Puzzle of the Red Stallion (5 page)

“How does one look at the underneath of a horse’s foot?” Miss Withers demanded. They showed her—and she was immediately confronted with the realization that she had lost her bet. Siwash wore all four shoes.

“And that is that,” the schoolma’am decided. “By the way, Oscar—we might try a different tack. Have you identified the dead woman?”

Piper snapped his fingers. “I knew I’d forgotten something!” He turned and shouted toward the scattering detectives. “Boys, what’s new on the identity angle?”

Sergeant Burke, who had been entrusted with the guardianship of Miss Withers’s dog, ceased his efforts to make Dempsey sit up and beg. “Radio Officer Shay’s been on the phone for half an hour, sir. But he reports most of the stables don’t answer their phones, and the ones he’s reached haven’t sent out any horses this morning.”

“Well, tell him to keep on trying,” barked the inspector. “We can’t have a murder investigation of an unknown dame.”

But Miss Withers interrupted again. “We’re only wasting time, Oscar. After all, the horse is supposed to be one of the most intelligent animals. Suppose we let this big red fellow lead us to his stable?”

“Huh? Will they do that?”

“They will,” Miss Withers assured him. “In fact, the only time I rode a horse he turned around and galloped into the barn without giving me a chance to dismount. Just let him have his head….”

“Come on, Burke,” ordered the inspector. “Another job for you. Take this nag and see if he’ll go home.”

The sergeant put Dempsey down and gingerly accepted the reins. “You know, Inspector, I never rode anything except a motorcycle….”

“You don’t need to ride him, just walk along beside him and we’ll follow,” Miss Withers suggested.

Burke tugged on the rein. “Come on, Plug!” Siwash rolled his eyes a little and did not move.

Burke pulled harder. “Gitty ap, Napoleon….”

“He’s just balky, I guess,” said the inspector. “Go on, you!” And he slapped Siwash smartly on the rump.

It was a mistake. Siwash seemingly performed the miracle of levitation. He reared with his front feet and almost at the same instant slashed out viciously with his heels. They whizzed past the inspector’s face, neatly knocking the cigar from his mouth.

Miss Withers vented a surprised scream and Dempsey burst into a furor of barking. But Siwash, who had had too much of the whole affair for his liking, bounded over the prostrate figure of the sergeant and disappeared almost instantly around a bend in the path.

“Not so balky after all,” observed Miss Withers quietly. “Are you all right, Sergeant?”

Burke climbed wearily to his feet. “Where is he, the misbegotten …” He stopped and smiled apologetically. “Guess he must of pulled a knife on me, Inspector.”

“I’d like to get that big red plug alone …” Piper was muttering.

“Yes, alone in the back room at headquarters, with a bright light to shine in his eyes and a rubber hose to smack in his face,” Miss Withers told him bitterly. “Anyway”—she pointed to the line of clear and definite hoofprints which led southward along the bridle path—“anyway now we can follow the horse and see where he belongs.” Dempsey barked excitedly and tugged at his leash.

“Okay,” agreed the inspector. “But let’s get rid of the bloodhound. Burke, you know the address—take the pup home, will you?”

Then the inspector and Miss Withers set off together down the bridle path. They were barely around the second turn when the schoolteacher stopped and grasped her companion’s arm. She was pointing down at the path. “Snakes!” she cried.

Sure enough, a serpentine trail wound along in the mud. “Oscar, what made it?”

“Relax, Hildegarde,” he told her wearily. “It’s the track of a bicycle tire, just a common, everyday bicycle.”

“Oh,” she said. “Odd place for it—one would think the rider’d prefer the roadway.” They went on, trudging wearily along the path. After a while they came upon cinders, which made the going faster. Even here, still clearly marked, were the two lines of dainty hoofprints, going and returning, with the bicycle track between.

“Observe, my dear Oscar,” pointed out Miss Withers, “that the light rain left the bridle path in excellent shape to give us a record of who—or what—passed here.” She pointed. “First came the horse, running north. Then the bicycle, presumably in the same direction. Finally, superimposed upon the other prints, we have the hoofmarks just made by the beast on his homeward gallop.”

Piper nodded. “Hildegarde, you should have been a Boy Scout.”

She took that as a compliment. “But Oscar, how did the bicycle return? We haven’t passed it anywhere….”

Nor was there any sign of the bicycle as they left the park at the Sixty-sixth Street gate. Piper frowned. “I ought to know what stables are near here—walked this beat once. Thwaite’s is closest, I guess.”

