Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla Page 4

  “Looks that way,” Piper agreed. He rose to go. “And you can’t help me any, eh?”

  Adele Mabie hesitated, looking intently at the tip of her shoe. “Why—why, no, I can’t think of anyone. Unless—Francis, it couldn’t be that girl, could—”

  Piper intervened. “What girl?”

  Adele said, “Oh, just a silly idiot of a maid in Laredo who tried to put an end-curl in my hair and did this!” She showed the inspector a singed strand and then tucked it back into her smooth coiffure.

  “Yeah? What about this maid?”

  Adele Mabie flashed a sidelong look. “Why, Mr. Piper! You ought to know, because I saw you trying to pump her, right outside this room. How Miss Dulcie Prothero got onto the train I haven’t the slightest idea, but—”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Piper put in. “That girl—why, she didn’t look like a maid.”

  Adele laughed bitterly. “Well, she didn’t act like a maid! It turned out that all the experience she talked about when she answered my ad in the New York paper for a traveling maid was a great big lie. She hadn’t the slightest idea of what a lady’s maid is supposed to do, not the slightest. Why, I found out—she actually admitted, mind you—that she’d been working in a soda fountain!”

  “Where?” broke in the inspector, jubilant.

  “Oh, Amsterdam and Seventy-second, or some terrible place on the West Side”—as if this were an especially sore point. “The fuss that girl made when I discharged her, after she ruined my hair! It seems that she had her little heart set on a trip to Mexico City, and the things she said!”

  “Well, you did fire her a little roughly,” put in Mabie. “And without any notice.”

  For an instant Adele’s eyes blazed. “Yes, Francis, stand up for a pretty girl! I suppose I’m just a cruel and unreasonable woman because I wouldn’t put up with being b-burned!”

  The alderman moved toward her, but she shook her shoulders discouragingly. “That insolent, hotheaded little fool!”

  “I’ll be going,” Piper said. “Got to question the boy who brought you that tea, though it’s not likely we’ll get anything out of him. You’d better take all the precautions you can from now on.”

  There was a strange, dazed look in Adele Mabie’s eyes. “But, Inspector, if somebody on this train wants to kill me, what can you or anybody do?”

  “I don’t know,” said Piper honestly. “But I’m going to do it.”

  He spent the next half-hour in trying to get something out of the porter and waiters, without any luck. Language difficulties aside, they seemed to view him as a meddlesome gringo to whom one should answer “¿Quién sabe?” and nothing else. But he did find out that Adele Mabie’s dressing case had been used to prop open the door of the drawing room as they pulled out of Laredo station. Where anybody passing could see it, Piper reminded himself.

  The train roared and rattled along its bumpy roadbed, climbing, dropping, winding on. The inspector, conscious of the fact that he had a lot of loose ends that needed tying or braiding or whatever it is that is done to loose ends, dropped into a chair at the rear of the combination club- and dining-car. Calling for a bottle of amber Moravia, he sipped it in silence.

  Up ahead, in one of the dining booths, Hansen and Rollo Lighten were playing checkers on a table which had not yet been set with linen and silver for dinner. Their voices now and then drifted back in snatches.

  They were still talking about the strike scheduled to darken the lights and stop the wheels of Mexico City on the morrow. And they seemed to be speaking as if that strike were distinctly an act of Providence. “It’s an ill wind that can’t blow something into the right pockets!” was a pet remark of Al Hansen’s. He repeated it two or three times.

  Hansen was looking at his watch. “Ought to be getting the message about now …” He mumbled something else indistinguishable.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Lighten said. “Mike is an old hand at this sort of thing. When corners need cutting, he’s the one to cut ’em. Been down there for ten years. I was with him when he promoted that Washington to Mexico City auto race a couple of years ago. Wrote the publicity. Mike Fitz made a good thing out of it too, believe me, even if the race never came off. His backer backed out on him.”

  Hansen said something about “more cash.”

  “Sure he will. He’s a dependable guy, and this sort of thing is right up his alley. If you want something promoted—business or red-hot telephone numbers—he’s the man. Ten to one he’ll come through with some of his own money—and he’s got plenty.”

  Far to the south, in the great city hung on a sky-high plateau, Mr. Michael Fitz was frying his supper, in the shape of a solitary egg and two strips of bacon, when the doorbell rang.

