Puzzle of the Red Stallion (16 page)

She smiled. “The long arm of coincidence, Oscar? Impossible. Besides, the pipe was in the mud
underneath
the body. And your own men testify that the body was not moved until the medical examiner arrived and took charge.” She shook her head. “No, Oscar—the murderer dropped that pipe as he murdered the girl on the muddy bridle path—and it will hang him!”

“We don’t
hang
people in New York. We use the Chair!” Piper snapped. “And I don’t suppose there’s a chance that you’re wrong, but all the same—this sounds like reconstructing a dinosaur out of one of his fossil toenails. If you’re right, of course, it simplifies our work—both the dames are cleared right off the bat.”

Miss Withers agreed brightly. “But we still need the woman in the case, Oscar. That’s pretty Barbara Foley. Three men are making eyes at her already—Eddie the gambler, Latigo the lonesome cowboy, and Mr. Don Gregg. If I can stir them up about her they’re certain to conflict and something is bound to happen….”

Piper lit his cigar. “Hildegarde, you’re a holy terror. Always stirring up something. Dr. Bloom was describing you the other night—said you were what doctors call a catalytic agent, stuff that you put in with harmless ingredients to make them explode….”

“What a nice compliment,” Miss Withers was saying. The expression on her face showed that she was internally purring. “Now if I can only succeed in making somebody explode …”

Just then the telephone buzzed. Piper snatched it up, barking, “Who? WHO? Yes, put him on…. Yeah…. Okay, okay, sit tight.”

He crashed the phone and rose to his feet. “Hildegarde,” he said solemnly, “it looks like you’ve succeeded.”

“In solving the case?”

The inspector shook his head. “In making somebody explode,” he said. “That was Latigo Wells, the lonesome cowboy, on the phone. Wants me to send a man up to Central Park to watch Barbara.”

“Barbara Foley? But why, for heaven’s sake?”

“Because a few minutes ago the girl appeared at the stable demanding to take Siwash out on the bridle path. Latigo tried to stop her and was over-ruled by the Thwaite woman. The cowboy sneaked out to telephone because somehow he’s got the idea that little Babs is riding in her sister’s trail, straight for the Last Roundup!”

“Hold on to your hats, boys—here we go again,” muttered Miss Hildegarde Withers as she climbed into the squad car.

A
S THEY WENT UP
the slope toward the park gate Siwash bent his heavy-sculptured neck and touched a velvet muzzle to Barbara’s leg, leaving a wet mark on the old pair of flannel slacks which the girl had pressed into service as a riding habit. He whinnied uneasily, remembering another morning….

Siwash liked the soft feel of the bridle path underhoof. He tossed his head and waltzed sidewise, whinnying. His rider’s hand was heavy on the rein, heavy and uncertain. The big red horse tried to be philosophic about it, but the ache to run was making him fairly tremble. Months of bridle-path cantering had not sufficed to erase the memory of those glorious mornings of breezing around the track, those tense and wonderful afternoons with the crowd roaring in the grandstand. He had learned a lesson too well.

Then, miracle of miracles, it happened. His rider, that pleasant young female human, gripped his barrel with her knees so that her heels touched his ribs and at the same time the reins tightened and then fell slackly on his neck.

Siwash plunged as if somewhere a bell had clanged, bounding furiously ahead in the ground-covering leaps that his long red legs were born to make. There was a short cry, presumably of encouragement, from his rider and the heels pressed more tightly against his belly. Here was a rider after his own heart, an understanding human who loved to race against time! Siwash put his head down, since still there was no restraint from the bit, and really demonstrated what a race horse can do when he puts his mind to it.

There was no touch of the bit on his mouth, for the excellent reason that Babs had dropped the reins to adjust her unaccustomed foot in one of the stirrups. Now the leathers were flung wildly in the wind as the paralyzed girl clung to the pommel with both hands and prayed….

On they rocketed northward through the cheerful stretches of Central Park in the sunny morning. Bleary men dropped their newspapers and stood erect on park benches as Siwash went thundering by. A woman screamed somewhere and a dog yapped sharply. Babs could hear the yap of the dog very loud and clear … she wondered if it would be the last thing she would hear, besides the thunder of those hoofs beneath her…. “And there are so many things I want to do with my life,” she cried inwardly.

