“Laplanders can have an economic conscience, too, you know,” the Chinese put Archie down. “And he’s a good laundryman — except sometimes he tends to be a little heavy on the detergent.”
“You’re not implying that would be true of all Laplander laundrymen, I hope,” Helen Steinberg said anxiously.
“Not at all,” the Chinese assured her. “I have no prejudice whatsoever toward Laplander laundrymen. And in the case of this particular Laplander, believe me when I say that we work shoulder-to-shoulder for world revolution." He drew himself up. “But I can allow you to distract me from my purpose no longer,” he said firmly. “Where is the formula?”
“We don’t know!” Archie and Helen chorused.
“If that is true, then you will die for your ignorance. If it isn’t, you will die for your stubbornness.” The Chinese pointed the gun straight at Archie’s heart.
A shot rang out. A look of surprised inscrutability spread over the features of the Chinese. He hadn’t fired the shot. His eyelids lowered enigmatically until his eyes fastened on the Russian. He was still on the floor where he had fallen before, but now he was propped up on one elbow, gun still in hand. “You’re not dead.” The voice of the Chinese was impassive.
“Nyet.”
“But I shot you twice, straight through the heart.”
The Russian merely smiled broadly.
“What’s to smile about? ” Helen Steinberg wondered aloud.
“I always smile when it hurts,” the Russian told her.
“With me it’s the other way around,” the Chinese said. “It always hurts when I smile.”
“You sub-culture Orientals do everything backwards,” the Russian sneered.
“Don’t you sneer at me,” the Chinese sneered back. “If it wasn’t for these inferior guns you Russians palmed off on us, you’d be dead now!”
“That’s gratitude for you!” The Russian grimaced with pain. ‘There’s nothing wrong with our guns, and I can prove it! ” He shot the Chinese again.
The Chinese staggered over to where he was lying, placed his own gun against the top of the Russian’s head, and fired. The top of the Russian’s head flew off.
“Oooh! I’m splattered with Bolshevik brains!” Helen Steinberg made a face and shuddered.
“So sorry," the Chinese apologized as he sank to his knees. But I guess I’ll show him who’s going to bury whom,” he added as the bloodstain over his heart widened.
“But you're dying, too,” Archie pointed out.
“But I killed him first. You don’t understand, do you? That’s the whole trouble with you Americans. You’ll simply never understand the Asiatic concept of ‘face’.”
“I guess not,” Archie granted. “Any last requests before you kick off?”
“Yes,” the Chinese gasped. “Will you please see to it that that bundle of laundry gets delivered to 3C. I really only stopped off here on my way up there.” There was a rattle in his throat, and his breathing became extremely labored.
“Will do,” Archie assured him. “Well, it looks like you have to be going now. Ta-ta.”
“Ta-ta,” the Chinese echoed, stiffened momentarily, and fell back dead.
“He was true to his calling to the last,” Helen Steinberg said, picking up the bag of laundry and hefting it over her shoulder.
“Where are you going?”
“To carry out his dying request,” she told him over her shoulder as she carried out the laundry. “I’ll be right back.”
“Oh.” Archie shrugged off her departure. He had more important fish to fry. Systematically, he began ransacking Dixie Keller’s bedroom, looking for the stolen papers. He was still at it when Helen Steinberg returned a few moments later.
“This place is a mess,” she declared, standing in the doorway and looking from one to another of the bloody corpses strewn around the bedroom. “Why do men always have to be so sloppy when they murder people? Women aren’t like that. Take Lucrezia Borgia, for instance—”
“You take her,” Archie interrupted. “Right now I’ve got to locate those papers.”
“Well, they shouldn't be so hard to find.”
“Really?” Archie was sarcastic. “Well, suppose you tell me where to look, then.”
“All you have to do is think logically where a woman would hide something if she didn’t want it to be found.”
“And where would that be?”
“Well, most women would go through a sort of step-by-step process of reasoning.” Helen held her finger to her cheek. “Now, if I wanted to hide something around here, for instance,” she said, “the first place I might think of would be that box with the flushing thingamajig behind the toilet in the bathroom."
“Why would you think of that first?”
“Because it’s the last thing a woman would go near.”
“Oh. Well, that makes sense. Let’s have a look.”
“Don’t bother. It won’t be there.”
“Why not?”
“Because the next thing I’d think of is that any woman would figure that would be the last place she was supposed to look, and so she’d look there first. So I’d never hide it there.”
“You lost me on that last Talmudic turn,” Archie told her. “I think I'll have a look, anyway.”
“Don’t bother. It won’t be there.”
Archie looked. It wasn’t there.
“I told you so,” Helen singsonged as he returned to the bedroom. “Now, the next logical place I might hide it would be the fuse box.”
“I’ll look in the fuse box.”
"Don’t waste your time. It won’t be there, either.”
“But you said -”
“You didn’t let me finish. After I thought of the fuse box, I'd decide against it because a single girl sometimes has gentlemen callers and suppose one of them was amorously inclined?”
“Suppose he was?” Archie was bewildered.
“Then he’d want the lights out, wouldn’t he?”
“I guess so.”
“So what if he’s the kind of shrewdie who decided to deliberately yank a fuse when a girl’s not looking so he can act like the lights blew out? What would he find when he sneaked over to the fuse box?”
“The formula, if it was there." Archie saw the dawn.
“Exactly. So l’d never hide it in the fuse box.”
“You don’t think I should look, anyway? Just to make sure. ”
“Stubborn! Stub-bor-n! Just like a typical male! So go ahead and look if it will make you happy.”
Archie looked in the fuse box.
“I was right? ” Helen asked smugly when he returned.
“Yeah.”
“All right. So pay attention, now. I know exactly where I would put it, the perfect place, if I wanted to hide something.” She paused dramatically.
“Where?” Archie fed her the straight line.
“In the icebox.”
“Icebox?” Archie looked blank.
“Refrigerator, I mean. I got the habit of calling it ‘icebox’ from my parents. They always refer to it that way because of their ghetto background.”
“What ghetto background? I thought they came from New England.”
“Not so loud. The walls have ears. The ghetto background is part of passing. Everybody thinks they worked their way up to Central Park West from the Lower East Side. And on the Lower East Side, in the old days, everybody had iceboxes. . . . Anyway, the refrigerator, that's where it is.”
“Ridiculous!” Archie opined. “Why, anybody that was in the house might open the refrigerator door to get something to eat and find the papers if they were hidden there.”
“Not if they were in the freezer compartment behind the ice trays. They’d be out of sight there.”
“That’s crazy. Nobody would hide anything there.”
“A woman would. And I’ll bet that's where they are. So let’s go look.”
“Kookie!” Archie muttered to himself as he followed her into the kitchen.