Authors: Stuart Palmer

Puzzle of the Red Stallion (35 page)

He said it in English several times, in a loud voice. But the waiter only flinched. And then, just as it appeared that he would have either to send for the Pullman conductor or else go hungry, a pleasant voice spoke in his ear.

“May I service you,
señor
?”

Without waiting for an answer, the tall blond youth sat down opposite him, bringing his cup of coffee. He told the waiter, in flowing Spanish, to produce instantly
huevos con jamón,
the
huevos fritos
on both sides. “Okay?”

“Thanks,” said Piper grudgingly. “By the way”—he confronted his table mate—“how did you know I was from New York?”

The smile widened. “But your necktie!”

Piper stared down at the somewhat twisted and bedraggled cravat, genuinely pleased to think that there was something metropolitan about it. “The inside label, it says Epstein Kollege Klothes of Broadway,” pointed out the younger man. So it did, but the inspector instantly doubted if it could have been seen in the one brief glance the youth had given him when they met in the coach ahead.

“Didn’t doing so good with the
señorita,
eh?” his companion continued, as one man to another.

Piper stiffened, but the smile was an ingenuous one. “Only pretty girl on these train, hell-damn it,” went on the youth, in tortured English which the inspector thought faintly reminiscent of some play he had once had to sit through, a play about a lovely Castilian girl and an American aviator and a bandit who was “the best damn caballero in all Meheeko.”

“She didn’t encouraging me so much neither,” the youth went on. “But I know her name. Her name is Dulcie, and that means ‘dessert’ in my language.”

The ham and eggs arrived. “You live here, then?” Piper asked.

“Allow me!” With a flourish the young man produced a narrow engraved card bearing the name
Señor
Julio Carlos Mendez S. “The initial is for Schley, my mother’s name,” he explained. “I use it to give a something at the end, you understand? From my German mother” I get my blondness. Everybody takes me for one American, I’ll tell you. Because I speak such hell-damn good English. I pick that up in Tijuana when I used to go there for spending the money my papa make raising bulls for the bull ring. Me, I like very much Americans.”

Piper introduced himself, without going into his official status. “¡
Mucho gusto, señor
!” They solemnly shook hands.

“I like girl Americans,” Julio Carlos Mendez S. went on cheerily. “I like to learn slang from pretty
señoritas.
Not many pretty girls on these train, except Miss Dulcie and”—he added this most casually—“the lady in our Pullman who make all the peddlers on the platform happy buying so many curios.”

The inspector suddenly realized that the other was watching him covertly, waiting for an answer.

He nodded and went on eating.

Julio leaned confidentially closer. “I hear stories that there was this afternoon a misfortunate accident on this train. In that lady’s room!”

The inspector cautiously admitted having heard a rumor or two.

“But you yourself were there, no? Or very soon afterward?”

“I was,” admitted Piper. He wondered if this came under the head of idle curiosity, or if he was being cleverly pumped.

“What you think, eh? You think that poor Manuel Robles died by heart failure?”

So that was the customs man’s name. Piper made a mental note. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said.

Julio shrugged. “I happen to know the family of that poor young man. Very healthy family, that. They don’t have heart failures. I never hear of one person in that family having heart failures.”

“Then your idea is …” Piper broke out into the open.

Julio Mendez hesitated. Something was in his dark intent eyes, something hovered on the tip of his tongue. But he did not speak.

“You’re not thinking of murder, are you?” the inspector pressed.

“I’m thinking,” said Julio Mendez earnestly, “that it is sometimes better to let the police pulling their own irons out of the fire.” And he rose and walked away.

“Funny his knowing the name of the customs man,” Piper said to himself. Possibly either a dupe or an out-and-out accomplice. Because this seemed to be stacking up as a woman’s murder. Poison, that was distinctly feminine. And all that roundabout stuff of the smashed tea glass. A man wouldn’t have shot the air gun or whatever impelled that bullet at the glass. A man would have shot at the intended victim.

Well, the Mexican authorities could thresh that all out for themselves. No use trying to contact any of these jerkwater police chiefs along the way; Mexico City was the only place for a showdown. Thanks to Hildegarde, it was a pretty fair chain of circumstantial evidence that he had prepared to lay before them.

Oscar Piper counted off points, one, two, three, on his fingers. Not entirely complete as yet, but no bad holes in it. Not even Hildegarde Withers could knock holes in this setup. Though it was only fair, really, to let her in on the inside.

Taking some yellow blanks from the rack down the car, he returned to his table and settled down to the throes of composition. The next stop would be Saltillo in half an hour, and he could put it on the wire there. He began:

MURDER IS WHAT IT ADDS UP TO INNOCENT BYSTANDER DEAD THROUGH POISON PLANTED FOR ADELE MABIE IN PERFUME BOTTLE STOP YOUR INFORMATION SHOWS PERFUME STOCK OF DRUGSTORE WHERE PROTHERO GIRL WORKED BEFORE TAKING JOB WITH MABIES STOP AS DISCHARGED EMPLOYEE SHE HAD FAIR MOTIVE EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY STOP POLICE HERE HESITANT HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO FORCE THEIR HANDS ON ARRIVAL MEXICO CITY THANKS
OSCAR

He read it over, frowned and shook his head. You never could tell when information would leak out. If there only were some possible code—but of course! He tore up the first message, dropped the scraps into his ashtray and began again, using a code that would be Greek to Mexicans and simplicity itself to a Manhattan schoolteacher.

URDERMAY…INNOCENT…YSTANDERBAY…OISONPAY

He wrote on and on, finishing as they drew into the station. It was only the work of a moment to cross the platform, file the message with the telegraph operator, and return to the train. As he walked back through the dining car he noticed with some surprise that while his ashtray still held the remains of his after-dinner cigar, the scraps of the first telegram he had written had completely disappeared.

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Cover design by Mimi Bark

978-1-4804-1885-1

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