Puzzle of the Red Stallion (33 page)

“Why not?” Mabie said and held out his hand.

The inspector put the bottle back in his pocket. “No, you don’t.”

The train was rolling across a waste of mesquite, now and then broken by the inevitable adobe hovel, fenced in with organ cactus, in front of which always stood a line of blank-faced Indians in clean faded cotton, drawn up to watch the one event of the day. Big black flies hovered over the huts, swept after the train, and droned endlessly about the two men on the back platform.

Suddenly Piper made a snatch in the air, imprisoned one of the flies in his hand, where it buzzed like a bee. Then he cupped his fist over the upper end of the perfume bottle, loosening but not drawing the cork. He held it there while he counted twenty.

“Look!” he commanded and opened his palm. The fly was still there, moving slowly along what palmists and fortune tellers call the Mount of Venus.

“It’s not dead,” Mabie said. “See? What did I tell you?”

They both saw. The big black fly suddenly let go the grip of its suction pads, tumbled down the slope of the inspector’s palm, and lay motionless, legs in the air, against the base of his thumb.

“Heart failure,” Oscar Piper pointed out with a grim smile.

The other man stared at him, haunted eyed. “Will you give me that bottle?” he begged. “Right now, before something else happens?” He pointed over the edge of the rail, down to the stony roadbed and the flickering cross-ties. “Smash the thing!”

Piper shook his head. “That won’t do any good. I’ve got to smash what is behind this. Smash the murderer, not the weapon. Looks as if I pulled the boner of my career by not giving this to the authorities in Nuevo Laredo. Now it’s up to me.”

“You mean that you still cling to the ridiculous idea that Adele …”

The train whistled lugubriously, a long wailing blast which seemed endless. They were coming toward a station.

They were barely at a full stop before the swarthy porter made his advent, looking inquiringly at the inspector.
“Señor
Piper?”

“Well, what is it?”

“Telegrama para usted,”
was the announcement. The porter handed over an envelope.

Alderman Mabie stood up as Piper took the message. “Think I’ll stretch my legs a bit,” he said and climbed over the rail and down the steps to the platform. He walked quickly away.

The inspector wasn’t noticing, for the message surprised him. It was not quite what he had expected from Hildegarde Withers. She had wired him:

IF YOU ARE MIXED UP WITH A WOMAN ADVISE STICKING TO CANDY OR FLOWERS DONT PUT ANYTHING IN WRITING STOP PERFUME YOU MENTION WOULD NEVER APPEAL TO A LADY OF TASTE IT IS SOLD HERE FOR FIFTY CENTS AN OUNCE AND IS TERRIBLE BEST REGARDS

HILDEGARDE

It did not occur to the inspector that his tried and trusting sparring partner back in New York had misread his telegram and was imbued with a trace of jealousy. He was too busy with a new train of thought. Adele Mabie was a rich woman, rich in her own right. A woman of taste too. She wouldn’t be likely to go in for fifty-cent perfume.

And if that hadn’t been her perfume bottle—

He left the platform suddenly, started in through the car. And then he saw that Adele Mabie was coming toward him, rushing along the corridor. She caught his arm.

“Have you seen my husband?”

Piper motioned. “Stretching his legs on the platform, I guess. What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “Oh, nothing, I guess. But it does seem so odd. Probably I’m just jumpy …”

“What seemed so odd, Mrs. Mabie?” Piper demanded.

“It was the tea, the iced tea I had the waiter bring me,” she said. “I couldn’t drink it, because it was so bitter. And then just as we stopped I thought I saw a face at the train window. I don’t know who it was, or if I imagined it all. But it makes me wonder—”

“It should make you wonder,” Piper snapped. “Come on, show me that tea.”

“It’s still on the tray,” she said. “In the drawing room. I didn’t want to send it back until someone else had looked at it. I may be imagining things, but still …”

Back they went to the door of the drawing room again. And Adele stopped in the doorway, pointing.

A little one-legged table was hooked under the windows, between the seats. On the table was a flat silver tray with a napkin and the remains of a sandwich. But there was no glass of tea.

There had been a glass. The shivered fragments strewed table and carpet, and everywhere pieces of ice melted soppily amid bits of tea leaf.

