Puzzle of the Red Stallion (21 page)

“Thanks,” he said. “Thinking about anything special, Hildegarde? I mean, have you got any new ideas?”

“I’ve been thinking about pipes,” said the schoolteacher. “About pipes and air guns and bicycles and horses, but more especially about pipes.”

“And the result of your thinking …”

Miss Withers smiled wryly. “No result as yet.” She prodded Dempsey with the toe of her shoe and he kicked sleepily at his ribs. Then he rolled over and held up white paws at the ceiling.

“We’ve been running around in circles trying to find another man in Violet Feverel’s past,” the inspector went on. “A man with false teeth maybe. But we didn’t find one.”

“With or without teeth?”

“Either way,” said the inspector. “She was a funny girl, that Violet Foley who changed her name to Feverel. At the studios where she posed they all insisted that she was icy-cold when working—but, they all hinted, she must have been a gay damsel off duty. Such casual friends as the race-track gambler Mr. Eddie Fry swore that Violet was a very conventional lady at home—but that she cut loose at the stables. Down at the stables everybody swore that she was hot stuff with her friends, but strictly business when riding. And to sum it all up—if Violet Feverel ever had any man in her life except her husband it was the Invisible Man. Her only love—” Piper made a dollar sign in the air. “Everybody admits that Violet did love to get money, and spend it.”

“So much for the murderer with the false teeth,” Miss Withers admitted. “Go on.”

“We checked up on that guy Thomas too,” Piper said. “Anyway on his car, because those rubbers at the Turkish bath don’t know which end their head is on. And we found out that Thomas was telling the truth when he said he parked the station-wagon at the Park Central parking lot. He left it there at about eleven o’clock Saturday night …”

“I didn’t think he’d be foolish enough to risk having it spotted in getting Don Gregg out of alimony jail,” Miss Withers put in. “But when did he get it again?”

“The men at the lot go off duty at midnight and come back at six in the morning,” Piper explained. “We’ve proved that the flivver was there at six—because Thomas had left word to have it filled up with gas and the oil changed. The boys swear they were working on the car at the exact hour that we know Violet Feverel was killed!”

“Hmm—then the car heard by the park attendant was not Thomas’s!” Miss Withers seemed only mildly disappointed.

“Thomas showed up for the car about eight—a few minutes before he arrived at the Harthorn,” Piper finished.

Miss Withers was frowning. “There’s something wrong with this murder, Oscar,” she pronounced. “Something slipshod and unfinished. I have a feeling this was a very clever plot that miscarried—perhaps Violet Feverel wasn’t even the intended victim! Or maybe we’ve been seeing it backwards….”

She didn’t explain. “I’ve got a list of questions,” she told the inspector. “You can have them for what they’re worth. If they fail and if the murderer doesn’t make a mistake, we’re finished. I thought for a while I could start something by mixing up Barbara and the three young men—out of such a quadrangle we might have struck a spark or two….” She let the metaphor fall mangled and left it there.

“Let’s have the questions,” said the inspector without eagerness. Miss Withers had them all neatly typed out.

“Try to have the answers before Saturday,” the schoolteacher advised as he got up to go. “Before we leave for the races.”

“Races? What races?”

“You and I,” she told him, “are going to be at Beaulah Park this Saturday. We are going to keep our eyes open and pray that the murderer will make a misstep. That’s your method anyway, isn’t it, Oscar? To sit tight and wait for the other team to fumble?”

“Yeah—but what makes you think the murderer will be there?” protested Piper.

“I’ll bet—” began Miss Withers. Then, “Why should the killer be any different from the thirty thousand people who will be there? Besides, can’t you see that every trail leads straight in the direction of that race track—and that day?”

The inspector didn’t see it at all, but he nodded. A drowning man will clutch in desperation at a straw, and Miss Withers had proved herself more than a straw in the past. “It’s a date for Saturday,” he said. Meanwhile he could hang his teeth onto the questions.

The Farmers and Merchants Bank of Beaulah village was not in the habit of giving out information about its depositors. The inspector had to telephone his old friend, Captain Joel Tinker of the state police, in order to find out what he wanted to know.

He finally learned that Mr. Abe Thomas had a savings account with the bank to the amount of thirty-one dollars and sixty cents. He also discovered that the mission of Thomas on the preceding Monday had been to solicit a personal loan to the amount of five hundred dollars.

