Puzzle of the Red Stallion (24 page)

Miss Withers was thinking about something else. “Oscar, did you notice that everybody today seemed to bet on a horse because they liked his name—because like Babs they believed in Santa Claus, or like Don Gregg expected good news, or like Eddie Fry, who once had a toy wagon?”

“Sure,” said Piper. “It’s as good a way as any other of betting. Is that why you bet on Wallaby?”

Miss Withers stopped. “Oscar, do you know what a wallaby is?”

“Of course I do,” he came back. “It’s a mythical monster, like the windigo of the north woods, or the side-hill gouger down in the Blue Ridge, whose legs are short on the right side because he always runs on a slope. He travels backwards to keep the sand out of his eyes and …”

Miss Withers shook her head. “Wrong, Oscar!”

“Well, then … it’s out of that Alice in Wonderland book you always talk about!”

“Slithy toves?” Again Miss Withers shook her head. “A wallaby is a miniature kangaroo, a marsupial of the genus Macropus. Although the wallaby is often no larger than a rabbit, the female carries her young in a pouch as do larger kangaroos….”

The inspector hurriedly said that he was sorry he’d asked. The crowd was thinning out a bit now, although two lesser races remained to be run.

Miss Withers saw the Thwaites, calculating over a
Racing Telegraph
furiously as they tried to pick long-shots for the final events. “There’s a woman who never gives up,” Miss Withers observed.

The inspector looked at his companion quizzically. “I’m getting wise to you, Hildegarde,” he said. “I know what you’re hanging around this place for. Are you trying to solve the Feverel murder by watching how the suspects act and trying to get a line on their characters?”

“Something like that,” Miss Withers admitted. “But I’m floundering in deep water, Oscar—without my water-wings.”

“It’s a good idea, all the same,” said the inspector. “Come on—I see that colored boy over there. Let’s put the bee on him.”

Miss Withers shook her head. “Oscar, you can’t stride up to people and demand that they tell you their thoughts. Walk softly…. Let’s follow him.”

Highpockets was shuffling sadly in the direction of the exit gate, a picture of dejection. Suddenly he caught sight of Latigo Wells and Barbara who were moving in a parallel direction and who seemed to be in much the same mood. Yet they clung very closely together.

“They face adversity by sticking to each other,” Miss Withers told the inspector. “I have hopes for them.”

So did Highpockets have hopes. He rushed upon the couple with shrill cries.

“Listen, Miss Ba’bara—I been mighty unlucky but I know I can hit this next race, I gotta have five”—he looked thoughtful—“anyway two dollars.”

Latigo shrugged his shoulders. “Miss Foley and I are busted,” he said. “We need our money.”

“Yeah,” Highpockets returned. “But Miss Foley still owns a horse. That Siwash horse, he’s a mighty fine animal. And you’re going to lose him … unless you lend me the loan of two dollars.”

“Lose him? What do you mean?” Barbara turned to Miss Withers and the inspector, who were coming closer. “Hello—can you people figure out what he’s talking about?”

Highpockets was excited, voluble. “Your sister—she didn’t pay the board bill for her horse. Over two hundred dollars due already. An’ the law says that when an animal’s board has run four months, the stable can have the sheriff come and auction it off for the cost of the board bill!”

Highpockets took a deep breath. “Miss Thwaite, she know you don’ know about that law. She’s fixing to auction off Siwash to herself on the fifteenth of next month. Of course she’s gotta send you a notice in the mail, but leave it to her to send it to the wrong address or something, like she’s done befo’.”

Miss Withers was indignant. “Oscar, can that be done?”

The inspector nodded and Latigo interrupted, “It shore can, ma’am. It’s part of the old Herd Laws.”

Highpockets bubbled with enthusiasm. “I overheah ’em talking lots of times, and Miss Thwaite she sure wants that Siwash horse. Now do I get my two dollars?”

But still Babs Foley was doubtful. “We’ve only got our fare back to the city,” she admitted. “I don’t see any chance of paying that two-hundred-dollar board bill. I don’t think the horse is worth more than that—certainly he isn’t to me. I’m sick of race horses anyway.”

“Let Maude Thwaite have the nag if she wants him so bad,” Latigo agreed. “I’ve seen all the horses I want to see in my life.”

Miss Withers protested: “But Siwash shouldn’t go into the hands of that woman! Besides, he’s worth more than that, he must be. Couldn’t you sell your equity in him?”

