Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla (15 page)

“Me, I am waiting for a streets-car,” said Julio sweetly. “And you?”

“I am snooping,” Miss Withers informed him acidly. “I’m trying to find out if there is any connection between what happened on the Laredo train and what happened at the bullfight this afternoon. I forced my way into this place, I admit.”

Julio arose. “You weren’t afraid that maybe police would come sometime to search the rooms of the dead man?”

Miss Withers sniffed. “Not if they’re as leisurely as everybody else in this country.”

Julio grinned and nodded appreciatively. “Just what I’m thinking myself. You know,” he continued thoughtfully, “it begins to look like we better lay our chips on the table, you and me. We are both after the same things—”

“Are we?”

He nodded. “You are one amateur detective, no? Trying to trap the murderer? Me—I am the same.”

“You?” Miss Withers gasped. “You a detective?”

He shrugged. “Can I help it if I look like your Harold Teen in the fonny papers? I tell you, for this once I am trying to be a so-smart detective. Believe me, I don’t come to Mexico City for fun. I don’t take that train because I like to be with Americans. Not me. I take that train because I want to find the murderer of my friend. In this case everybody talk about poor Mrs. Mabie, nobody think about Manuel Robles, the young customs man. He don’t die from heart trouble, not him. We both know there was poison in that perfume bottle, like your inspector is saying. So now—”

“So now you deduce that there is a connection between the two cases?” Miss Withers sat down on the edge of the bed somewhat warily.

Julio shrugged. “I am not to the point of deducing. It is all one puzzle. Only—both my friend Robles and this Fitz have one things in common, just one. They die in different places, different times, different weapons. Nothing to connect them—nothing but one thing. When they both kick the pail, as you say in your so-wonderful slang, they both happen by accident—maybe on purpose—to be very close to one charming lady.”

“Go on,” Miss Withers prompted. “Meaning?”

“Meaning nothing—except that you can bet you my life that being next to Mrs. Adele Mabie these days is one plenty unhealthy place to be!”

Miss Withers digested that and nodded. “I suppose,” she suggested, “that you are about ready to denounce her to your friends in the police?”

The young Mexican looked up sharply. “Friends? In the police?” He laughed bitterly. “I have not one friend, not in the police. I tell you true. They are—how shall I say?—very dumb. They are also afraid of these case, because everybody have orders not to offend visitors to our country and scare other tourists away. No, what we do we do privately—about Mrs. Mabie or anybody else? What you think?”

“I think you’re going great,” the schoolteacher told him. “For a beginner, that is. And what conclusions did you draw from the photographs?” She pointed at the heap on the floor.

“I think maybe these Mike Fitz was a lady’s man, a grand caballero,” Julio said thoughtfully. “A what-you-call chaser.”

Miss Withers murmured something about calling the kettle black.

“Oh—you mean me?” He shrugged. “Me, I chase one at a time. When I find the right one, then I stop chasing. But I think these man, he chases many, and afterward he likes to sit and look at the pictures, no?”

Miss Withers looked over the pile. “Recognize any of these?” But Julio shook his head.

“You didn’t discover anything at all? If you’re going to play detective, you must try to use your powers of observation. Think, now!”

Julio thought. “Maybe this might have somethings to do with something, you don’t think?”

From his pocket he produced a folded sheet of notepaper. “I found this when I came in—somebody tucked it under the door, maybe.”

Miss Withers took it, read the penciled scrawl out loud:
“Say, Mike, who do you think your kidding, the boys won’t give a buck on this they say it’s lousy glass, so here it is back, yours sincerely, Benny.’”

“Folded up in the note when I pick it up,” said Julio, “was this!”

And he showed the schoolteacher a smallish flat green stone which shimmered in the candlelight. It was a stone which she had seen before, seen when she peered over the top of a booth at a cocktail emporium on the preceding day. Then it had been part of a shoulder clip on a redheaded girl’s dress.

“It’s Dulcie Prothero’s lost emerald!” the schoolteacher gasped. “She said—I heard her say—that her grandfather discovered a whole mine of the things somewhere down here near a smoking mountain.”

Julio’s expression changed at the name. “Dulcie Prothero!” he repeated. “What a girl! The sweetest and the prettiest and the fieriest and the—”

“The biggest liar in the Federal District,” Miss Withers concluded sharply. “Because I happen to remember from my geology books that there aren’t any emeralds produced in Mexico.”