“When we couldn’t let him have it without security he wanted a hundred,” explained the cashier. “He wanted it pretty bad and said he’d repay the loan on Monday, certain sure. But—we couldn’t see our way clear.”

It turned out that Mr. Pat Gregg also had an account at the bank to the amount of twenty-three dollars. Mr. Gregg had also made strenuous efforts, in recent months, to solicit a loan. It was of no avail because he hadn’t been paying the interest on the mortgage upon his place. “Nor anything else around this town,” said Captain Tinker.

Heinrich Jasper, pipe-maker and repairman, gave it as his official opinion that a pipe could remain warm to the touch not longer than twenty minutes after the smoker had put it down. “And only if the pipe was very hot to start with, and put down in a closed place out of the draft, could it remain hot more than ten minutes,” he added.

A. V. Leonard, plain-clothes officer assigned to homicide duty, working out of the 7th precinct, reported that one “Latigo” Wells had been discharged from his job at the Thwaite stables on Sixty-fifth Street. The officer reported that Latigo had been discharged in a forcible manner which included the smashing of his guitar and that since Wednesday the young man had divided his waking hours between a park bench on Lincoln Square and the Hotel Harthorn.

B. L. Armstrong, also a plain-clothes officer assigned to homicide duty out of the 7th precinct, reported that Miss Barbara Foley had succeeded in having herself appointed executrix for her deceased sister, and that on Thursday Miss Foley had drawn seven hundred dollars from her sister’s account at the Manufacturers Trust Company, leaving a balance of forty-four dollars and eight cents.

Also on Thursday, Miss Barbara Foley had purchased a twenty-dollar guitar from the Conn Music Company. Miss Foley had entertained Mr. Wells, presumably with the twenty-dollar guitar, on the evenings of Thursday and Friday respectively.

“They were singing,” reported Officer Armstrong. “I listened awhile outside the transom and it sounded terrible.”

D. B. Trent, sergeant, headquarters homicide division, reported that Mr. Edward Fry had locked himself in his room in the Hotel Amsterdam since Tuesday night, emerging only for meals. From time to time bellboys brought him reading material, mostly dealing with the race track. His phone bill was more than five dollars a day. “One call was to a dame named Babs, and she said yes, she’d love to go with him Saturday….”

A. V. Leonard, in addition to his report on Latigo Wells, supplied information to the effect that on Wednesday Mrs. Maude Thwaite had been seen posing for a large number of photographs in Central Park, mounted upon a large red thoroughbred. Her husband had been left in charge of the stables.

“The husband had a good grouch on too,” added Officer Leonard.

“Abe never rode a bicycle in his life!” insisted Mrs. Mattie Thomas when discreetly questioned by Captain Joel Tinker of the state police. “Wouldn’t risk his neck on one of the things—but there is an old wreck of a bicycle around the place somewhere that used to belong to Master Don.”

Nurse Rogers, when diplomatically questioned by Captain Tinker, gave it as her opinion that Mr. Pat Gregg needed a nurse about as much as a cat needs two tails. “Whatever he had he’s over it now,” she said. “The old man would outlive us all if he’d only make some effort to quiet his nerves.”

Nurse Rogers denied any interest in the big race. “I’ve heard my patient talk about horse racing until I’m sick of it,” she said. “When I leave this case Friday night I’m going to sleep twenty-four hours. I always sleep twenty-four hours when I go off a case.”

Sergeant J. A. Howe, assigned to desk duty, headquarters, reported that there were no automobiles stolen on Manhattan Island between the hours of midnight Saturday and 8
A.M.
Sunday. “Nothing bigger than a bicycle,” said the sergeant. “Some Western Union kid claimed his bike was pinched outside an apartment house on Central Park West while he was delivering a message. The bicycle was recovered in a smashed condition on the parkway in Central Park at noon on Sunday. Probably he smashed it up and then claimed it was stolen so the company wouldn’t hold him responsible.

“We did have a report of one stolen car, but it was a phony,” added the sergeant. “A hackee left his cab outside a Coffee Pot on Fifty-seventh early Sunday morning. He found it an hour later a block away, down the street—probably some other driver noticed the key was in the dashboard and played a joke on him.”

