Nipped in the Bud (21 page)

No messages at the desk. Upstairs the rooms were full of Talley’s absence, but she put away his tongue-polished dish and his beloved rubber rat. Talley was locked up—and Junior Gault was at liberty. None of it made any immediate sense to her. The world was out of joint. With the best intentions in the world she had alienated her old friend the inspector by sending the innocent messages which had brought almost everyone connected with the Fagan murder heading hellbent toward Tijuana. The monkey wrenches she had flung into the machinery, she wryly admitted to herself, had come home to roost.

When in doubt, wash your hair—it was an ancient feminine maxim, but a good one. After an hour of intense effort spent in trying to cleanse the reek of the Tijuana jail from her person, the schoolteacher finally sat down at the desk, took out a clean sheet of paper and her fountain pen, and then stopped in midair. Her thoughts, her suspicions, were still nebulous.

Somewhere she had read that the super-automatic calculating machine at Harvard, the cybernetic robot, produced now and then, instead of the expected answer, only a code word meaning “Insufficient data.”

If Junior Gault had been set free, then the Fagan case was again wide-open. Nor could the schoolteacher take too seriously the murder warrant for Ina Kell’s arrest.

Miss Withers found herself idly doodling, drawing doghouses and complicated roses with long thorny stems, involved geometric mazes and bearded snakes and maps of imaginary islands with an X marking the spot where the treasure lay buried. She drew an oversize question mark, and then changed it over into an exclamation point. So much for Ina Kell. The schoolteacher tore up that page and started on another. She wrote down the name
Ruth Fagan.

Some time later there came a diffident, almost apologetic knock at the door. “Come in, Oscar, come in!” she called, much relieved. “It’s about time—”

But it wasn’t the inspector. A stranger poked his head in the door, an elderly benign-looking stranger with a butternut-colored face and snowy-white hair, his cap held politely in his hand. “La Señorita Hildegarde Weethers?”

“Yes, yes. If it’s another telegram just put it there on the table; I’m very busy.” She felt in her handbag for a quarter. But instead of taking the coin, the old man placed a thickly folded document in her hand, bowed, and then withdrew. His departure disclosed that there had been still another man behind him, more or less supervising the proceedings; none other than Lic. Ramón Julio Guzman y Villalobos, who was looking very pleased with himself.

“It is not a telegram, Miss Withers,” said the lawyer.

“So I see,” she murmured, trying to make some sense of the involved legal Spanish, of the interminable list of names which came before the
contra.
But a summons was a summons in any language. “Are you mixed up in this farce?” she demanded acidly.

“I have the honor to represent the plaintiffs in the action,” Guzman corrected her gravely. “The eleven gentlemen who had the great misfortune the other evening at the track to lose their wagers and their potential winnings because of the overt act of your dog.”

She extended the paper to him. “Go serve it on the dog, then.”

The lawyer looked shocked, as if she had moved a pawn sideways in chess. “This is a most serious matter, Miss Withers. You will find that our juries do not take lightly a grave offense by a foreigner against our citizens.” He shook his head gravely. “However, it might be worse. My clients are reasonable people. It is sometimes possible to settle these affairs privately, out of court….”

She nodded. “For dollars, a great many American dollars?”

“Yes, senorita. But not too many. My clients can show their wasted pari-mutuel tickets, and the total—”

“Good day, Mr. Guzman.”

He hesitated, then bowed calmly. “Think it over, señorita. You know where to reach me.” The door closed ever so gently behind him.

Miss Withers stalked up and down the room, growing angrier at every step. If only Oscar Piper had been here, to tell the lawyer what his precious clients could do with their pari-mutuel tickets!

But first things first. Finally subsiding after a fashion, she sat herself down at the desk again. After surveying what she had already written, she made a new start under the name
Arthur Wingfield …
and was lost in deep thought and more doodles when another knock came at her door. Again she brightened, and cried, “Come in, Oscar.”

But the watched pot never boils. It was only Vito, looking small, worried and unhappy. Apologies and explanations, in a potpourri of two languages with perhaps a touch of some Indio dialect, poured from his lips. The boy blamed himself for everything. If he had only taken Talley walking on one of the side streets instead of straight down the Avenida last night—

“Heavens, child, it’s not your fault.”

