Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla (11 page)

The inspector finally joined her, his face well whittled from the combination of a razor with cold water. “This strike is getting on my nerves,” he began. But the hotel manager approached, full of apologies. He was a bouncing, bulging man in a wing collar and looked, Miss Withers thought, like a cross between Wally Beery and Ramon Navarro.

“Ah, we have good news!” he announced, with a wide and toothy smile. “No more candles! No more cold water! Even if this strike goes on a week more, the Hotel Georges will from today have its own generator, its own lighting plant, at great expense. Tonight I promise lights, and hot water from seven until nine. Hotel Georges service!” And he hurried away to supervise the entrance of a large and unwieldy gasoline engine.

“Oscar!” began Miss Withers. “Has it occurred to you …”

He took her arm. “Breakfast first, clues afterward.” They went out into the sun-flooded street. “We’ll need our strength today.”

Enjoying their breakfasts, this oddly assorted pair of detectives found, was easier said than done. In the first place it took even longer than usual to attract the attention of the vinegar blonde in Pangborn’s and secure menus. The breakfasts, when they came, were sketchy and cold. The waitress mumbled, when complaints were made, that everything had to be carried down four flights of stairs from charcoal ovens improvised on the roof. “¡
La huelga, senor
!”

Then too, they saw where the bullet holes in the farther wall were visible, two staring black eyes. There seemed also to be a smeary stain on the tile floor where only yesterday a horrible blotch of color had died. The gaudy worm, the writhing snake with its rings of yellow and red and black …

As dessert Miss Withers handed to the inspector a railway timetable marked in commanding red crayon. “First blood, Oscar! Results!”

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“Well, I do. A delicate little hint to mind my own business and catch a train out of town. Which must mean that we are getting warm.”

Piper conceded that. “But who do you suppose …”

“If we knew that, this case would be washed up,” she told him. They came out into the street again. The sun was gone, and the Hotel Georges loomed against the sky, a sky now more slaty gray than blue. Great dark thunderheads massed from the south.

Miss Withers pointed up. “There’s my window, the one where the curtain is blowing.”

He squinted. “It proves one thing, anyway. You were right all along in eliminating the Prothero girl.”

“Was I? Why?”

“No dame in God’s world could throw hard enough and straight enough to toss a weight in that window from here,” he pointed out. “That’s two stories up.”

Miss Withers agreed. “We can now eliminate everybody but Hansen and the alderman and Lighton and Mr. Ippwing and Julio Mendez and-and yourself.”

Somewhere in the direction of the Alameda a crowd was gathering and a band was playing under the great elms. But Miss Withers at the moment felt no interest in civic affairs.

“One moment,” she told the inspector. There was some building in progress on the corner of San Juan de Letran, and a pile of bricks stood invitingly near by alongside the boardings. “I’d like to make a harmless little experiment.”

Before he could stop her the good lady seized a brickbat and poised herself beneath that high distant oblong which was her window. “I wonder, Oscar …”

But the experiment was nipped in the bud as a voice behind them spoke sharply. “No, lady!” They both turned to see a policeman, a very military and dapper policeman. Upon his right sleeve he wore tiny American, German and French flags as a sign that he was an accomplished linguist and thus received three
pesos
extra pay a day for his ability to speak to tourists in their own tongues.

“No, lady!” he repeated earnestly, taking the brickbat from her and tossing it back on the pile. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a fine lady like you—at this hour of the morning!”

His voice was thick with that persuasive, buttery tone which people save for naughty children, the insane, and alcoholics. But Miss Withers faced him, snapped: “I am not a typical American tourist, young man. And I am not under the influence of liquor.”

Piper put in: “You ought to see that this lady isn’t a night owl.”

Swift comprehension dawned upon the face of the policeman. He looked from Miss Withers to the scene of the excitement in the Alameda, saw the red banners tossing against the green of the trees, heard the music of the
“Internationale.”
“But of course,” he said. “It is only a little demonstration, a protest against capitalist greed? The lady, she is sympathetic to Labor? A thousand pardons.” With a wary and apologetic smile the officer withdrew, faded around the corner.