“I remember too,” Julio said. “But
Señor
Fitz, he didn’t.”

“And he died without knowing,” the schoolteacher went on. “He stole that girl’s emerald—not knowing it was a glass heirloom—and he tried to have some friend of his get it turned into cash for him …”

Suddenly Miss Withers snapped her fingers. “Wait! Suppose the girl didn’t
know
that her emerald was false? Suppose that she thought it was real, treasured it highly, and then found that a man she thought her friend had stolen it? Would she—could she …”

Julio shook his head. “Couldn’t be. Miss Dulcie is not our man. I mean,” he corrected, “she is not the one we look for.”

For a beginner, Miss Withers thought, this young man was very opinionated. “Still coming back to Mrs. Mabie herself?” she asked.

Again the head shook. “No lady kills Michael Fitz, I know that. To stick a
banderilla
through a man’s back, into his heart—to kill him instantly like that was done? She is not strong enough, a woman. I read all about it in what the police say to the newspapers.”

“That is a big help …” began Miss Withers. Then she stopped speaking, put her hand warningly on the young man’s arm. “Listen!” she gasped. “It may be the police!”

There was a loud pounding on the outer door, a hoarse masculine voice. “Come on, open up in there!”

“Not police,” Julio whispered. “Too early for them, and they don’t speaking English much.”

More pounding on the door. “Open up, I tell you! You’ve had time enough.”

“Maybe we better open, eh?” Julio said. “You don’t break an egg without making any omelettes, yes?” And he opened the door.

Rollo Lighten blundered into the room. He blinked at the unexpected couple he saw before him. His tone softened. “Mike Fitz here?”

“Why, Mr. Lighton!” Miss Withers greeted him cordially. “I didn’t expect to see you out. I thought you said that you’d be busy until all hours doing those hundred publicity stories for the government press bureau?”

Lighton stood there, swaying perceptibly, and blinked. “Oh, that was nothing,” he bragged, almost giggling as he contemplated his own cleverness. “Easy enough to fool these greasers—just scribbled out ten stories and sent ’em to a stenographer. Told her to make ten copies of each story and shuffled ’em good! They’ll never know the difference!”

He paused, sensing that there was disapproval in the faces of the two who were before him. “Well, it’s all the time I can afford to give for such lousy pay! I had to put up the dough for my own expenses going up to Laredo and back, and now they only give me five
centavos
a word for news stories!” He sniffed. “Five lousy
centavos
!”

He stopped short, the mention of money bringing him back to the reason which had impelled him here. “Say, is Mike Fitz here, or has—has—”

“He’s gone,” Miss Withers said gently. “Can we be of any help?”

“Gone!” Lighton said miserably. He looked past them into the bedroom, shaking his head. “Gone …”

Slowly he sank onto the day bed, his gaunt frame suddenly boneless. There were tears in the corner of his bleary eyes. “It’s just the luck I always had,” he complained. “The others won’t miss the money, but to me—”

“What others?” snapped Julio Mendez, trying his hand. But his eagerness was too evident. Lighton stared at him warily, shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said dully. “I’ll never get back to East Orange. I was going home with this money we were going to make. I was going to show them back home that I was a big shot.”

“Why did Mr. Fitz take your money?” Miss Withers tried again.

But that was all there was, there wasn’t any more. Rollo Lighton stood up painfully. “I’m going—going out and get crocked to the gills, do you hear me?” The tears were rolling down his gaunt blue cheeks. “That’s all that’s left to do.”

He turned and went out through the door, and they heard his heavy uncertain tread going down the stairs.

Julio nodded sagely. “That one, he didn’t know Fitz was dead.”

“Yes? It looked like a pretty good performance, if you ask me,” Miss Withers pronounced.

But the Gay Caballero was serious. “If that one had killed
Señor
Fitz, he wouldn’t have come here. Because usually the
agentes,
they search the rooms of a murdered man. Sometimes they even—how you say?—ambush the place? And when they find someone comes there, they ask plenty questions.”

“In which case,” said Miss Withers, “we had better be getting away while we can.” Then she stopped. She led Julio to the kitchenette door, showed him the half-picked skinny fowl on the table. “If you’re going to play detective, draw me a deduction from that!”

