Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla Page 6

  Miss Hildegarde Withers peered at the three bedraggled and alcoholic Indios who were his cellmates. Then, as the inspector rose from his cot and came bewilderedly forward, she cleared her throat.

  “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

  V

  Let the Buyer Beware

  “I COULDN’T REMAIN IN New York and let you railroad Dulcie Prothero into a Mexican jail,” Miss Withers advised the inspector a few minutes later, thoughtfully poking her finger at a massive steel bar.

  “Wait a minute!” gasped that gentleman. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but who’s in this Mexican jail? I go to a lot of trouble to investigate a murder case, and these idiots turn the suspects loose and put the detective in the cell! Beat it while you can, Hildegarde, or they’ll have you in here too. And we’re crowded as it is.”

  “Don’t be so subjective in your viewpoint,” she chided him. “On the plane coming down here I got to thinking that the trouble with your theory is—”

  “Hildegarde!” he broke in, speaking with a painful distinctness, “Hildegarde, please! Will you do something? For God’s sake wire the commissioner in New York or get in touch with Washington or something. Haven’t we got an ambassador in this country?”

  Miss Withers smiled wryly. “From what I hear there are two schools of thought on that subject. It appears—”

  “If I was a British subject they’d have a gunboat in the harbor inside of twenty-four hours,” he declaimed.

  But Miss Withers reminded him that Mexico City has no harbor. “I, Oscar, am your gunboat,” she consoled him. “No remarks, please, about my superficial resemblance. But I have the matter well in hand. Unless I miss my guess this person coming down the corridor has the keys to your cell.”

  The jailer, a bowlegged man with sweeping mustachios, puttees and a denim jacket, unlocked the gate with much ceremony, stood back as the inspector stepped out, and then barred the way to the remaining prisoners.

  “G’by, boys,” the relieved Piper called back to them.

  They responded with wide smiles and a united “¡Adios, señor! Hasta luego!”

  “That means ‘Until we meet again’,” Miss Withers obligingly translated for him as they went on down the corridor.

  “Yeah? Well, suppose you tell me what this means. Am I turned loose, or do they line me up against a brick wall?”

  It turned out to be a little of both. A reception committee met them in the hall, just inside the main gate of the Delegatión. The inspector found his hand shaken by a number of officials in business suits, by an officer or two in uniform. The spokesman, a worn, youngish man with a prematurely bald poll, introduced himself as no less than Capitán Raoul de Silva, aide and assistant to the lieutenant colonel of police. There were explanations and apologies.

  “If we had but known, señor!” There was much shrugging of shoulders. “To know is to forgive, is it not? Never in the world would we have given the slightest inconvenience to a representative of the police force of Nueva York, a fellow warrior in the endless battle against the forces of the underworld. But how could our men know? By the way, it is that the Señor is feeling much better this morning, is it not?”

  “Huh?” grunted Piper. “I wasn’t …”

  Miss Withers nudged him sharply in the back, as Captain de Silva sailed on. “I have the honor—we all have the honor—of extending to you the courtesy of the ciudad!” Piper found himself fingering a small card embossed with the red, white and green flag of the Republic. “If during his vacation in our midst the Señor finds his pleasures”—the spokesman cleared his throat—“finds his pleasures interfered with by overvigilant officers, he has only to display this card!”

  “Thanks,” Piper said. “But I don’t see—”

  “We also wish to extend to you, señor, the most cordial invitation to make the jefatura here your home-away-from-home while in our city. As we say in Spanish, my house is your house. The unfortunate episode of last night is forgotten.” There was a chorus of smiles and nods from the other members of the committee.

  “Forgotten, is it?” The inspector managed a faint, one-sided smile. “Thanks. And any time you boys come up to New York City we’ve got some things we can show you too. Make you right at home in the back room …” He winced again under Miss Withers’ bony thumb.

  Then, as a parting gift, Captain de Silva handed over a wad of papers which looked familiar to Piper. “All in order, señor!”

  Oscar Piper ruffled them, then buttoned the identification papers carefully inside his coat. He was wearing a new, rather pleased expression. “So you did nab that girl, then? Found that I was right after all, didn’t you? She had swiped my papers trying to avoid arrest? Get a confession yet?”