Miss Hildegarde Withers, whose mind was something of a single track, looked longingly at the pile of bricks, but the inspector took her arm firmly. “Come on, Emma Goldman,” he advised her. “Let’s get inside out of the Revolution.”

They ascertained, by the simple expedient of inquiring of the pleasant young lady at the switchboard, that Adele Mabie had not yet returned.

“Oscar, I’m a little worried,” Miss Withers announced. “I promised myself that I wasn’t going to let that woman out of my sight if I could help it, and now she’s running around the city alone.”

“As long as she’s alone,” Piper pointed out dryly, “she’ll be all right.”

“You know what I mean,” the schoolteacher said. “Anyway, I’m going to sit right down here and wait until she comes in. I have a very strong hunch that something is about to happen, and a stronger one that I’m going—that we’re going—to miss out on it.”

They sat down and busied themselves with ineffectual efforts to snub the swarms of shoeshine boys with their little boxes and their wide hopeful smiles.

“You know,” Piper said ruefully, “at thirty
centavos
per shine this is running into money.”

They waited and watched. At eleven o’clock the
chofer
of a taxi-cab entered, loaded down with parcels, boxes, an armful of bulky Tolucan baskets painted with
peones,
horses, cockfight scenes, cactus, and Mexican flags—all in bright yellows and reds and greens on a loud purple ground. He dumped them at the desk, mentioned a name, and departed.

“Adele is busy somewhere, we know that,” Miss Withers pointed out.

At noon two small urchins appeared, bearing armfuls of red carnations, lilies, gladioli and water lilies. They also carried earthen pots, bright green pottery ware and glassware, and several
serapes
much brighter than anything seen heretofore.

“Adele Mabie has discovered the markets,” Miss Withers deduced.

This interlude ended, the manager approached. “More Hotel Georges service,” he told them gaily.

“We have tickets in the
primera filia
for the
Toreo
—first-row tickets. Better get yours while they last.”

“Tickets?” Piper demanded. “For what?”

“Ah, for the bullfight,
señor!
Everybody goes to the
Toreo
on Sunday afternoon in Mexico.”

“Everybody but us,” Miss Withers told the man firmly.

Then she caught sight of a familiar gaunt figure at a writing desk across the lobby. She waved invitingly, and after a moment Rollo Lighton came cheerfully toward them, stuffing hotel stationery into his coat pocket.

“Didn’t know you were living here too,” Piper greeted him.

“I’m not,” Lighton said. “You must come and see my little apartment sometime. Nothing grand, but furnished in some antiques that I’ve picked up here and there. I use it as my office too—where I do all my publicity work.”

“Oh, you don’t confine yourself to corresponding for newspapers?” Miss Withers asked him.

He shrugged. “I’m only hooked up with the New York
World,
the Chicago
Tribune,
the
Christian Science Monitor,
the Seattle
P.I.
and the Los Angeles
Examiner,”
he explained, with a wave of his thin arm.

“Doesn’t keep me busy, not me. So I do booklets and ads and publicity. Just got a swell order too,” he confided, sinking comfortably into a chair. “A rush order from the government!”

“Really!” said Miss Withers.

Lighton nodded. “Have to turn out a hundred publicity stories by ten o’clock tonight, all about the Laredo highway. For the news broadcasts that the government sends to American newspapers. Ought to bring tourists down, eh?” He looked inquiringly from Piper to Miss Withers. “Don’t suppose either of you has a typewriter I could borrow? Mine is just temporarily out of service.”

“I haven’t a typewriter,” Miss Withers assured him, “but I could lend you a fountain pen.”

Much to her surprise Mr. Lighton took the pen. He lingered a moment. “I happen to know a wonderful little bar around the corner,” he hinted hopefully. “Their brandy cocktails are famous all over the world. It’s chock-f of atmosphere too—a place you really ought to see.”

Nobody took him up on the suggestion, and he finally faded away. “You know, Oscar,” Miss Withers said, “I don’t like that man.”

The inspector laughed and said that newspaper men were a funny lot.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Particularly correspondents for the New York
World.
You wouldn’t remember, but the
World
died four or five years ago—just about the time we were mixed up in that aquarium affair.”

At that moment another
chofer
entered the lobby, bending under the weight of two wicker chairs and a card table with a leather top painted with
mescal
plant designs around the yellow circle of the Aztec calendar stone. “Adele is still going strong,” Piper said.

