Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla Read online

  “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!”

  X

  Perchance to Dream

  MISS 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 iro
n 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.”

  The girl on the bed was moaning, muttering. There were a few words that were intelligible.

  “Perhaps we ought to call the doctor,” Miss Withers suggested. But when he came, the black-haired dapper young man expressed himself as completely satisfied with the patient’s condition. Miss Withers found that he had taken his medical degree at Harvard, and she relaxed part of her vigilance.

  “She’s all right,” said the médico. “If she hadn’t been brought in here by the scared chofer she could have gone home. She’ll come out of it slowly.”

  “But this babbling, Doctor?” Adele said worriedly.

  “It’s just like coming out of ether,” he told them. “It means nothing except that she’s comatose from shock. Somebody ought to be with her when she wakes, as she may be frightened. I’m still trying to find a nurse—”

  “I’m bearing the expense, Doctor,” Adele advised him hastily, “and I’ll wait until you can find the nurse.”

  Miss Withers said that they would both wait. The two women, allied in a common cause, stood on either side of the bed and watched.

  Suddenly Dulcie spoke faintly but clearly, “Auntie Mac! Auntie Mac, don’t punish Tige! It was my fault, for leaving the salmon where he could get his claws on it!”

  Miss Withers relaxed. She had been hoping for revelations and received news of Dulcie’s landlady’s cat.

  “Delirious, I guess,” Adele Mabie suggested.

  “No!” came the clear voice from the bed. “Not in the slightest. Why I’m clear as a bell, clear as a big bell ringing …” She babbled on.

  “She hears and understands,” Miss Withers whispered. “It’s a coma. You know, it’s the same sort of coma produced by twilight sleep, or scopolamine. I’ve been reading all about it—they call it the Truth Drug, you know. Suppose I ask her some questions?”

  “Oh no!” Adele gasped. “Why—”

  “I don’t see how it could hurt her, as long as she’s bound to talk her head off anyway!” Miss Withers was burning with curiosity to explore this mind—the same mind that she had once helped to cram with knowledge. “In her condition she simply cannot lie!”

  “All right,” Adele said slowly. “What shall we ask?”

  “Listen to me, Dulcie,” said the schoolteacher. “This is Miss Withers, your old teacher. You remember me?”

  There was a pause. “Snoopy, snoopy Withers!” sang out the girl. “No more lessons, no more school, no more teacher, darned old fool.”

  The schoolteacher did not bat an eye. “Inhibitions are removed,” she said dryly. Then: “Tell us, Dulcie, what really happened? Was it an accident?”

  “He did it on purpose,” the girl said, her voice lower. “He did it on purpose, he did it—”

  “What? He ran into you on purpose?”

  “No,” Dulcie corrected. “He broke—he broke my heart, the bum.”

  “Who did?”

  “‘Hearts don’t break, it isn’t true; but they ache, ah yes, they do …’” sang the girl almost cheerfully.

  Miss Withers looked at Adele Mabie and hardened her heart. “Was it Francis Mabie?”

  “What are you saying!” burst in Adele, but the schoolteacher hushed her.

  “Go on, tell me! Was it Mr. Mabie?”

  “Not—not him, that fat old toad with the wet hands …”

  “But he gave you money, didn’t he?”

  Adele broke in to say that that was a lie. “My husband was never involved with this girl or anyone else in his life!”

  “Answer the question, Dulcie. Did Mr. Mabie give you money?”

  “Y-es,” admitted the half-unconscious girl. “Money—”

  “Why did he give you money?” The whole process seemed to Miss Withers like the senseless séances that once or twice in her life she had been forced to sit through, with spirit raps for no and yes.

  “My money!” said Dulcie. “Week’s wages—as a maid, oh, a very funny, funny maid, Maid Marian in the moated grange…”

  “Of course,” Adele cut in happily. “Don’t you see? Francis was so softhearted that when he found the girl broke on the train he gave her a week’s pay because I fired her without notice!”

  Miss Withers paused, momentarily baffled.

  “Now it’s my turn,” Adele cried. “After all, if anybody has a reason for getting to the bottom of this mystery, I do.” She leaned over the girl. “Who was the man?” she insisted. “The man you loved so terribly? Was it Mr. Fitz?”

  “Poor—poor Fitz,” Dulcie murmured. “Poor little Fitzy.” Her voice sounded stronger, more natural now.

  “Perhaps we ought to stop this,” Miss Withers suggested, having a few tardy compunctions. But Adele Mabie shook her head.

  “Listen!”

  Dulcie Prothero was off to a good start, needing no prompting. “Poor Fitzy thought he was fooling people, and he wasn’t fooling anybody at all, not anybody. A bird in the hand is worth a hundred flying, is it? You ought to take love where you find it, and we’re only young once…”

  “It sounds,” Adele said softly, “as if the girl had fallen into the hands of one of those wolves who hang around hotel lobbies all over the world and try to pick up girls.”

  Miss Withers nodded. “But Dulcie didn’t want to look at his etchings.”

  The girl on the bed cried: “Bobsie! Get Bobsie!”

  They both leaned closer. “Where is he? Who is he?” Adele begged.

  “Handbag, please,” moaned the girl. “In the handbag…”

  “Now she’s rambling,” Miss Withers decided. But Adele suddenly crossed the room, returned with a worn brown purse.

  “The taxi driver brought this along,” she whispered. “Here is your handbag, dear.”

  “Open it,” commanded the weak voice. “Open the handbag and take Bobsie out and tear him up.”

/>   The bag was well filled, but instead of money the two curious women found a folded wad of newspaper clippings. She held them to the candle.

  “But of course!” she ejaculated. “They’re the pictures of Mrs. Macafee’s cows—bullfight scenes, in other words.”

  She held out to Adele one picture, showing a pleasant-faced young man with big ears under a funny hat, a man who wore with obvious pride the gold-spangled costume of a matador de toros. She read the caption out loud: “‘El Yonkers Matador, un Nuevo Torero de Yanquilandia.’”

  “An American bullfighter, eh?” mused the schoolteacher.

  Dulcie took that remark up too. “American bullfighter gone native,” said she. “Bobsie broke my heart, almost…”

  “She’s coming out of it,” Miss Withers whispered.

  Adele nodded. “But we’ve gone this far—please let me ask just one more question.” She bent over the girl. “Did you ever own a bottle of Elixir d’Amour perfume, Dulcie? You did, didn’t you?”

  The girl whispered a doubtful “Yes” and then, more loudly, “But it wasn’t any good. I threw it away!”

  “Where?” put in Miss Withers eagerly.

  The girl moved restlessly beneath the covers, turned her face to one side. The marble pallor was gone.

  “Where did you throw it?” There was a moment’s wait, and then…

  “Here’s the nurse,” Adele Mabie broke in suddenly. There were footsteps in the hall, and the nurse arrived, starched, crisp, and competent looking. The doctor was close behind her.

  “Why, our patient is practically well!” he announced cheerfully. “Pulse slowed down, respiration normal—she’ll be able to go out of here tomorrow.” Adele Mabie drew him aside, took out her handbag.

  Miss Hildegarde Withers bent over the bed, saw a pair of clear brown eyes staring up at her.

  “Why—I know you!” cried Dulcie.

  “Yes, dear. Don’t talk. You’ve already done quite enough talking for one night.”

  The lips trembled into an uncertain smile. Dulcie Prothero was no fool. “Did I give the right answers?” she asked.

  But Miss Withers was being paged. Adele Mabie drew her into the hall.