He frowned, so seriously that he was again comic. “It’s only—only a fight rooster, what we use in cockfights in this country. I can tell that by his spurs.”

Miss Withers nodded dubiously. “Is it a Mexican custom to kill and eat fighting cocks?”

Julio Mendez, hand on his heart, swore that in all his life he had never eaten a fighting rooster and never wanted to try.

And that was that. “You run on ahead,” the schoolteacher told him, “and if you see any police hanging around downstairs whistle three times. I’m going to use this telephone to make a call to Mr. Piper.”

Julio’s eyes took on a wicked glint. “But I thought you said that that gentleman, he is waiting for you downstairs?”

She sniffed. “Never you mind, young man. How was I to know that you were a fellow sleuth and not—something else? Besides, I’ve been around liars so much lately that I’m beginning to catch the habit, to my shame and sorrow.”

“In this country,” Julio admired her dreamily, “we have some very fine proverbs. We have one that goes ‘He who lies down with dogs gets up with fleas!’” He waved his hand blithely, went out of the door.

Miss Hildegarde Withers stared after him, sniffed, and then made certain that he was really gone and not lurking in the hallway. She returned to the telephone and dialed a number. Finally she was connected with the clerk at the Hotel Georges.

“I wish to speak to Mr. Piper, please,” she said. “Right away, it’s very important.”

“The
Señor
Piper, he has gone away with the police,” the operator advised her.

“Really? Then please connect me with Mrs. Mabie.”

“The
Señora
Mabie, she has gone to the hospital, the Methodist Hospital!”

M
ISS HILDEGARDE WITHERS
had never seen a Mexican hospital. Nor had she ever seen a hospital lighted with candles and farm lanterns. The general effect was distinctly weird.

The smell was reassuring, however—being that mingled odor of iodoform, ether and soap which clings to every hospital in the world. Shapes in white moved vaguely up and down on mysterious errands of their own.

She had great difficulty in finding anyone who could understand a word of English, even though this was supposed to be an American hospital. She had greater difficulty in getting directions.

“But you have a patient named Mabie here, I know you have!” she insisted.

And finally an orderly was dispatched to lead her up the flights of stairs, deposit her before a door.
“Aquí
!” he said and left.

Gingerly Miss Withers opened the door of the hospital room. One faint candle flickered on a bureau, and there was the inevitable high iron bed, like a catafalque, with its motionless white burden.

The schoolteacher tiptoed into the room. And then a voice spoke in her ear, making her jump half out of her skin. “Oh, thank you for coming!” It was Adele Mabie.

Moreover, it was Adele Mabie sitting in a rocking chair and smoking a cigarette, the glow of health on her cheek.

Miss Withers shook her head. “But I understood …” She stopped. “Who is that on the bed, then?”

“Have a look.” Adele lifted the candle, and the schoolteacher looked down at the marble white face of Dulcie Prothero.

“Why—the child looks dead!”

Adele smiled. “She’s still unconscious. But it’s only a mild concussion, the doctors said.” She put back the candle. “It’s all right to talk if we keep our voices low,” she said.

“But how—what happened? Was she attacked, or did she attempt suicide, or …”

Adele shook her head. “She just walked in front of a taxi half an hour ago—up on Violetta Street, in the very worst part of town.”

“Hit-and-run driver?” Miss Withers hazarded, looking grim

“No, lucky for her. The man picked her up and rushed her here. Said it wasn’t his fault, that she just stepped off the curb from behind a parked car, as if she were walking in a dream. They found her tourist card, giving my name as employer, and traced me from that. So I came—at a time like this there’s nothing else one can do, is there?”

“Don’t apologize, don’t apologize,” Miss Withers told her. “What can we do?”

“Just wait,” Adele said. “They are short of nurses, and I said I’d stay until they found one. She may come to any minute—lucky that the child has such a thick head of hair. She’ll have a headache tomorrow, that’s all.”

She went to the bed, lifted the limp wrist, and felt the pulse. “This isn’t much different from beauty parlor operating,” Adele said. “Which is where I got my start, you know.”

The girl on the bed moaned a little. “I feel rather responsible for this girl,” Adele went on. “She was so desperately anxious to get down here to Mexico City, and everything seems to have gone so terribly wrong for her.”