He brightened a little. “You got out okay, then?”

“I got out, in a manner of speaking.” Miss Withers absently tried to scratch her left shoulderblade. “But at the moment Talley’s prospects are not so good.” She told her young aide about the lawsuit, and even showed him the summons.

“Is not good,” Vito said solemnly.

“Is not—I mean, it certainly is not. Someone is obviously laboring under the delusion that I am both gullible and wealthy.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “But you are not reech, then? You spend much money.”

“It is nearly all spent.” She sighed. “Vito, it might be interesting to discover just who is trying so hard to put a spoke in my wheel. Do you happen to recognize any of the names of the plaintiffs on this summons? Are there any cousins of yours among them?”

Vito studied the list again and shook his head. “No, lady. Lowlifes, probably.”

“Lowlifes most certainly. But you might still make a few discreet inquiries.”

“Sure!” said the boy proudly. But then as she reached for her handbag he shook his head. “This one is on the house,” he announced.

After the boy had taken himself off, Miss Withers sat down at the desk again and with pen in hand tried to regain the thread of her scattered thoughts. If her suspicions were correct, Oscar Piper was well on the way to the greatest mistake of his professional career. But how at this late hour could she be expected to draw rabbits out of hats—even her own incredible hats? After a little while she wrote down the name
Thallie Gordon.
But she wrote nothing much after it, and finally in spite of herself went back to doodling again. One of the doodles was an engagement ring without any diamond, and another vaguely resembled an eagle with a simpering feminine face, perched high atop a dead pine tree.

Any murder case, she knew, could be broken by only asking the right questions at the right time of the right person. Offhand she could think of three or four—she began to make a list of those.

When finally there was still another knock at her door, the schoolteacher resisted the impulse to say, “Come in, Oscar.” She crossed the room and said very cautiously, “I’m not sure I’m home. Who is it?”

“It’s me, teacher—Sascha Bordin!” came the surprising answer.

Hastily Miss Withers threw the door open. Bordin today was turned out in lightweight gabardine, sea-green in color, and he held in his manicured hand the sort of Panama hat which is never made in Panama at all, but woven underwater by Peruvian mermaids or something along those lines—the schoolteacher was never sure about men’s clothing. But she was sure about English grammar. “You might have said, ‘It is
I
,’” she reminded him.

“Okay, so I’ve backslid,” said the lawyer cheerfully. “Things are bad all over, and getting worse. May I come in?”

He already was in. Miss Withers shook hands warily. “Just how did you find me, and what do you want?”

“I happened to phone my office a little while ago, and Gracie gave me your message. I also learned that my client has been turned loose—”

She sniffed. “And did you also learn that Inspector Piper is down here with a first-degree murder warrant for Ina Kell? I suppose that, having lost the chance to defend one client, you’re down here looking around for another?”

“You wrong me, Miss Withers,” said Bordin easily.

“You mean to say you wouldn’t defend Miss Kell?”

“From all I’ve heard of the girl, I’d gladly defend her for free if only she’d go out to dinner with me afterwards.” He sat down, asked for and received permission to light a cigarette, and then patiently explained, “So you don’t get the point yet, Miss Withers. The D.A.—and your friend the inspector—don’t really want Ina Kell in the dock. But they do want a warrant to hold over her head, a warrant strong enough to force the Mexican authorities to deport her in case the girl still refuses to return willingly. If she surrenders peaceably they’ll later reduce the charge to accessory, or even drop it if she testifies just the way they want.”

“Sascha, that isn’t true!”

“You think not? Those things go on all the time.”

“But whom is she supposed to testify against, now that Gault is free?”

He laughed. “My client is released from custody only because the D.A.’s office couldn’t very well hold him while they were asking for a murder warrant, even a phony one, against someone else. But the moment they have her tied up tight and scared half to death, they’ll rearrest Gault and then off we go to trial.”

“Oh,” said Miss Withers.