On Friday afternoon Officers Brown and Ruseck of the Special Operations squad dragged thoroughly and with much profanity a small muddy pool hidden away in a corner of Central Park near the Eighty-sixth Street Transverse. The results were:

One turtle (comatose)

Four rusty tobacco tins (empty)

One man’s shoe (minus sole)

One wedding ring (Woolworth non-tarnishable)

One whisky bottle

Two pop bottles

One small target-type air pistol (retail value three dollars and a half at any shop on West Forty-second Street)

This booty, with the exception of the turtle, was carefully turned in as per instructions to the desk of Inspector Oscar Piper, Homicide Bureau, Centre Street.

At the hour when the rest of the world was sitting down to its evening meal sportswriter Francis Xavier McCarthy removed his shoes, yawned, and moved sheets of yellow paper into his typewriter. He typed the heading “MAC SAYS—”

He lit a cigarette, threw it away and continued: “Today war news, quintuplets and upside-down stomachs move off the front page to let the sport of kings get into the headlines. Even yesterday’s murder is cold potatoes compared with the mystery of what nag is going to poke his nose first across the finish line at Beaulah Park.

“Head Wind, Mrs. Julius B. Higginbotham’s temperamental beauty king, is going to be an odds-on favorite comes the word from the insiders. But the big sorrel is the bookie’s delight, because until the starting bell sounds nobody on earth knows if Head Wind will run his race or sulk.

“If he feels like galloping he’ll have to run sideways to keep from flying. But that’s a big IF, boys and girls. He’ll either be first or last, there’s nothing halfway about Head Wind. And if he cuts up at the post the way is clear for any one of the other eight nags to come home with the bacon. Pick ’em by name, pick ’em by post position, or fold your program and stick a fork through it—you’re likely to make a pile for yourself.

“Don’t forget there’s Verminator, that grand old veteran. Maybe his legs won’t hold out, but if they fail him he’ll run on his heart. Easter Bunny too is a filly that never quits and who may take it all at a price. Toy Wagon likes the distance and saves ground at the rail. And if you want a long shot, where your dollars will come home—maybe—by the basketful, you have your pick of Prince Penguin, the California-bred six-year-old who’s won five out of his last eight starts; you have Good News, who’s backed by a great stable; you have the gallant but erratic Tom-Tom; the great sprinter Santa Claus; and the ex-steeplechaser Wallaby, who looks like a horse and may not run like a duck today.

“They’re all going to be in there trying. Nine great horses thundering around the mile and a sixteenth in a minute and forty seconds or better. Maybe it’ll be Head Wind in front, but if this humble observer is any guesser at all it’ll be one of the long-shots who’ll come thundering down the home stretch in the lead—to gladden a few hearts with winnings in telephone number prices.

“The weather man says it’ll be a clear day and the track at Beaulah Park is in perfect shape. A crowd of thirty thousand is expected and if that thirty thousand doesn’t see a track record (and maybe an American record) broken, your guide and mentor will eat his hat.

“And if that record isn’t broken by Verminator the hat is all your uncle Mac will have to eat, because the week’s wages are going down on the nose of that grand old thoroughbred who’s out with a chance to top all stake-winning records if he knocks down this fifty-thousand-dollar purse….”

The inspector was reading this aloud to Miss Withers from the
Herald-Tribune
as they rode northward in a crowded Race-Track Special on Saturday morning. The train was a madhouse of excitement, massed humanity for this little while freed of its worries and fired with the chance—the wonderful, elusive chance—of Something for Nothing.

Oscar Piper wore a binocular case on a strap and was making notations on the margin of his newspaper—“As long as I have to be there anyway,” he said. Only Miss Withers remained aloof from the contagion, for deep in her heart she knew that there was more than money at stake in this race of races.

“What are the odds on murder?” she kept asking herself.

“Y
OU CAN’T GO IN
there!”

A tall and soldierly figure suddenly stepped forward to bar their way as Miss Withers and the inspector were heading for the turnstiles of the west gate. They stopped, startled.

“This park is for sports, not for bloodhounds,” said the big man severely. “I got instructions to keep all suspicious characters out and that means you, Inspector. Haw!” He extended a hamlike hand.

Piper’s face lit up. “Tinker! You old horse-thief! Haven’t seen you since you picked Judd Gray off the Albany train for us. Miss Withers, meet Captain Joel Tinker who stands for law and order in these parts. Think you’ll let us in, Cap?”