“I’m glad you’ve told me this much, Mrs. Peters. I confess I don’t know what has become of Chick. But I soon will. He has good reason for being away, no doubt.”
He nodded a dismissal, and Mrs. Peters disappeared. Patsy did not ask any more questions for the present. He busied himself with breakfast. At the end of the meal Nick Carter asked him if he could take him direct to the Sun Jin laundry.
“I can do that, chief,” replied Patsy. “But we’ll find the chinks there pretty suspicious. How are we going to get in?”
“We’ll see when we get there,” replied Nick Carter quietly.
“I don’t say you can’t get into the laundry,” went on Patsy. “We’ll find one or two chinks in there, ironing and washing, as they always are. But you know that what you see in the shop of a chink laundry doesn’t tell you what is going on behind or upstairs.”
Nick Carter only nodded and smiled. He did not depend on Patsy, or anybody else, to make him understand the ways of Chinamen in New York.
“Call up Danny Maloney, and tell him to bring the small car—the new one. I don’t think there are many persons in New York know I have that one. I have never had it out yet.”
In ten minutes’ time, Nick Carter and Patsy were sliding smoothly uptown in the new car which the detective had bought for daylight use—mainly because his other motor cars—and particularly the big sixty-horsepower machine—were too familiar to the gaze of certain New Yorkers who feared him.[Pg 32]
Leaving the car at a little distance, Nick and Patsy walked along the side street on which Sun Jin’s laundry was situated, and stepped inside. The detective produced a shirt and collar which he said he wanted laundered, and accepted the check from the moon-faced man at the ironing board without any comment.
During the transaction, another Chinaman continued to iron at a board at the back of the hot little room without turning his face toward the customers. He seemed to be completely absorbed in his work, and to feel no interest in anything else. Certainly, he showed no curiosity.