“I’m down here,” Bordin continued briskly, “because I’m determined to talk to the Kell girl before anybody else gets their hands on her. I’m asking your help, because I think you believe in justice and fair play. She’s left this hotel—but do you know where I can find her?”

The schoolteacher hesitated, and he said quickly, “I see that you do know. Look, all I want is a chance to get a deposition out of her before she’s taken into custody. Is that asking too much?”

“Perhaps not,” Miss Withers admitted cautiously. “But, Sascha, who are you to ask for fair play when you yourself sent her down here?”

His eyes clouded. “
I
sent her?”

“You knew she was here, or else why did you rush down to Tijuana?”

“If you must know,” he said wearily, “it’s because last Sunday night—Monday morning, rather—I got yanked out of bed by a long-distance phone call from here. It was Ina Kell—”

“Whose voice you recognized, even though you’d only heard it once or twice?”

If that was a trap, Sam Bordin neatly sidestepped it. “Correction. I was called by a girl who said she was Ina Kell, missing witness in the Fagan murder. I’d never talked to her, though I knew in a general way that she existed, and somebody by that name called my office once when I was out. The girl wanted me to give her some free legal advice about how she could avoid being dragged back to testify against my client. It seemed that somebody—presumably you—was on her trail and getting close. I told her that she was mistaken in thinking the defense wanted her out of the country; that I wanted her brought back as much or more so than the prosecution did. So she gasped and hung up. I thought it over and then next morning I tipped off the press, having a feeling that a little publicity would bust this thing wide-open. Not that I expect your friend the inspector to believe me.”

“But tipping off the press was supposed to prove that you’d previously known nothing about Ina’s being in Mexico.” The schoolteacher sniffed. “What was her voice like, over the phone? Was it a finishing-school voice or a high-school voice?”

“Just a voice. Like most voices over three or four thousand miles of wire; why do you ask?”

“I’m just asking questions at random these days. Sascha, where are you rushing off to?”

The lawyer had risen and was moving toward the door. “Things to do,” he told her. “I see now that you’re not going to tell me where the Kell girl is. I guess I’ll have to start combing the town for her.”

“Save your breath, she isn’t here.”

“Gone? But she’s nearby?” he asked quickly, his eyes searching her face. “A few miles away—say, half-an-hour’s drive, or an hour, or—”

Miss Withers tried valiantly to immobilize her features, and pressed her lips tight together.

Bordin was smiling. “I’ll find her,” he promised, his hand on the knob.

“Wait, Sascha. I’m beginning to think that we’re not really at cross-purposes, after all. Stay here until the inspector gets back, and perhaps I can convince him—”

He shook his head. “Inspector Oscar Piper wouldn’t give me the correct time. You know something? It would serve him and the D. A. right if I got word to Junior Gault advising him to put on a wig and a set of false whiskers and sneak out of town for good. I think I might even be ethical in telling him that; after all, he’s technically in the clear for the moment. It might save his neck.”

“What?” The schoolteacher gasped. “You’re that sure he’ll be rearrested? But—but that must mean that you really do think the man is guilty!”

Bordin started to open the door, then turned with a confiding smile. “This is off the record, but strictly between you and me and the fencepost, who doesn’t?” He waved his hand. “Thanks for your help, anyway.” The dapper lawyer winked at her over his shoulder and then stepped briskly out into the hall, falling over two suitcases and into the arms of Inspector Oscar Piper, who had been standing frozen there with his fist upraised to knock.

“This,” murmured Miss Withers helplessly, “just isn’t my day.”

“These two hated with a hate

Found only on the stage.”

—BYRON

I
T WAS SOME TIME
before Miss Withers, who hadn’t giggled in forty years, could quite contain herself. The picture of the two hereditary enemies struggling to extricate themselves from their accidental embrace outside her door had been a little too much, even for her. Of course it had all been over in a second or two; Sam Bordin had regained his hat and something of his aplomb and taken himself hurriedly off. The inspector brought the suitcases inside, kicked the door shut, and slammed them down before her.

“Oh, dear,” murmured the schoolteacher. “Thank you, Oscar. And don’t glower so. How long had you been listening outside the door?”