  “A confession, señor?”

  “You know,” he insisted. “The girl I wanted picked up as a suspect in the murder case at Nuevo Laredo.”

  “That matter, señor, is being taken care of by the lieutenant colonel personally, who flew north yesterday to investigate. An arrest is expected at any moment.”

  Piper found himself being escorted to the street door. “Good morning to you, señor. Good morning, señorita.”

  “Wait a minute,” objected the inspector. “If they haven’t picked up the Prothero girl, then how in blazes did they get my identification papers?”

  “Shhh,” Miss Withers counseled, hurrying him down the steps. “They got the papers from me.”

  “Now I know I’m nuts,” said Oscar Piper, all resistance gone. “And that crack the guy made about my feeling better this morning? I suppose that was your work too?”

  The schoolma’am nodded, led the way into a taxicab. “Yes, Oscar. Forgive me. But I thought they might be more apt to overlook your poking an officer in the eye if I insinuated that you were—er, just a teeny bit under the influence when you arrived on the train last night.”

  They rode on for some distance in comparative silence. Then the taxi came to a stop, remained there indefinitely.

  “This isn’t the Hotel Georges,” Miss Withers accused the driver. “I distinctly told you to drive to the Hotel Georges!”

  The chofer turned, said something about “la huelga” and shrugged. Then Miss Withers noticed that all other traffic was stopped. A parade came into view, several hundred extremely gay young men with bright placards and a few red flags. One group was doing its best to remember the words of the stirring “Internationale.” Sellers of fruit juice and sliced pineapple were doing a rousing business by running along the sides of the marching ranks, and the general atmosphere was one of holiday.

  “This can’t be May Day!” the inspector ejaculated. “Oh, I know. It must be that strike they were talking about on the train. Looks more like a Boy Scout parade. Anyway, we might as well get out and walk.”

  There was no room to walk anywhere but in the street, and so it was that Miss Withers and Inspector Piper came marching into the heart of Mexico City on the fringe of a Communista demonstration.

  Suddenly the street narrowed and changed its name, and Miss Withers peered into the doorway of a massive tile building. “It looks like a giftie shoppe combined with Grand Central,” she observed, “but I smell coffee.” They wandered through a silver shop, an art store, past counters filled with genuine “Made in Japan” Mexican curios, through a drugstore, a perfume shop, and a liquor counter, but finally they found themselves seated at a round table in the center of Pangborn’s restaurant, the inspector mellowing a little under the prospect of eggs and coffee.

  “Well, Hildegarde?” he faced her. “Glad you came. But why?”

  “I,” she said, “am Jack Dalton of the United States marines, galloping up at the last moment to save the day. Your telegram, Oscar! All about that little Prothero girl—fiddlesticks! I investigated farther than the drugstore. I went to her home. And any girl who can win the affections of a New York landlady—owing back rent too—has a noble nature. Besides—”

  “Facts, Hildegarde, facts!” he demanded.

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nbsp; She still shook her head. “Besides, Oscar Piper, my real interest in the case is this. When I went to the Prothero girl’s room I found a class photograph among her belongings—taken on the steps of Jefferson School. Shortly afterward I looked over my class records, and I find that Dulcie Prothero was for one year a pupil of mine—and an honor pupil too! So …”

  He shook his head wonderingly. “So she couldn’t do anything wrong ten or fifteen years later! But, anyway, now I see how you got her to hand over the papers she filched out of my pocket while I was sleeping in my berth.”

  “Correction, Oscar. Will you please get it out of your head that Dulcie Prothero stole your precious papers? I didn’t get them from her. I haven’t seen her. She isn’t staying at the hotel, though almost everybody else is. Mr. Mabie, by the way, had your baggage sent there. But when I arrived from the airport this morning, looking for you, I came to the Georges. There was an envelope left at the desk in your name. Of course, everyone was talking about what had happened to you, so I immediately took the papers to the authorities.”

  “Left at the desk—for me?” Piper frowned. “But that could still have been the girl!”

