Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla Page 7

  “Well,” said the inspector, “this means we can eliminate Julio, anyway. If he’d planted that snake he wouldn’t have appeared and shot it.”

  “No? Don’t be too quick in absolving that mysterious young man. Why was he hanging around anyway? Besides, he didn’t appear until the snake had failed of its purpose and was running wild. It might be that the gay youth with the comic-opera accent didn’t want another murder by accident!” Miss Withers shook her head. “On the other hand, wouldn’t this seem to clear Dulcie Prothero? Because she couldn’t disguise herself as an Indian, nor could she deal with the Indian snake seller. I learned from her landlady that Dulcie doesn’t know a word of the language!”

  They started to cross the street during a lull in traffic and then were suddenly cut off in midstream, dodging among the fenders of the massed cars. They had one intimate glimpse of a taxicab containing a pretty, obviously American girl. She was looking up into the eyes of a tall man, a man who had a beautiful tan face and above it a thick head of waved gray hair.

  As the taxicab started to move away Miss Withers heard the girl’s voice ring out during a second’s hush in the din, heard her saying “… pájaro en mano que ciento volando…”

  Oscar Piper stared after the slowly moving taxicab, on his face a most peculiar expression. Miss Withers had to half drag him to the safety of the curb. “Oscar! What is the matter?”

  He turned, grinning from ear to ear. “Nothing, Hildegarde. Nothing at all. Only that pretty girl in the taxi, the one that was rattling off Spanish a mile a minute …”

  “Well, what about her?”

  “That,” he said, “is your former pupil, Dulcie Prothero.”

  The schoolteacher’s eyes widened. “She? As pretty as that, eh?” She nodded. “Dulcie would turn out just like that!” she said. “She’d be good at languages. She was good at everything except deportment.”

  “Anyway …” began the inspector. But Miss Withers was out of earshot.

  VI

  The Mountain That Smokes

  “MAIL ISN’T IN YET!” snapped the woman behind the desk at the American consulate. She was a plump woman with streaked white hair, and looked rather like a character actress made up for a mother role, in costume and shoes that fit too tightly.

  “I’m not expecting any mail,” said Dulcie Prothero. “Can you tell me please how to find somebody? Somebody that’s down in Mexico?”

  “Look in the book,” said the woman. She pointed with her pen toward a register on a table near the door. “All Americans are supposed to sign their names, but some don’t.”

  Dulcie had already looked in the book in vain. “You see, I really must find this person …” she began again.

  “Mail isn’t in yet!” snapped the woman at a newcomer. It was a man, an exceptionally pleasant and well-dressed man with a beautiful tan and grayish wavy hair. He smiled down at Dulcie, small and lost looking, as she turned to go.

  “Perhaps,” said Mr. Michael Fitz pleasantly, “perhaps I’m the person you’re looking for.”

  Dulcie looked at him, shook her head.

  The Fitz smile was engaging. “Then perhaps I can be of help to you. It’s a cinch that Old-Mother-East Wind won’t. Here’s my card—I’m something of a fixture down here in the American colony. Always finding apartments for somebody, or getting them out of a traffic ticket.”

  “My problem is more serious,” said Dulcie politely. “Thank you, Mr. Fitz, but I’m afraid—”

  “Wait,” he said. “Do I look like the Big Bad Wolf?”

  “N-no,” she admitted.

  “Well, then! We Americans must stick together. If you go running around the town, especially without knowing Spanish, you’ll get into all sorts of trouble. I know everybody in the city, and all the angles and all the shortcuts. And I’m at your service.”

  “Well,” Dulcie admitted, “I’m looking for a man.”

  “That ought to be easy—for you,” he said jovially.

  “A certain special man,” she told him. “It’s a long story …”

  Mike Fitz offered his arm. “We have a proverb down here that says ‘Long stories need long drinks!’ Or at least a good lunch. I know a place not far from here, about five minutes in a taxi …”

  He was very nice in the taxi, Dulcie found. Didn’t even sit close to her, but chatted gaily and impersonally. “Teach me the Spanish for that proverb about the long stories,” she begged him. He taught her that and several more. “A bird in the hand is worth a hundred flying,” she repeated a moment later. “That’s much nicer than the other way, about birds in the bushes!”

