picked up my laundry parcel & dusted myself off. “I am glad you did not give into Temptation,” I said. “Now tell me, did you ever watch those Minstrel Singers putting on their black faces?”