  “They were left by a man, a young and handsome man.”

  “Yeah? What was his name?”

  “Heaven only knows,” confessed Miss Withers. “I didn’t see him, and the girl at the desk wouldn’t tell me a thing when I tried to pump her. Only—”

  “How do you know he was handsome, then?”

  “Elementary, my dear Oscar. I knew that by the way the girl giggled when I asked her how he looked. But never mind that. If we want to solve this mystery it has to be done in some other way than by hounding a suspect. Why not concentrate on the intended victim? If this is really a plot to murder Mrs. Adele Mabie, why not watch her and nab the killer at the psychological moment?”

  “Theories, Hildegarde!”

  “Well, your much-vaunted facts and common sense didn’t get you anywhere but in jail, did they? I tell you, the thing to do is to watch Adele Mabie like a hawk!”

  Piper chuckled. “If you’ll turn your hawk eye over your shoulder you’ll see the lady in question coming in the door.” It was Adele Mabie, carrying a small wicker basket hugged to her breast, and followed by her husband. They caught sight of the inspector, waved, and came threading their way through the maze of tables.

  “Well, if it isn’t the jailbird!” greeted Alderman Mabie.

  “You poor man,” said Adele. “What you must have gone through!”

  The inspector invited them to sit down. “You’ve already met Miss Withers here, who has—”

  “Been hearing the most exciting things about your weird adventures on the train!” the schoolteacher put in, neatly kicking the inspector under the table. You could trust him, she thought bitterly, to advertise her when she wanted to keep quiet, and to introduce her as his secretary when she wanted to appear in authority.

  Alderman Francis Mabie picked up the menu, squinted at the long lists of American food with Spanish names. “What’s good?”

  “God knows,” Piper said. “We haven’t got a waitress yet.” He snapped his fingers, but the impassive and bulging women with their huge trays went serenely by, like expresses past a local station.

  There was a thin vinegar-blonde hostess leaning over a table near the door, practicing loud and inaccurate French with a customer who had finished his breakfast and opened his vest to display a bright blue silk shirt.

  “Try the hostess,” Miss Withers suggested. The inspector snapped his fingers again, but nothing happened. Miss Withers called out “Miss!” in a somewhat peremptory tone, and Adele Mabie, who had been around the world on the Empress of Australia and prided herself on Continental manners, clapped her hands.

  The vinegar blonde looked up, smiled vaguely at them, and said “Just a minute.” Then she bent again over the man in the open vest.

  “I don’t care so much for myself,” Adele said, “but I did want to ask her what I ought to order for a baby lizard.” She pointed to the wicker basket. “I wonder if he would eat flies?”

  There were plenty around, but much too lively to catch. “Why not try bread crumbs?” suggested Miss Withers helpfully, reaching to an adjoining table and purloining a plate of rolls.

  Adele opened the basket gingerly, dropped in a little shower of bread crumbs. “He doesn’t seem to care for them,” she said. “I don’t think he’s doing at all well.”

  They all stared in the basket, watched a gaudy worm of a thing move sluggishly amid tattered and soggy banana leaves. The inspector made a wry face. “Hate all reptiles, and lizards are no exception. Not even cute sport-model lizards like that barber pole you’ve got.”

  “This lizard is exceptional, all the same,” observed Miss Withers suddenly. She frowned, peered in the basket again. “Where’re his legs?”

  Adele could explain that. “It’s a baby lizard—they don’t grow legs until later.”

  Miss Withers’ eyebrows went up. “You’re thinking of tadpoles! Lizards are lizards—and that one has the wrong stripes!”

  Adele Mabie tilted the basket, and suddenly her reptilian pet writhed up toward her face. She threw herself back, letting basket and all slide to the tiled floor. Her mouth opened to scream.

  Out of the basket poured a thin streak of harsh bright colors no longer than a ruler and about as large around as a man’s thumb. The thing writhed, twisted, slithered across the slippery tiles, its tiny evil head swaying from side to side with a satanic grace. They all watched, fascinated.

  “Stand back!” cried a masculine voice behind them. “Look out!”