Latigo said he didn’t think there was much demand for retired race horses. “Come on, honey, we got to rush to catch that train!”

The man and the girl hurried away, still arm in arm. So it was Miss Withers, after all, who loaned Highpockets his sadly needed two dollars.

Yet there was still one more entry for the notebook before Miss Withers got out of the place. At the very turnstile of the west gate she and the inspector came upon the drab and gloomy figure of Abe Thomas in the grip of the loquacious Eddie Fry.

“You’re a man who knows horses!” Eddie was saying excitedly. “I tell you it can’t lose—I got the tip straight from a jockey’s brother-in-law. It’s a red-hot three-horse parlay at Tijuana tomorrow—Velociter to Mad Frump to Shining Jewel!”

The young man’s spirits were seemingly undampened. “This is a chance in a million,” he pleaded.

The inspector saw the look on Miss Withers’s face. “Steady, Hildegarde!”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t bet unless I could see the horses run,” she said. “And I don’t suppose I could get to the Mexican border by two o’clock tomorrow….” The sentence ended a little wistfully.

Eddie Fry turned his barrage on the newcomers. “I tell you I can make a fortune on a parlay like this,” he insisted. “Start, say with a ten-dollar bet—if the parlay works we’ll win thirty on Velociter, bet it on Mad Frump and make two hundred, bet the two hundred on Shining Jewel and we’d have over two thousand when he comes across the line a winner….”

Miss Withers shook her head slowly and Eddie Fry shrugged his shoulders. “Somebody else will stake me!” he said hopefully. “There’s that Gregg—he ought to be willing to take a chance. Hey, Gregg!” Eddie rushed toward the exit gate.

“He’s already forgotten about today’s losses,” Miss Withers observed. “There’s a young man who couldn’t hold a grudge!”

“There’s a young man who’s a fool for gambling,” Abe Thomas put in. The old family retainer seemed a little more drab and dusty, if possible, than usual. It was as if he had been left out in the sun and wind for a long time. His eyes were avid and his expression would have seemed envious to Miss Withers if she had not heard his principles in regard to gambling.

He seemed anxious to talk. “You made a killing today, didn’t you?” he accused Miss Withers.

She looked surprised. “I don’t remember confiding in you,” she said stiffly. “How did you know—”

“Pardon, ma’am,” Thomas apologized, “but I couldn’t help hearing you. I was standing just behind you at the rail and I heard you cheering the winner.”

“Naturally I was a little excited,” Miss Withers snapped back.

Thomas nodded. “It was quite a horse race, ma’am. When Head Wind left his jockey and threw the race, I knew it was going to be something! And then when Wallaby came through on the rail …”

Suddenly he stopped and drew himself up. “I’ve got to be getting home—Mr. Gregg may need me,” he explained. He moved away.

The inspector had an idea. “What’s your hurry, man?” he cried. “We’re due at the Gregg place this afternoon and if you’ve got the flivver here you can give us a ride….”

But Abe Thomas was moving nimbly through the crowd, out past the exit gate. “A crusty sort of a guy!” the inspector complained. “Now I suppose we’ll have to take a taxi.”

There were few taxicabs to be had. Stout Captain Joel Tinker, Cerberus of the gateway, wouldn’t have listened to the idea anyway. He accepted his winnings with the heartfelt joy which only an underpaid minion of law and order could have felt. “Say no more,” he maintained. “Wait here until I get one of my boys to relieve me and I’ll drive you over to the Gregg place.”

“That’s luck,” the inspector said. “Hildegarde, you’re batting .300 today.”

She nodded. “That’s because I threw away my water-wings, Oscar. I’ve forgotten all about People’s Exhibit A, the briar pipe. It was my main clue—but it was an hallucination. Didn’t somebody say that when the probable becomes impossible then the improbable is the truth?”

“Sounds like Gertrude Stein to me,” the inspector protested. And then Captain Tinker drove up in a battered roadster and flung open the door.

“All aboard for the Gregg homestead!” he sang out cheerily.

“And all aboard for a solution of the Feverel murder,” Miss Withers added. “Wasn’t that what Pat Gregg promised to give us if we called upon him right after the big race today?”

The inspector was inclined to doubt that possibility. Miss Withers shook her head. “It stands to reason that
somebody
knows who killed Violet Feverel,” she protested.

“Too bad that that certain somebody isn’t you—or me!” the inspector said sadly.