“But what happened?” Adele cried. “Why, only this minute I stepped out of the door! There hasn’t been time for anyone to do this!”

The windows, still left open to clear away the faint sweet odor of perfume and bitter almonds, faced away from the noisy life of the station platform, faced full upon a little wilderness of freight cars, oil tanks, and the distant purple mountains. There was nothing alive within the view of the inspector except a starved yellow dog, who immediately streaked out of sight.

Piper dropped to his hands and knees, surveying the floor. It took him only a moment to find the bullet, which was embedded not too deeply in the upholstery of the settee. It was .38 caliber, a most baffling bit of lead. It had smashed the glass of bitter tea, smashed it so thoroughly that fingerprints and contents were alike beyond analysis. That much was obvious to the inspector.

“But I don’t see how it could have happened!” Adele repeated.

Piper stood up. His finger drew an imaginary line in the air, from the bullet hole in the upholstery to the tray on the table, then out through the window.

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “The bullet was fired from a noiseless gun, because there was no sound of a shot. The gun had no barrel, because there are no rifling marks on the slug.”

“But who?” she implored. “Who could have done it?”

“There you have me,” Piper said. “All I know is that the person who fired that shot must be more than nine feet tall.” He shook his head after sniffing at the remains of the glass of iced tea. “No chance to find out if it was poisoned or not,” he told her. “But it would seem that somebody didn’t want us to look into the matter.”

Adele Mabie shivered a little. “I—I think I’ll go and find my husband,” she said.

“Good idea. And when you find him, stick to him and stay in the middle of the crowd until the train starts up again,” Piper advised her. He watched her out of sight.

Then he locked the drawing-room door behind him, drew the shades of the windows, and turned on the light. He went through the baggage of Mr. and Mrs. Francis Mabie with what is usually known as a fine-tooth comb. Luckily all of the much-labeled bags were unlocked, presumably left so as a result of the second customs examination.

Through hatboxes, Gladstones, briefcases, and overnight bags, he went, searching for he knew not what. In one black leather case devoted to lingerie he found a small book bound in rough cloth—
Your Trip to Mexico.
It was well-worn, and he would have liked more time to examine it, having learned that often such things can serve as excellent keys to the character of their owners.

He thumbed through the little book, found two back pages stuck. Between them someone had left a snapshot, one of the cheap horrors snapped at amusement parks and sold for a dime. The chemical coating was peeling from the thing, but Piper could see Adele Mabie’s face, a face younger and happier than she was wearing today. She was seated in a “prop” roller coaster, marked “Luna Park,” with a man. Unfortunately the face of her companion had been neatly cut away with fingernail scissors. What to deduce from this evidence of some trip to Coney Island the inspector could not decide. So he pocketed it and went on with his search.

Investigating every jar of cold cream, every container of shaving soap, every flask of cleansing lotion, he found no weapon and no trace of poison—nothing that didn’t belong. He even squeezed the tube of toothpaste, sniffed cautiously, and touched it to the tip of his tongue. No, nothing had been planted here. Nothing but an incongruous bottle of perfume that nobody owned. He replaced everything exactly as he had found it.

Then, as he moved toward the door, someone knocked from the outside. It was an odd, timorous knock. Piper turned out the light, waited for the knob to click …

But there was another knock.

Certainly this wasn’t the Mabies. On an impulse he threw off the catch and opened the door. The red-haired girl in the yellow dress, the prettiest girl on the train, stood there. Her eyes were still fiery.

“Here!” she said, thrusting thirty dollars into his hand.

“O
H,” BLURTED THE GIRL,
“I’ve made a mistake!” She reached for the money.

Piper drew back, gazing appraisingly at the cropped red curls, hot brown eyes, bright yellow dress. “Maybe you have,” he admitted. “The question is how much of a mistake?”

“It’s so dark in there,” she said.

It was dark, but the inspector optimistically thought that things were growing just a bit lighter. He held the drawing-room door open invitingly. “Want to come in and wait?”

Red hair tossed, red lips curled. “Not tonight, Josephine!” She was going to say something else, but suddenly she cocked her head like an insolent bird and stared at him. “Haven’t I seen you before? On the train coming down from New York, perhaps?”

