Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla (16 page)

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.

“Can you imagine!” Adele gasped. “I was telling the doctor here that I would be responsible for the hospital bill and everything. And what do you think he said?”

Miss Withers refused to guess.

“Dulcie has loads and loads of money!” Adele went on.

The doctor nodded. “When the nurses undressed this young lady, down in the emergency ward, they found this pinned to her slip!”

He produced a small cloth bag, a bag containing a sheaf of United States currency.

“Something over sixteen hundred dollars!” gasped Adele Mabie.

“A lovely nest egg, isn’t it?” Miss Withers admitted. “I suggest that you arrange, Doctor, to have this put back under the girl’s pillow tonight.”

“But sixteen hundred dollars!” Mrs. Mabie repeated. “What is she doing with all that money? What if it should be lost?”

“Miss Dulcie Prothero,” the schoolteacher said, “won’t lose anything she doesn’t want to lose.”

In the lobby of the Hotel Georges that night—actually it had been Monday morning for some hours now—Miss Withers found a solitary figure stretched out in the easiest of the modernistic chairs, sound asleep. It was the inspector, with cigar ashes all over the front of his vest.

“Well!” she said sharply. Oscar Piper’s feet came off the edge of the opposite settee, and he stiffened to attention.

“Ugh!” he greeted her. “You back?”

“Asleep at the switch, Oscar?” she inquired unkindly. “I’m glad that one of us can get some rest, anyhow. I’ve been hard at work.” She told him, briefly, the results of the evening.

“Yeah? That money looks phony, eh? But it doesn’t seem to fit into this muddle of a murder.” He considered her results and found them small. “You don’t care how you work, either, do you? Quizzing a hospital patient while she’s half unconscious, and then you talk to me about the third degree! Anyway, you needn’t crow. I’ve been busy too.”

“Solved the mystery of the two murders, Oscar?”

“I’m getting closer,” he insisted. “While you were running around in circles I was called in as a consulting expert by nobody else than Captain de Silva of the Mexico City Police!”

Miss Withers remembered him. “Oh yes—the worried young man with the high forehead, who loves so to make speeches! The one who helped me get you out of the police station lockup!”

“Yeah,” said Piper. “Anyway, all that is forgotten. We’re buddies now. What happened at the bullfight has blown the lid off everything. De Silva is fronting for the lieutenant colonel in charge. Seems that whenever anything happens down here the, big shots take a powder out of town and let somebody else sweat. Naturally de Silva wanted to get the inside. We compared notes—”

“You mean, he questioned you?” she asked shrewdly.

“We compared notes!” Piper repeated a little stiffly. “De Silva was very friendly. I told him everything that I noticed at the bullfight. That is—everything that could have any bearing on the case…”

He stopped short. “What are you smiling at?”

“You must have been a big help, considering that we both sat there and let a murder be committed under our very noses!”

“Yes,” admitted the inspector. “That’s what de Silva intimated. But like everybody else, we were watching the show in the arena. There’s no use crying over spilt milk.”

“Something worse than milk was spilled,” the schoolteacher told him sharply. “It may have slipped your mind, but somebody sneaked up on that poor man and stabbed him in the back. Our job is to find out who!”

Piper smiled weakly. “De Silva thinks he knows. And I had hell’s own time keeping him from making an arrest last night.”

“What? Who?” Miss Withers went off like a string of firecrackers.

“Francis Mabie is suspect number one,” the inspector admitted. “But they make it sound logical. You see, we didn’t know that, like most young Mexicans of good family, this Robles chap was educated abroad—in Paris, in fact.”

“The customs man? Paris—that’s very incriminating,”

“Wait, will you? Adele Mabie is a damn pretty woman, and she took a cruise around the world on one of the
Empress
liners a couple of years ago. What happens to a pretty woman gadding around alone, eh?”

“Don’t ask me, Oscar Piper!”

“Well, anyway—she could have met a handsome young Mexican in Paris and had a red-hot affair.”

“Please, Oscar! Leave the Latin Quarter out of this. Are you trying to say that Adele came back to New York, married, and then two years later on a trip to Mexico the phlegmatic alderman is so burning with jealousy that he leaves poisoned perfume where the boyfriend, now a respectable customs examiner, might smell it? The longest long arm of coincidence I ever saw in my life.”

“Wait,” Piper said. “That’s not all. Leave it to these romantically minded Mexicans. They go farther than that—after Mabie got rid of the young man he is supposed to have started brooding over his wife. Maybe she flirted with somebody else—anyway, the alderman sneaks out of the bullfight saying that he can’t stand the sight of blood, sneaks in again with a dart under his coat, and then slides along the seat until he is just behind the fancy umbrella that his wife has hired to keep dry under. Then”—the inspector made a gesture—“boppo!”

“Whoa!” Miss Withers interrupted. “Aren’t you confused, Oscar? At last reports Adele Mabie was alive and well.”

“Sure! Because when she left her seat she dropped the rented umbrella, and Fitz, in the row ahead, picked it up to keep himself snug. So he got killed by accident.”

“It’s building a house of cards without straw,” Miss Withers declared. “Just guesswork.”

“Not all guesswork,” Piper corrected. “It doesn’t show in the newspaper photographs of the stiff, but when they found Mike Fitz he had that striped umbrella over his shoulders!”

The schoolteacher wasn’t saying anything, but she had an extremely thoughtful look in her cool blue eyes.

“But of course it’s full of holes,” the inspector continued. “Mabie has a good alibi. He says that after he left the bullfight he came back downtown to the Papillon bar and stayed there.”

“That I can believe without straining myself,” Miss Withers admitted. “It sounds more than reasonable.”

“Sure does. And I got de Silva to send one of his
agentes
over to check it. The manager of the Papillon bar says he distinctly remembers a man of the alderman’s description being there from four-thirty to sometime around seven.”

“And the murder was at five?”

“Within a few minutes, anyway. De Silva figures it happened just as the deluge came down, with everybody rushing to get out of the place.”