This time there seemed to be a certain amount due on the purchases, and as the clerk seemed dubious about laying out the money, the alderman had to be telephoned. He came weaving down the stairs, walking with the exaggerated dignity of the half swozzled. Without protest Mabie paid for the C.O.D. He also paid for two bullfight tickets, leaving one encased in an envelope to be placed in the letter box in Adele’s name.

“Tell Mrs. Mabie that I’m out doing a little shopping of my own,” he said in a loud and petulant voice. “I’ll meet her at the bull ring.”

He went out of the hotel, with only a surly nod at the two watchers. “Ten to one he’ll do his shopping at the Papillon bar,” Piper said.

Miss Withers nodded, “Oscar, there’s a man with something on his mind.”

“Huh?” said Piper. “Guilty conscience, eh?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. But
somebody
must have!” As she was about to continue, the Ippwings suddenly hove in sight, dressed in their Sunday best.

“Oh, I do hope it doesn’t go and rain!” cried the little old lady, peering dubiously at the somewhat murky exterior. “I’ll be so disappointed if they call off the bullfight. I know our daughter is counting on my writing a long, long letter all about it.”

“Mr. Hemingway is our daughter’s favorite author,” Ippwing confessed. “Myself, I like biographies better.”

“We have only five days in the city,” Mrs. Ippwing continued. “These tours, you know!” She smiled at Miss Withers. “We’ve got to get through two frescoes and a church somehow this afternoon, besides the bullfight!” They trotted out.

It was true, the afternoon was drawing on. Suddenly Miss Withers arose. “Oscar, we must up and away.”

He nodded. “If everybody’s going to the bullfight, we might as well—”

“We might as well do nothing of the kind!” the schoolteacher snapped. “Don’t you see—with everybody accounted for at the bullfight, this is a wonderful chance to do a little quiet research?”

“A little breaking and entering, you mean?” Oscar Piper brightened at the prospect of action.

Miss Withers was already hailing a
libre.
And she amazed the inspector by the address she gave.

“I thought you’d eliminated Dulcie!” he complained. “What use is it …” But they went to the Hotel Milano all the same.

It turned out to be a small hotel, an old and sad and dingy hotel stuck off and forgotten on a side street not far from where a great unfinished Arch of Triumph stood as a monument to the incurable optimism of some previous political administration.

The lobby was narrow and dark, and deserted besides. Piper rang the bell on the desk and finally a callow youth appeared, with a bottle of beer in one hand and a tortilla in the other.

They learned, after much travail with language difficulties, that the
Señorita
Prothero was registered in Room 23 but was out.

“Never mind,” Miss Withers said confidently. “Have you any vacancies on that floor?” The youth gaped at her, open-mouthed. She tried again, calling upon her Spanish dictionary, and finally succeeded in making the lad understand that she wanted a single room.

Borrowing five
pesos
from the inspector, since lack of baggage indicated that payment in advance was required, she received a massive iron key at least four inches long. The number on it was twenty-eight.

“See you later, Oscar!” said Miss Withers meaningfully. The youth led her up one flight of stairs, indicated a door, and departed clutching his
tostón
tip.

Five minutes later the inspector, feeling a little foolish, came stealthily up the stairs and caught Miss Hildegarde Withers in the act of picking the lock of Room 23, making use of a hairpin. The door finally yielded, and they entered a small cubbyhole whose only window was a square of glass opening onto an airshaft.

“I still don’t see why we’re going to all this trouble,” Piper complained. “I told you I’d come around to your idea that this Prothero girl is innocent.”

“I’m just contrary enough,” Miss Withers told him, “to keep on the opposite side from you. It will, I think, improve my average. Besides …” She put on her most cryptic expression.

“Besides what?”

“Besides, the real reason we’re here is the geological fact that there are no emeralds in Mexico. Gold, yes. Silver, yes. Rubies of a sort, garnets and aquamarines—but no emeralds!”

With a deftness born of long experience the inspector took the lead in searching the little room. It was simple enough, for the place held only a bed, a dressing table, a chair, and a wardrobe. In one corner stood Dulcie’s suitcase, empty.