Oscar Piper flashed his gold badge, watched for some effect on the girl’s face. Did he imagine it, or was she swiftly withdrawing into her shell, like a startled clam? “I’ll ask all the questions,” he told her, in his best inquisitorial manner. “Who are you, what are you doing on this train, and why are you returning this money to Francis Mabie?”

The girl gave a soft and tremulous smile. Her quick softening gave Piper the momentary impression that this was going to be duck soup. Then she spoke. “We’re below the border, aren’t we?”

“What of it? I want to know—”

“And isn’t there a full moon tonight?”

The inspector didn’t care a hang if there was. He couldn’t believe, being a modest man, that this pert young thing was hinting at an assignation on the back platform in the light of the full moon.

The soft smile flashed again. “There
is
a moon, so will you please go and take a running jump at it, Mr. New York Copper?” And then she turned on her heel, went hurrying away toward the front of the train. Outside sounded the mournful chant of “¡
Vamonos
!”

So she had won the round on points, eh? The inspector was close to losing his temper. “Hey, you!” he called out and rushed after the girl.

And then the way was barred by a new addition to the passenger list, in the person of a tall blond young Mexican in a blue beret. He carried a guitar under his arm, in each hand a big bag in heavy alligator, with the heads left on and fitted with artificial eyes.

“Damn sorry!” the youth insisted, but all the same the inspector tripped over a bag, cursed, and gave up the chase. It was hard for him to remember that below the Rio Grande his bright gold shield meant just about as much as one of the tin “Chicken Inspector” badges sold at Midwestern county fairs. The other passengers were pouring back onto the car from either end. Here was the old couple from Peoria, dragging with much ado a whole fresh pineapple big as a half-bushel basket. Hansen and Lighton, their heads together. And Adele Mabie, her arms loaded.

It was evident that she had sought forgetfulness of the afternoon’s tragedy in the purchase of a pair of deerskin sandals, a set of crudely carved doll furniture fastened to a sheet of cardboard, three packages of Mexican burned-milk candy in round tiers of bright red boxes, two riding crops of jointed cowhorn, and a pair of large fire-opal earrings. Behind her the alderman was loaded down with two
serapes,
great home-woven blankets in demoniac colors and designs.

Piper followed them back into the drawing room, closed the door. Mabie dropped his burdens, faced him. “Now what’s all this about the tea glass and a shot and—”

“I’ll tell you both,” the inspector said. “Mrs. Mabie, have you any enemies?”

She almost dropped the doll furniture. “Any
what?”

“Anyone who would like to kill you?”

For a moment there was a look in her eyes as if she had heard some obscene four-letter word. “To kill me?”

“That’s what I said. Look back into your past!”

She smiled faintly. “Really, I’m afraid I haven’t had a Past! Why, no, I can’t think of anyone who would like to kill me. If it were the other way around …”

“I’m serious,” Piper said. “Mrs. Mabie, you’re a rich woman, aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“And I’m her only heir,” the alderman cut in swiftly. “If that’s what you’re driving at. Piper, are you crazy?”

Adele linked arms with her husband. “Go on, Mr. Piper.”

“Well …” he hesitated. “Any cousins or anything like that who might resent your being left all this money?”

“But—but I wasn’t! I mean, I made it. Don’t you know, Inspector, that I once owned the biggest chain of beauty shops in the country? And that I sold out for one million dollars when I was thirty—well, a couple of years ago. Then I went around the world and came back to New York where I met Francis and one thing led to another—”

“You can ask anybody if we’re not the perfect couple!” Mabie put in. “We get on like rye and ginger ale, don’t we, dear?”

“I’m not accusing you,” Piper said. It was his private opinion that Alderman Mabie would never murder for money, not when he could handle bridge and harbor contracts. A man sticks to his racket.

“No triangle stuff, then? No former sweetheart with a grudge?”

Mabie opened his mouth to speak, but Adele spoke first. “A woman making a million dollars has no time for anything else, Mr. Piper. It wasn’t until I came back to New York and met my handsome rising politician that I realized I’d been missing something … so you see!” Suddenly her face changed, a little drawn. “You mean by all this that somebody is trying to kill me?”

Piper shrugged. “Your dressing case is usually unlocked, Mrs. Mabie?”