“Maybe it is,” Miss Withers murmured. There was a very tiny suspicion in the back of her mind. It involved a dozen “ifs,” but all the same it intrigued her tremendously. She toyed with the possibility during the five-minute ride to the Gregg homestead.

Captain Tinker sent his little roadster careening along country lanes until they came out at last upon the county highway which led up the hill to the Gregg home. Again the mare and the red colt escorted them to their destination. As always the Gingerbread House stood somnolently among its elms, but in contrast to its usual loneliness three automobiles had been parked in the driveway.

One was a taxi with a driver drowsing at the wheel, his cap pulled over his face to shut out the late afternoon sun. One was the steaming station-wagon with a tattered tire on one badly bent rim, and the other a light roadster which Miss Withers recognized as belonging to Eddie Fry.

“Of all people!” Miss Withers said to herself. “You’re coming in with us, Captain?”

Captain Tinker thought he might as well wait in the car. “I’ll drive you on over to the village when you get through in there,” he promised.

The inspector rang the bell and after an interminable wait Mrs. Mattie Thomas opened the door. Her eyes were red-rimmed with sleep and her shapeless body was sheathed in a bright orange and green coolie coat with woolen slippers beneath.

She looked at them blankly. “I think Mr. Gregg is expecting us,” Piper said.

The woman nodded. “Come on in,” she said. She managed her sugary smile, but it seemed more strained than usual. She pawed at her hair. “I been having myself a nice nap,” she apologized, “That is, I was until this doorbell started ringing….”

The door closed out the sunlight and Miss Withers wrinkled her nose at the mingled, musty odors of the old house. “You may as well go in with the others,” said Mrs. Thomas. She pointed toward the living room with its horsehair furniture.

Miss Withers and the inspector came to the doorway and stopped. Within the room was what seemed to be a vast crowd of people. Barbara Foley, Latigo Wells, Eddie Fry—even Don Gregg himself. Latigo and Eddie Fry seemed about to fly at each other’s throats.

“It’s open house!” said Miss Withers cheerily. “And we’re all here to see old Mr. Gregg!” Her voice seemed to calm things.

“We came to try and sell Mr. Gregg my equity in Siwash,” Babs hastily announced. “As you suggested…. Mr. Gregg always wanted to get that horse back.”

“And if we can get some dough from him, we’ll still get married!” added Latigo.

“We were here first!” Eddie Fry insisted. He turned to Don Gregg. “Just let me talk to your father, that’s all I ask! He’ll give you the money to bet that three-horse parlay with me….”

“I rode home with Mr. Fry here,” explained Don Gregg, “because Thomas didn’t seem to be anywhere around … but I tell you all, I doubt if my father has any spare change to put into other people’s gambling games—”

“And Thomas isn’t here yet?” Miss Withers cut in.

“Yes, he’s here,” admitted Don Gregg. “He arrived just a moment ago as the four of us were pounding on the door and trying to get Mattie to snap out of her dreams and open up. Thomas is upstairs trying to find out if the old man is up and can see us….”

It didn’t take Thomas long to find out. He came running down the stairs, all expression sponged from his face.

He stopped, clutching at the doorway. “Mr. Gregg!” he babbled. “It’s Mr. Gregg—I can’t wake him up!”

Nothing but the trump of judgment would suffice to waken Mr. Pat Gregg, the inspector discovered. As he led the mad rush up the stairs, down the long hall and into the old man’s bedroom, the inspector was trying to remember what he had learned about first aid. But there was no need for first aid.

Pat Gregg sat calmly in the easy chair at his desk in the tiny cupola room beside the telescope which was still trained upon the track at Beaulah Park. He was in his shirt sleeves. One arm was stretched across his littered desk and upon that arm rested the dead man’s face.

From the shoulders up Pat Gregg was tinted a reddish purple in color.

“Get the doctor!” Abe Thomas was crying.

“Get the police!” Babs Foley screamed.

The inspector’s first thought was to call in Captain Tinker, but that took no time at all. The captain was at the outer door as they flung it open, his face wearing an expression of mild puzzlement.

“Funny thing to find in a flower bed,” he observed before they could speak. “I don’t see the sense of it.”

He was holding a man’s blue silk sock. There was sand ground into the sock…. Strangely enough, the grains of sand were on the inside rather than the outside where they might have belonged.

The captain looked from his discovery to the strained, tense faces of the people in the doorway.

“Hey, what’s up?” he demanded. With one breath they told him.