  Fitz instantly closed the kitchenette door, crouched beside a chair in the square living room to put on his too-tight shoes. Then, after a quick and critical glance at the tanned handsome man with grayish waved hair who stared back at him from his pocket mirror, he answered the door.

  It was only a messenger boy, after all. He took the telegram, automatically reached into his trouser pocket, and found there a solitary tostón. On second thought Mike Fitz left it there. It was no time for expensive habits.

  The boy lingered hopefully for a moment, then started down the apartment stairs. He was almost to the bottom when a voice hailed him from above, in a jubilant summons. “Hey, muchacho!” And a silver tostón came flying down to tinkle on the bottom step.

  Mike Fitz read the telegram again, read the official form which the company had added at the bottom. Merrily whistling the lilting notes of “Adelante, Maria Theresa,” he waltzed into the kitchenette, turned off the electric stove, and threw the egg and bacon into the garbage pail.

  He looked at his watch—or, rather, at the white place on his tanned wrist where his watch had been until last week. Then he shrugged. It was still early, plenty of time to get to the telegraph office, grab some chicken with rice at Prendes, and then …

  “Even in Mexico City luck has to turn sometime!” he told himself gaily, as he put on his raincoat and fared forth onto the Paseo.

  The train swung and swayed as it raced southward toward the ancient mountains of the Aztecs and the Mayas at the dizzy speed of thirty-some miles per hour. In the club/dining car a few passengers were already eating. Inspector Oscar Piper turned down a pressing invitation to join Mr. and Mrs. Ippwing in a slice of their pineapple. “Like nothing you ever tasted in your life, honestly!”

  But he had other fish to fry. “Thanks just the same,” he said and pushed on. A moment later he stood in the door of the first-class day coach, his mind made up as to what had to come next.

  Here was another world, a scene of life and color entirely foreign to anything within his ken. At the farther end of the car three boys were softly harmonizing with violin, mouth organ and guitar. It was some wailing, melancholy song that must have come straight down from Granada and the Moors. Whole families shared basket dinners or supplies purchased from the train windows at Villaldama. Many already slept, curled two-deep in a section, wrapped in gay blankets. Some of the luggage in this car was of fine leather, some consisted of blanket rolls, bags tied with rope, paper sacks and wicker baskets. There were boxes and baskets of food and fruit scattered everywhere, here and there a white jar of pulque. A train butcher squatted in the aisle arranging his basket of cigars and candies, adding his voice to the music. There were smells of food and humanity accented by the terrific heat which poured through the open windows, and two or three babies were crying—quietly and apologetically, as Mexican babies cry.

  Then, up toward the front of the car, Piper caught sight of the girl whom he had decided to confront, the fresh, impulsive girl in the yellow dress. She happened to be in close conversation with the blond youth in the beret, the boy whom Piper had seen enter the Pullman at Villaldama. “That girl surely gets around,” the inspector said to himself.

  He saw the young man rise, smiling broadly,
and come swaying down the aisle. As they came face to face the youth stared at him appraisingly, then grinned. “Hello, Meester New York!” Then, as Piper grunted something, he passed on toward the diner.

  The inspector leaped to some very interesting conclusions. If these two were mixed up together …

  When in doubt, Oscar Piper had always said, plunge forward. He stepped around the train butcher, climbed over baggage and outstretched shoes, and finally planted himself firmly on the arm of the seat beside Miss Dulcie Prothero.

  The girl rose to her feet suddenly, startled. But Piper held out thirty dollars, waving the money in her face like a flag. “You dashed off and forgot something,” he reminded her. “Something of yours. Or is it?”

  “I don’t see …” She closed her mouth, accepted the money, and began to cram it automatically inside her handbag.

  “Wait,” said Oscar Piper. “You’d better count it.” He reached suddenly forward with a clumsiness that was unusual for him, and somehow the bag, money and all, fell to the floor.

  “Sorry!” he said, and they both knelt to pick up the scattered articles. The inspector noted that the bag, for all its capacity, was empty enough. It contained only a handkerchief, several pawn tickets, some small silver, a tarnished vanity case, and some tattered newspaper clippings. One was of a young man with large ears, wearing some sort of extremely unbecoming fancy dress. “That’s funny,” he observed conversationally. “I didn’t know Clark Gable ever sang in Carmen.”