  “It’s true too,” Michael Fitz said. But he didn’t leer, not the slightest.

  They inched down Madero in the midst of the late morning traffic, turned south for half a block, left the taxi.

  “Oh, for goodness sake!” Dulcie said. Inside the door she was staring at the walls of the long darkish place, walls covered with anemic Harlequins and Pierrots and Pantaloons who seemed to be making merry with some very buxom and lightly clad ladies. “Are you sure this is a restaurant?” Dulcie said to her companion. “Looks like a bar …”

  Fitz pouted. “Of course,” he told her, “you can eat here if you insist. But I don’t advise it. Always bad to eat on an empty stomach.” He waved at the waiter, who ushered them into a red-leather booth. “Dos champagne cocktails.” He gave her a long and interesting black cigarette which tasted, Dulcie thought, like the odor of burning leaves. Then he leaned upon his elbows, studying her white skin as if he wished to commit every soft brown freckle to memory. “Now then, drink your medicine and then tell your Uncle Mike all about it. You’re looking for a man. A young man?”

  “Yes,” she answered quickly. “Younger than I. You see …” Mike Fitz listened, now and then ordering more cocktails.

  “Waiter!” Fitz cried. The waiter was at the moment having his troubles in the next booth with an angular lady tourist who had obviously wandered into the Harlequin bar under the impression that it was a soda fountain, and who was demanding lemonade. “Lemonade with lemon, and not those nasty little green limes!”

  Dulcie was talking, her eyes fixed across the shoulder of her companion on one of the disquieting frescoes. “Obviously, Grandfather found those four emeralds while he was on the sketching trip down here,” she said dreamily. “They were all he left when he died—besides the pictures nobody would buy. And then on one of the sketches my—my brother and I found a title, ‘El Cañon de las Esmeraldas’!”

  “The canyon of the emeralds, eh?”

  “It was just a sort of smeary study of a rocky gorge with a few pine trees at the top, but in the background there was a mountain with snow on it.”

  “Not much to go by,” Fitz pointed out. “Mexico has dozens.”

  “Yes, but this mountain had a wisp of smoke coming out of it! There aren’t many volcanoes, are there? Anyway, my brother Bob thought he might be lucky enough to discover the place. He came down here—and when I’d sold all the emeralds but this little one”—Dulcie’s eyes dropped to the clear green oblong set in the clip on her shoulder—“I decided to come down and look for him.”

  “You’re afraid he didn’t have any luck and couldn’t face—”

  “Oh no,” she said. “I’m afraid he did find the canyon—and stayed. You see, Bobsie isn’t to be trusted when there are women around. And that,” concluded Dulcie Prothero, “is why I need help.”

  In spite of its white softness, Fitz’s hand was surprisingly firm as he gripped hers across the table. “Count on me, all the way.”

  Dulcie noticed that he didn’t let go of her hand, and that he was frowning a little, staring toward the entrance. “Someone I don’t want you to meet,” he explained quickly. “Couple of fourflushers I used to know. You can’t trust all your countrymen down here, you know.” He leaned farther into the booth and bent over Dulcie in an attitude indicative of deep absorption.

  But she shook her head, and her lips noiselessl
y formed the word “Jiggers!”

  Fitz turned and saw that two men had come up to the booth and were standing motionless. One was tall and gaunt and blue-chinned, the other was short and bulging beneath a big black Stetson. It was wonderful to see the expression of amazed and delighted surprise which came over the face of Mr. Michael Fitz. “Well, I’ll be a horned toad!” he cried, waving hospitably toward the opposite seat. “Sit down, sit down! We’ll drink to this. Meet a charming compatriot. The more the merrier, I always say.”

  There was a silence. “We’ve already met on the train,” Dulcie said. “Mr. Hansen and Mr. Lighten, isn’t it?”

  They both said hello. “We’ve been looking for you, Mike,” Hansen continued.

  “In the Papillon and Mac’s and the Cucaracha,” Lighten added hoarsely.

  “We’re not drinking,” Hansen said. He motioned.