He led the way one block south. “We’ll ask there anyway….”

But inquiry was not necessary, for outside the double doors of Thwaite’s stood a big red thoroughbred patiently waiting for someone to let him in. He moved aside as the inspector somewhat warily edged past and pounded on the panel.

There was a long silence. “Open up, here!” roared Piper. He pounded again, harder.

Then the top half of the door opened and a round brown face peered through. Highpockets pointed at the other door across the driveway. “Office over there, mister man—just ring the bell—”

“I’ll wring your neck if you shut that door,” Piper promised. “Who’s in charge here?”

“Mister Latigo Wells, he’s the manager—only he’s out to breakfast,” Highpockets explained tremulously. “If you want to wait he ought to be back pretty soon, he’s been gone a long time already!”

“Well!” said Miss Withers. “How long a time, young man—would you say forty-five minutes?”

Highpockets frowned in deepest concentration. Then he shook his head. “Not as long as that, ma’am—I wouldn’t say he’s been gone much longer’n an hour or two.”

Miss Withers turned to the inspector. “Your witness,” she said sadly.

Piper nodded. “What we want to know is—”

Intent upon questioning the colored boy, both Miss Withers and the inspector had quite forgotten the big red horse. They were now reminded of his presence as Siwash thrust a long russet-colored nose between them, over the top of the door. He nickered softly.

They jumped aside and Highpockets opened the lower part of the door.

“Look out—he’s dangerous,” warned the inspector quickly.

“Him?” Highpockets laughed gleefully. “I been taking care of this horse fo’ a long time, boss, and I never see him dangerous to anything but a pan of oats!” And the colored boy grasped Siwash firmly by one ear and led him in through the door. Deftly he slipped off the bridle and loosened the cinch.

“Go on, git to your stall!” And Siwash obediently went back along the runway, meek as a kitten.

Highpockets turned toward the two who now ventured inside the stable. “How come you bring back Miss Feverel’s horse all lathered up this way?”

“Feverel, eh?” Piper nodded. “Sounds like a phony—a stage name. But go on—where does—I mean where
did
she live?”

“Why—” Highpockets’ face turned a sickly green.

“Where
did
she live? You mean—she ain’t living anywheres now?”

“Answer the question,” pressed Piper. “Good heavens, if the woman stabled her horse here you must know her address.”

But Highpockets backed away shaking his head. “I doan know nothing and I never had nothing to do with—”

“Anything!” Miss Withers finished for him. “Oscar, we’re just wasting time. This place must have an office and the office must have records of some kind.”

Piper nodded. To the boy—“You all alone here?”

Highpockets nodded. “Yes, sir…. I sleep on a cot in the back, so I’m always here. Mister Latigo, he comes in daytimes, and Mrs. Thwaite and her husband, they live in a flat upstairs. She owns the stables, but I doan like to disturb her unless we got to….”

“Heaven forbid,” Miss Withers cut in. “This is only a murder case, that’s all. But which way to the office?”

Highpockets pointed with wavering finger toward a side door. “Down the h-hall,” he offered.

It was a long hall with a sharp turn in the middle. Then they saw a pane of lighted glass in a doorway. As they came closer they heard sounds of distant, mournful song….

“Hillbillies!” gasped Miss Withers. “But this isn’t the hour for them to be on the air. Listen!”

The voice was untrained, but low and mellow. Its only accompaniment was the soft plucking of a guitar.

“Now I’ve got no use for the wimmen,

They’re greedy and graspin’ for gold….

They’ll love a man for his money,

When it’s gone they’ll leave him co-o-o-o-old.

My pal was an honest young puncher,

Honest and upright and true….

Till he fell in love with a woman,

With a woman known as Lou….”

The inspector’s head was nodding in time with the wailing ballad of the plains, but such music was not to Miss Withers’s taste. She flung open the door of the office.

Seated at a roll-top desk, with his booted feet high above his head, sprawled a tall, thin young man with a long sad upper lip. He clutched a battered guitar to his bosom and his eyes were closed as he sang.

He stopped and put his feet on the floor with a crash.

“Howdy,” he greeted them, sliding the guitar quickly toward its place atop the desk.

“You’re the manager here?” queried Piper.

“That’s me—Latigo Wells. And if you’re figuring to rent horses—”

“Don’t be silly—do we look dressed for riding?” Miss Withers snapped. She smoothed her neat serge suit.

