“But she said she left by the fire escape,” Archie remembered. “Why didn’t you dust her then and grab the papers?”
“She was too smart for me. And too fast.” The spy sighed. “Instead of coming straight through the window, she sneaked up on it from the side. She'd scrambled into her clothes by then and she’d picked up a quart whiskey bottle that had been on the nightstand. From the angle of her approach, I couldn't see her coming. She was on me before I realized what she was up to. She cracked the bottle down on my wrist hard and I dropped the gun. Then she broke the damn thing over my head. By the time I stopped seeing stars, she was past me and half way down the fire escape.”
“Three things still puzzle me," Archie mused. “Who sicced her on the professor in the first place? How did she know the formula was in the safe, or even that there was a safe hidden behind that picture? And where did she get the combination to the safe?"
“The last two questions are simply answered,” the Russian told him. “Your French friend was typically Gallic when it came to women and quite garrulous when it came to liquor. Before I shot him, while I was listening outside on the fire escape, I was appalled at how easily the redhead wheedled information out of him. She was very good at getting him to talk about his work. The more interested she seemed, the more he blabbed. He told her all about the formula for making gold from base metals and explained its importance to her in terms of world economics. By egging him on to brag some more, she had him careless enough to mention the safe and to tell her that the combination was in his wallet. They even had a big laugh about how he’d been caught in a storm and the rain had soaked through his raincoat and almost obliterated the numbers of the combination.”
“But who was behind her?” Archie persisted.
“That I don’t know.” The Russian shrugged. “Either the Egyptians or the Chinese, I suppose. Outside of us, they’d have the most to gain from the formula because they’d have the most to gain from the devaluation of the gold the United States uses to redeem its currency abroad.
“The Egyptians? I hadn’t thought of them,” Archie admitted.
“I had,” Helen Steinberg said bitterly. “You can’t take your eyes off those sneaky Arabs for a minute they're stealing the mazuzah from around your throat. But it wasn’t them that put Dixie Keller up to stealing the formula,” she added positively.
“What makes you so sure?”
“Just take my word for it, I’m sure.”
“Then it must have been the Chinese,” the Russian was sure. “Those little, yellow, slant-eyed, fanatic bastards!”
“Such a way to talk! And from a Communist just like them, too! The Anti-Defamation League should only know!”
“Imperialist Zionist!” the Russian spat at her. “I’ll talk any way I feel like. And you’re not going to stop me, because I’m going to eliminate you right now.” He glared and clicked the safety off the revolver. “Both of you," he added.
“Why me? I didn’t say anything,” Archie pointed out with desperate logic.
“You know too much. You have to die. Sorry.”
“You're sorry?” Archie became angry. “How do you think I feel? It isn’t bad enough you’re going to rub me out, but thanks to you, I'm going to have to die a virgin!"
“Are you implying maybe that I’m not?” Helen Steinberg was indignant.
“Not at all.” Archie assured her. “No offense, really.”
“You’ll be better off dead, anyway," the Russian told her spitefully. “A nice Jewish girl like you sleeping with Chinks!”
“I never!” Helen Steinberg protested hotly.
“Well, the way you talk, you would if you had the chance. It makes my Russian blood boil to think of you with some yellow-bellied little slant-eyed Trotskyite!"
“That did it!”
All heads turned at the sound of the new voice from the doorway to the bedroom. The Russian’s head didn’t turn quite fast enough. Before he’d focused his eyes, two shots rang out and he pitched forward to the floor on his face.
“That’s no way,” Helen Steinberg chided the Oriental gentleman with the smoking revolver. “Violence is no answer to prejudice. You should turn the other cheekbone.”
“Too late now. missy.” The Chinese blew coolly down the barrel of the revolver to clear the smoke. “The chauvinist, capitalist Russian is dead. And good riddance! Now we see who really will bury whom!”
“How did you get in here?” Archie wondered.
“Through the front door. Somebody left it open.”
“That’s true.” Helen Steinberg confirmed it. “It was open when I came in before, too. When you were in the bathroom and I sneaked under the bed, I mean.”
“So that’s how you got there.” Archie nodded. “I was wondering about that. But how come Dixie didn’t see you?"
“I guess she must have been dead already yet.”
“Just what are you doing here?" Archie asked Helen Steinberg.
“What’s that? ” She ignored Archie’s question and pointed to a large bundle perched on the floor behind the Chinese.
“Laundry,” the Oriental told her.
“You mean you’re a laundryman?”
“I’ve found it to be an excellent cover-up for my real work in behalf of world Communism.”
“But it's a stereotype!” Helen protested. “Don’t you realize you’re playing into the hands of the bigots by taking on the guise of a laundryman? I mean. for a Chinese it’s like smiling enigmatically, or looking impassive."
The Chinese looked at her impassively. Slowly, an enigmatic smile creased his features. “What you’re saying is that an Oriental doesn’t dare be inscrutable even if he happens to feel inscrutable -- whatever that feeling may be," he told her. “Like all decadent democrats, you would rob us of our heritage.” The smile vanished and his features became inscrutable. “I’ll be a laundryman if it suits me to be a laundryman,” he said with true Oriental calm. “And if you don’t like it, you can just go to the laundromat and be damned. You people are all alike. Always complaining about too much starch, or too little starch, or losing your ticket! Always sounding off about the white man’s burden while it’s us who have to carry the laundry! It’s one helluva --”
“You’re losing your inscrutability,” Archie interrupted.
“So sorry.” The Chinese mocked him. “It’s just that I get so mad! But then we digress. To get back to the matter at hand, where is the formula?”
“We don’t know,” Archie said truthfully. “And personally I’m getting pretty tired of being asked.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re no more to be trusted than she was.” The Chinese pointed at the corpse of Dixie Keller. “She pretended to be a dedicated Mao-ist, got me to trust her and assign her to this Beaumarchais business, and then when she had the formula she went and double-crossed me with the Russians.”
“How did you get wind of the Beaumarchais formula in the first place?” Archie asked.
“His laundryman in Paris alerted us. He's one of our agents.”
“Are all Chinese laundrymen Communist spies?” Helen Steinberg exclaimed.
“Now who’s being chauvinistic?” the Chinese taunted her. “Just because I said he was a laundryman, you leap to the conclusion that he was Chinese. As a matter of fact, he happens to be a Laplander.”
“A Laplander laundryman in Paris?” Archie thought about it. “And a spy for the Chinese Communists to boot.”