  The table tipped over in the inspector’s grasp, and he found Miss Withers clinging to him with a grip of death. From somewhere behind them Julio Mendez, the silly laughing youth in the blue beret, had materialized. He leaned down toward the thing on the floor, and the three shots from the immense pearl-handled automatic in his hand came so close together that they sounded like one.

  The beautiful bright coils loosed, the colors began to fade. It was no wisp of incarnate evil now, but only a blasted, shredded bloody pulp. Julio put the gun carefully back into its holster. “Coral snake,” he said. “Sorry for butting in, only coral snake very damn dangerous kinds of snakes!”

  The restaurant was in something of an uproar. “Always knew I’d someday be glad for carrying these pistola,” Julio Mendez said. “My friends they call me Tom Mix, but …”

  And then the hostess appeared, out of breath and angry. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” she exploded. “I was on my way—no need to go causing such a fuss and shooting off guns and shouting!”

  She fumbled for her pad and pencil, but at that moment she happened to look up and notice that Julio’s bullets, ricocheting from the tile, had done considerable damage to a large mural painting of impossible peacocks on the farther wall. The young man cocked his eye at it. “Looks more better these way, I think,” he told her frankly.

  There was even something said about damages and calling the police, which made the inspector apprehensive as he foresaw another night in jail. But Julio gallantly took the arm of the vinegar-blonde hostess, led her away, and spoke soothingly in Spanish. A moment later he was back, smiling in triumph.

  “Everything is okay,” he announced. “But maybe we go now, eh?”

  They came out to the street again. “Anyway, it’s luck again for you, Mrs. Mabie,” the inspector suggested. “The way it turned out.”

  “By the way,” cut in Miss Hildegarde Withers, “just who was it that gave you the baby lizard?”

  Adele, still a little white around the mouth, shook her head. “Nobody! I bought it at Rio Laja from a man on the platform.”

  “Oh yeah?” snapped the inspector. “Yeah?”

  “Could be!” Julio Mendez came to her aid suddenly. He had seemingly taken the whole group under his protection. “Sometimes the Indios bring snakes up from the Gulf, from the swamps south of Tampico. They hope to sell to natura
lists. But no Indio is going to mistaking a culebra de coral for a lizard, a harmless lagartito.” Julio shook his head solemnly. “Not much!”

  “But this one did!” Adele cried. “You must believe me!”

  “Was it an Indian?” the schoolteacher asked.

  “Why—why, I don’t know! He had one of those dirty old blankets over his head. I didn’t pay much attention to him. He just recited something about ‘prettee leezard ten pesos.’”

  “Then you couldn’t swear that he wasn’t an educated Mexican or an American playing a part?” Piper shot at her. Adele shook her head blankly, unable to swear to anything.

  “My wife buys almost everything in sight,” the alderman put in. “It’s pretty obvious that somebody took a clever way of striking at her through the snake, either by dressing up in a serape or by hiring some Indian to lie about his wares.”

  Miss Withers nodded. “And your wife was supposed to get familiar with the thing, perhaps take it out of its basket, and …”

  Adele seized her husband’s arm. “I—I think I’ll go back to the hotel room and lie down for a little.”

  “When you go to your room,” Miss Withers said seriously, “don’t forget to look under the bed. And if you take my advice you’ll cut this visit to Mexico as short as you can. They have planes to New York in twenty-four hours, you know.”

  Adele Mabie nodded, murmuring, “Yes, but—”

  She started to cross the street, left her husband for a moment to come back and say fervent words of thanks to young Julio Mendez. “You’ve saved my life,” she told him.

  Then Julio nodded, touched his beret, and said: “See you all some more, eh?” And he strode off down the street.

  Miss Withers and the inspector stood alone on the sidewalk, alone except for half a hundred itinerant vendors of lottery tickets, blankets, carved boxes, handkerchiefs, and shoeshines. They spoke to each other in small shouts, due to the fact that the Avenue Madero was packed with taxicabs from sidewalk to sidewalk. No Mexican chofer has ever succeeded in making a red light turn green by hooting his horn at it, but it is not for want of trying.