They rounded a turn without slackening speed and Barbara saw that just ahead a uniformed nursemaid was wheeling a baby carriage across the bridle path. There was a second of horror etched forever on Barbara’s memory—centered in the white face and gaping dark mouth of the nurse who was frozen to the handle of the baby carriage….

Barbara couldn’t scream, but she managed to shut her eyes. If she didn’t see it, perhaps the inevitable tragedy would have no real existence, remaining forever in the nightmare world to be forgotten when she finally awakened.

Siwash swerved to pass the unexpected obstacle, but on one side was the nurse, on the other two bystanders who were dashing forward in an attempt to seize the sleeping child. The big red horse had no choice in the matter. As Barbara clung blindly to his back she felt a sudden tightening of his muscles and then there was a long moment poised in the air and Siwash came down on his slim forelegs, well on the other side of the carriage. Barbara’s cheek received a hard bump from an arched rising neck. They were over the hurdle—over and away.

The girl now had her arms tight around his neck, a variation in riding form which puzzled Siwash considerably. He was ready for a signal to collect his pace, sensing that something had gone wrong at that last crossing. But no signal came. Instead there were shouts from behind, human voices quivering with fear and excitement. Siwash didn’t know what the voices were saying, but he immediately caught the note of hysteria. Someone was chasing him….

He lunged forward, faster than ever. The girl on his back, daring to breathe again, felt for the stirrup she had lost. She found it, lost it again…. “Eddie!” she moaned softly. “Somebody …”

Just ahead was the arch of the viaduct. Siwash, like all horses running with his eyes on the ground, saw the curving dark shadow and remembered what had happened here only yesterday morning. He shied wildly.

Babs, her weight mostly on one stirrup, gripped at his mane with both hands. The big red horse rocked awkwardly—and then suddenly his rider felt herself going off over his side, saddle and all. She struck the ground directly underneath him, and a dark gray curtain came down over her brain.

Central Park was calm and peaceful in the morning sunlight as the squad car from headquarters came tearing up the parkway. “I don’t see anything wrong!” the inspector was saying.

They were heading northward. “What you don’t see would fill a book!” Miss Withers snapped. “Keep going—and faster!”

At Seventy-second they saw a horse and rider galloping northward along the bridle path. “There she is!” cried the inspector.

“Look again,” Miss Withers retorted. “Barbara Foley doesn’t wear a blue uniform.” It was a mounted officer. Miss Withers had seen a lot of mounted police in her day, but she realized that until this moment she had never seen one whipping his horse.

“It’s Casey!” cried the driver of the squad car. “He must have got wind of something….”

Piper pointed to the left and suddenly the squad car left the parkway, smashed through a thin railing and rolled across a lawn. Then a sharp turn to the right and they were on the bridle path, the speeding car swerving dangerously as its tires spun in the dirt. A moment later they were alongside Casey and his fat brown horse.

The mounted cop shouted incomprehensible things. They could catch the words “runaway” and “girl.”

“Come on,” roared Piper. The mounted cop swung from his saddle to the running board of the squad car. His horse galloped after the car for a little way and then snorted indignantly as he found himself left behind.

“Girl—going hell-bent,” Casey was gasping. “Tried to catch her, but my horse couldn’t catch up.”

“If you boys weren’t so sentimental about those horses you’d have been transferred to motorcycles years ago,” Piper snapped. They careened around a corner where on one side of the crossing a little crowd had gathered around a hysterical nursemaid and a crowing, gurgling baby in its carriage. But the squad car did not stop.

Eighty-sixth Street—and there was a screaming of brakes. The squad car skidded to a stop and the pursuers piled out to see a girl lying sprawled in the shadow of the viaduct, a small, helpless-looking girl with tossed auburn hair.

Standing almost over her body was a big red race horse, his curving neck bent as he nosed softly but impatiently at her shoulder. He pawed at the ground with one delicate hoof.

Siwash moved aside as the newcomers came closer, stepping gingerly over the fallen girl. The inspector flung himself to his knees, Miss Withers beside him. Casey caught the trailing bridle and led Siwash out of the way.

“Is she—is she dead, Oscar?” Miss Withers’s voice was harsh.

Piper put his fingers on forehead and over heart, then lifted an eyelid. He held up his hand. “Smelling salts, Hildegarde!”

They were produced and waved under the pinched nose of the girl on the bridle path. “Come on, come on,” the inspector was saying under his breath. “Takes more than this to kill anybody by the name of Foley!”