“You never can tell,” Latigo Wells was saying. “I just had the dickens of an argument with a tough guy in a blue overcoat—he got sore when I wouldn’t rent him a fast horse. I told him he’d have to wear boots or chaps to ride any horse out of this stable. And these hacks in the stable get a hard enough life without going out under that kind of a hombre.”

“We don’t want horses,” the inspector cut in. “We’re looking for—for a Miss Feverel. You know her?”

Latigo’s gray eyes flickered. “Sure I know her. She’s not here. And if I were you I wouldn’t wait—she’s likely to be gone for some time.”

Miss Withers sniffed. “I don’t suppose that you, working here, happen to know where she lives?”

Latigo bristled at that. “Sure I know—I been up to her apartment. Last Tuesday night, to a swell party. She lives in the Hotel Harthorn, up on Broadway.” Then the westerner rose to his feet. “Say, what’s it to you folks?”

“It’s this,” said Oscar Piper. He flashed his badge. “Miss Feverel was found dead on the bridle path about an hour ago.”

Latigo didn’t say anything, but his neck reddened and he grew oddly white about the mouth.

“Of course you’ve been right in this office all morning?” Piper continued casually.

“Sure,” Latigo nodded. “Ever since I saddled her horse—that big red race horse she owns. I been sitting here …”

“Why didn’t you answer the phone, then—and why did the colored boy say that you went out to breakfast?”

Latigo blinked. Then he smiled apologetically. “I told him I was going and then I changed my mind. I been sitting here, just singin’ a little—and I guess I was too busy singin’ to answer that phone. I just let her ring….”

He began to roll a cigarette. “You say Miss Feverel’s dead? Did the horse kick her?”

Miss Withers looked at the inspector and her eyelid dropped a fraction of an inch.

Piper nodded. “Looks that way,” he said. “Dangerous horse.”

“Sure,” agreed Latigo. “Any fast horse is dangerous for a woman who can’t ride better than her. I warned her—no race horse makes a good saddle horse without a lot of training. But she wouldn’t spend the money to have the horse schooled right—I guess she was hard up. Didn’t pay her board bill on time, neither….”

“Mrs. Thwaite made a fuss about that, didn’t she?” asked Miss Withers wickedly.

Latigo shrugged. “Not that I know of. They were great pals, Mrs. Thwaite and Miss Feverel. And the doc, too—that’s Mr. Thwaite.” He faced them, twisting his cigarette. “Everybody was pals with Miss Feverel—that girl was strictly aces.”

“Not
quite
everybody,” Miss Withers amended. Piper nodded.

“Well,” Latigo admitted, “they did have their arguments. You see, Miss Feverel got the idea that Mrs. Thwaite wanted Siwash. She suspicioned that we were using her horse when we knew she wouldn’t be around….”

“And of course she was mistaken in that belief?”

“Well—” Latigo began.

“Of course!” snapped a brittle and decisive voice. A door had opened just behind Miss Withers, disclosing a stairway filled at the moment by a very wide woman and a rather smallish man who sported a large mustache. The woman came first in practically everything—as she made clear.

“I’m Maude Thwaite,” she announced. “What’s going on here?”

It was rare for Miss Hildegarde Withers to take an instinctive dislike to a person on sight. In fact, as experience had taught her, she was prone to the other extreme. Yet she felt an instinctive surge of loathing rise in her being as she looked upon the proprietor of this riding academy.

Mrs. Thwaite was wide and muscular—qualities not necessarily unattractive in a woman. But her eyes were small and beady, and her complexion was a gray-blue, heavily mantled with light powder.

She was dressed in formal riding attire—fitted jacket, light jodhpurs and heavy shoes. In one hand she held a heavy crop with a silver cap and she switched herself on the ankles as she spoke.

“I said—what’s going on here?”

“Yes, what’s going on here?” echoed her husband. Even shaggy worsted failed to give him bulk, either physical or mental. He waxed his mustache as he spoke.

“Only a few questions about Miss Feverel,” said the inspector hastily. “You know her?”

“Of course—” Rufus Thwaite began. His wife drowned him out.

“Yes, we know Violet—a very good friend and a valued customer,” she said. “She has stabled her horse with us for the last six months.”

The inspector was a great believer in direct frontal attack. “Well, she won’t be a customer any longer,” he remarked. He displayed his badge. “You see, she was killed about an hour ago on the bridle path.”