  Mike Fitz nodded. “Excuse me a momentito,” he asked Dulcie. “I’ll be back in a second or two.” He rose, slipped his hands companionably through the elbows of the two men, and they all walked back through the bar toward the excusado, disappearing around a corner.

  Dulcie Prothero took out a powder puff, dabbed at the faint brown-gold specks along her nose. Then a shadow loomed beside her, a soft voice spoke in her ear.

  “Am I protruding?”

  It was no less than Señor Julio Mendez, sporting a malacca stick. He insinuated himself into the opposite seat, grinned amiably.

  “Are you going to buy me a drink?” Dulcie demanded.

  Julio edged toward her around the circular seat. Then he stopped suddenly. “I am not,” said he. “Because you’ve been ditching ’em behind this cushion,” he accused her. “It’s all damp. And with cocktails at four pesos is that a nice kind of trick to play on an old friend of the family?”

  “Mr. Fitz is not an old friend of the family!” Dulcie said.

  Julio looked surprised. “I thought that that caballero is always an old friend of the family, any family.”

  “And if I want to ditch my drinks—”

  “It’s hokey-doke on me,” he assured her. “Anyway, I have find you. Last night you slip away from the train without giving me your address in Mexico City.”

  Dulcie’s smile denoted innocence. “It seemed to me that it was you who slipped away, about the time the police came on the train!”

  “Well …” he began. Then suddenly, “How about ditching this Mr. Fitz and going places with me?”

  “I—I can’t. He’s a very important man in the city, and he’s going to help me. Maybe he’ll give me a job to carry me until—until I can go back.”

  Julio Mendez almost choked.

  “Well, he is! A very nice person, and he owns a brewery and a plantation and a gold mine! And he’s got a beautiful apartment in the ritzy Principe building on the Paseo that he wants to show me!”

  Julio was silent for a moment. “I would take you to Xochimilco,” he said softly. “We’ll ride in boats on the canal through the floating gardens of flowers, with mariachis following us playing old tunes. It is very, very romantic.”

  “I didn’t come down here for—Sometimes I hate romance!” she said. Then she softened a little. “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” she hinted. “And if you wanted to pick me up at the Hotel Milano and take me to the bullfights …”

  Mike Fitz walked past them, obliviously. He went to the door with the newspaperman and Hansen. He nodded very many times as the departing Hansen said “Tomorrow night, then—at the latest!”

  Julio hadn’t answered. Dulcie looked hurt. “But why the Toreo?” he finally asked. “There is so much of my country that is beautiful—the villages, and the road that runs to the craters of the Nevada de Toluca, and the charros in their gay costumes on fine Arab horses, and—”

  “I think that bullfighting must be the most beautiful and thrilling spectacle in the world, and if you won’t take me I’m sure Mr. Fitz will be glad to!”

  “He certainly will!” cried that gentleman, as he came back into the booth. His glance at Julio was not especially warm.

  “An old friend from the train,” Dulcie said. After introductions there were perfunctory invitations to have a last drink and refusals of the same. Julio rose, yawned politely.

  “One o’clock—siesta time,” he observed. “See you some more.”

  Fitz and the girl moved after him, walking more slowly. The door closed behind them, and then suddenly it opened and they were back. The spinster in the next booth, having put aside the Spanish-Made-Easy with which she had been struggling, was about to leave. Her curiosity, however, got the better of her as she saw the girl and man pawing among the red-leather cushions of their booth, looking under the table …

  “Lose something?” inquired Miss Hildegarde Withers. “Anything valuable?”

  “Only an emerald pin!” cried Michael Fitz, red-faced from groping on hands and knees. “That’s all!”

  The lobby of the Hotel Georges is decorated in the prevailing fashion of the ciudad of Mexico, which denotes furniture of extreme geometrical angles, with much glass and metal. In the midst of this somewhat unreal grandeur sat Oscar Piper, his nose buried in a four-day-old copy of the New York Times. A small brown man was shining his shoes, in a fury of noise and effort.

  “Getting prettied up, Oscar?” inquired Miss Hildegarde Withers as she approached from the dripping outdoors.