“Sure!” agreed Casey. Then—“Stop it, you red divvil….” Siwash kept on rubbing his sweaty nose against the blue shoulder, which was rough and very comforting to a worried and unhappy thoroughbred. Besides, Casey smelled of horse.

“She’s out cold,” Piper was saying. “We’ve got to get her to a hospital. Come on, help me lift her….”

The driver of the squad car bent to take Barbara’s shoulder. But the voice of Miss Hildegarde Withers cut in rudely upon the proceedings.

“There he goes!” she cried sharply. “Get him!”

The officers looked up to see a rustling of the bushes on the slope above them. Casey and the police chauffeur lunged forward as one man, swarming up the slope.

It was all over in a moment. A young man in a light flannel ice-cream suit was plucked back just as he was about to clamber over the wall to the transverse above. He was dragged down again, thrust rudely before the inspector.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Eddie Fry!” Miss Withers greeted him cheerily, moving away from the horse who was trying to rub his nose on the small of her back.

“What in blazes were you doing here?” roared Piper. The young man opened his mouth but no sounds came.

“He was waiting for a street car, Oscar,” Miss Withers suggested.

Eddie Fry, somewhat shaken, was pointing down at the girl. “She asked me to come here!” he insisted. “She called me up early this morning and said I was to wait here because she was trying an experiment….”

“An experiment? Talk sense.” Eddie found himself surrounded by an accusing circle of unfriendly eyes. Even Siwash seemed to glare at him.

Still he insisted. “She said she was going to try to trap yesterday’s killer by re-enacting the crime and I was to wait here in case anything did happen….”

“The experiment seems to have been a success,” Miss Withers put in dryly. “Too much of a success, in fact.”

Piper caught the young man’s shoulder. “Gambling on another long shot, eh? Well, go on with your story—what happened?”

Eddie wanted to do nothing else. “I waited here,” he rushed on, “because it was here that Violet got hers. For a long time nothing happened and I was beginning to think that the people at the stable wouldn’t let Babs have the horse after all. Then I saw her coming, but she was just managing to hang on. When they got almost here the horse jerked sidewise and she went off, saddle and all. Zowie!” Eddie gestured eloquently.

Piper turned toward the big red horse. “That plug ought to be shot before he kills anybody else….”

“No!” Eddie protested. “You didn’t see what I saw, hiding there in the bushes. When Babs went off she fell right under the horse, and I knew I was going to see her brains knocked out by his hoofs. Only he stopped spraddle-legged, so as not to touch her. Then he nosed her as if he was trying to say he was sorry….”

“Stop, you’ll have me crying,” snapped the inspector. “Put the bracelets on him, boys. We’ll let him think up a better story behind the bars.”

“It happens to be true—what he’s saying,” came a soft voice from the ground. Forgotten for the moment, Barbara was sitting up and pressing both hands to the side of her head. If she had voiced the conventional “Where am I?” nobody had heard her.

She tried to rise but fell back with a little groan. “Breath knocked out of me, that’s all,” she said. Miss Withers and the inspector each gave her an arm, and she stood up. “Please let Eddie go,” the girl begged. “He’s telling the truth.”

Piper nodded. “Yeah? Then if you’re telling such a straight story, young man, why didn’t you rush down here when you saw the girl go off her horse? Why didn’t you try to help her instead of scramming?”

Barbara looked at Eddie with the same question burning in her eyes. He looked down at the bridle path as if he expected an inspired answer to be written there.

“I thought she was dead,” he said simply. “I saw the police car coming and I—I thought I’d better beat it.”

Barbara’s eyes clouded and the inspector burst forth with “Why, you chrome-colored …”

Miss Withers stopped him. “Oscar, you mistake common sense for cowardice. If that bulge at Mr. Fry’s armpit means what I think it does, he had every reason to make himself scarce. The neighborhood of a supposedly dead girl is no place for a young man with a gun in his pocket….”

“Well, I’ve got a permit for it!” interrupted Eddie Fry ungratefully. “Of course I brought a gun along—suppose the murderer had appeared and made a pass at Babs?”

“Sir Galahad in a purple shirt,” Miss Withers murmured. “All the same,” she continued brightly, “things might have been worse. This young lady isn’t hurt seriously and it all seems to have been just an accident….”