  “It’s not Clark Gable!” Dulcie told him, her voice trembling with anger. She hastily refolded the picture, tucked it away. “And now, if you don’t mind …” She was waiting for him to go away, but he didn’t go.

  “Interesting country, Mexico,” he observed, sitting down on the arm of the seat again.

  “It was,” Dulcie said. Some of the starch had gone out of her.

  “Interesting customs,” Piper went on. “Do you know that they don’t have juries down here? Just a judge, and then afterward usually a firing squad.” He shook his head. “It’s a tough exit.”

  The forcefulness of his stirring period was somewhat marred by louder strains of music from up forward, as the trio broke into “Rancho Grande.”

  “Go on,” Dulcie prompted him. The inspector frowned at her.

  “Go on, make some more conversation,” invited the girl. “You’ll lead up to asking me to come back to dinner with you, and I’ll say no.” She looked at him appraisingly. “I even said no to the Gay Caballero in the beret, and his approach was much nicer than yours.”

  “I wasn’t talking about dinner. I was talking about murder,” the inspector corrected her bluntly.

  She caught her breath.

  “Murder of that customs man this afternoon,” he went on. “Plus one or two more attempts. By the way, do you mind telling me what kind of perfume you use?”

  “I don’t use any right now!” she flared.

  “Ever own any like this?” He showed her a glimpse.

  “Oh, no! Never in my life!” gasped Dulcie Prothero, staring intently at the seat in front of her.

  Piper nodded, stood up. “Funny you’re so sure when I didn’t show you the label,” he said happily and stalked back through the car. Let her stew over that for a while. In the meantime …

  Telegram from Inspector Oscar Piper to Miss Hildegarde Withers, 32 West Seventy-fourth Street, New York City, filed at Palo Blanco, province of Nuevo Leon, Republic of Mexico, at 7:40 CST:

  NO FOOLING THIS LOOKS SERIOUS WIRE IMMEDIATELY INFORMATION DULCIE PROTHERO FORMERLY EMPLOYED SODA FOUNTAIN NEIGHBORHOOD AMSTERDAM 72ND STREET IF SODA FOUNTAIN IS IN DRUGSTORE DO THEY SELL POTASSIUM CYANIDE

  OSCAR

  Telegram from Miss Hildegarde Withers to Inspector Oscar Piper, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, care Tren 40 Ferrocarriles Nacionales, filed New York City at 9:18 EST:

  UPTOWN DRUGSTORE REPORTS PROTHERO GIRL QUIT WORK WEEK AGO WITHOUT NOTICE WAS GOOD AT HAM AND CHEESE SANDWICHES BUT HER BANANA SPLITS WERE TERRIBLE SHE SOUNDS LIKE NICE GIRL HAVE HEARD NAME SOMEWHERE YES DRUGSTORE KEEPS POTASSIUM CYANIDE BUT WOULDN’T SELL ME ANY THEIR POISON BOOK SHOWS NO SALES FOR FIVE MONTHS BUT THEY DO A GOOD BUSINESS IN ELIXIR DAMOUR AT FIFTY CENTS OR FREE WITH TWO DOLLAR JAR OF FRECKLE CREAM AM DYING OF CURIOSITY WHAT ARE YOU UP TO

  HILDEGARDE

  The train roared and rattled southward through a dusty desert. When Piper came into the diner he found that most of the tables were filled now. Hansen and the blue-chinned newspaperman were matching coins to see who would pay for their dinners and the ensuing beers. It was the little man in the cowboy hat who won, but it was a hollow victory. It developed that Rollo Lighton had left his money in the Pullman along with his coat and necktie.

  They departed finally, and Oscar Piper leaned his elbows on the table in deep self-communion. Things were beginning to fit together. And Hildegarde Withers had always insisted that he could get nowhere without the machinery of Centre Street to help him! In his suitcase right now reposed her derisive going-away gifts to him—a magnifying glass and a set of false auburn whiskers. Well, they’d see who had the last laugh.

  It was with a light heart that Oscar Piper beckoned to the waiter. And then he suddenly realized that, after all the efforts he had made to memorize the Spanish for ham and eggs, the words had slipped his mind.

  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 in
spector 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.