  “Third time today,” he confessed. “No sales resistance, and I don’t know the Spanish for ‘scram.’ How’s tricks with you?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Knew you wouldn’t get anywhere dashing off after that taxi,” he jeered. They both looked up as someone approached—a birdlike little old man closely followed by a birdlike little old lady.

  “Oh, Inspector!”

  Piper tried to stand up, to the discomfiture of the shoeshine expert. He introduced Miss Withers to Mr. and Mrs. Ippwing. “Of Peoria.”

  “Great place to come from,” said Ippwing with a twinkle.

  “And a great place to go back to,” his wife added loyally.

  “We were just at the desk, to mail a letter,” Ippwing went on. “Had to write our invalid daughter back home all about the excitement on the train. We had a murder on the train!” he confided to Miss Withers.

  The schoolteacher said fervently that she wished she had been there. “And it’s not over and done with yet, if you ask me!” Mrs. Ippwing went on. “Because our room is near the Mabies’ suite, and we heard them having a nice family argument over something. And just now—”

  “Just now at the desk we heard the girl at the switchboard—lovely girl, speaks English just as good as you or me—and she was asking about plane reservations for Mr. and Mrs. Mabie!” Ippwing added.

  “Running away!” was the little old lady’s parting shot. And they went blithely out into the inevitable rain of a summer afternoon in Mexico.

  “Looks like the Mabies are taking your advice,” Piper said to the schoolteacher. She was playing an imaginary tune on the edge of the table.

  “Oscar,” she demanded, “what sort of a man is Alderman Mabie?”

  “Francis?” Piper blinked. “Age about forty-five, fond of thick steaks and thin wheat cakes, a good district leader, but not any ball of fire. Thought he’d help himself by marrying money, but hurt himself because the boys think he’s playing society. Plays a fair game of poker but overbets his hand and always stays in no matter what he is dealt.”

  “His mind, his emotions?”

  “Reads Eddie Guest. Cheers when the band plays ‘Dixie.’ Wears a carnation on Mother’s Day.”

  “Women?” pressed the schoolma’am.

  “Not especially. Why should he? Married to a good-looking, not too smart woman with a million or so?” Piper shrugged. “He would inherit, of course, if anything happened. But he was frank about it.”

  “Which we could have found out for ourselves easily enough, so don’t give him too much credit for frankness! You know, Oscar, once in a blue moo
n a murder is actually committed by the person who has the most to gain by it. Although I admit that poison in a perfume bottle, to say nothing of the fantastic business of the smashed tea glass and the snake, sounds like someone other than Mabie.”

  “Sounds like that merry redhead, though you’re so set on the idea she’s lily pure.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Miss Withers told him. “But I’ll still give her high marks in composition. And I’ll admit that Dulcie Prothero is not to be ignored in this case.”

  “You’re telling me!” Piper sat up straight. “I wish to heaven I knew why Mabie slipped her that thirty dollars on the train.”

  “Well, why not ask him?”

  Oscar Piper snorted. “I did! About half an hour ago, right here in the lobby. I covered it so he wouldn’t know I saw him give it to her. Said something about her saying that he’d given her a loan. And what do you think he said?”

  “No guessing games, please !”

  “He said she was a liar and stalked out into the street!”

  Night fell upon the ancient capital of the Huastecas, a swift gray twilight which swept over mountaintop and tower, skyscraper and park. The city faded away, merged into obscurity like an overexposed photograph. There were no lights, no lights anywhere except the feeble electric torches in the hands of the traffic policemen, the glaring eyes of the taxicabs. Even these lazy howling nuisances seemed abashed, swiftly decimated, as if frightened into their lairs by the grip of the all-pervading darkness.

  “When they have a strike in Mexico, they have a strike!” said Miss Hildegarde Withers to herself as she stared down from the tiny balcony of her hotel room into the murky cavern that was Madero. She lighted the feeble taper which an apologetic hotel clerk had proffered her. Then she lifted the telephone and asked to be connected with the room of Señor Piper. There was no answer. “Please let me know the moment he comes in,” she insisted.

  She sat down with a book, but she could not read. Suddenly Miss Withers went out into the darkened hall and went up the stairs to 307, the room almost exactly above her own. Her knock was commanding.