Puzzle of the Red Stallion (15 page)

“Well, I’ll be a …” Unfortunately the rest of the inspector’s remark was lost in the excitement as he chanced to place the hot end of his cigar between his lips. Spouting ashes and rich Tenth Avenue curses he was still being racked with howls of laughter when Miss Withers took her fingers out of her ears.

“Glad you find it funny!” the schoolteacher snapped.

“I know—I know,” gasped Piper. “Hi-Hildegarde, this’ll teach you to steal a march on me.”

“As if I needed teaching to do that,” she snapped. “Well, you wanted to question this young man and here he is. I’ve already given him a rather lengthy third degree and I tell you that if you arrest him now you’ll make a terrible mistake.”

The inspector noticed that her left eyelid was moving up and down.

“Eh?” he said. “Why, yeah—yes, of course. Just a bit of routine, Mr. Gregg. A few simple questions.”

“You’ll excuse me,” Miss Withers interrupted. “I’ve had my fill of police routine for today.” She stopped at the door. “Do try to remember someone who can vouch for your alibi, Mr. Gregg,” she advised. “Good evening to you—and I’ll join the charming Miss Foley in wishing you good luck.”

“Thanks,” said Don Gregg doubtfully. And it wasn’t until some hours later, during a brief respite in the inspector’s attempts at a mild third degree, that the young man made a surprising discovery. Rapidly he had been going through his clothes and searching also in the pockets of the muddy blue overcoat which did not fit him. Now he rose indignantly to his feet.

“I don’t mind answering your foolish questions ’til the cows come home,” he announced bitterly, “but when it comes to having my pockets picked …”

“What’s this?” roared the inspector.

“When I came in here,” insisted Don Gregg angrily, “I had a pipe in my pocket.”

As was his habit, Dempsey, the wire-haired terrier, aroused his mistress at an extremely early hour next morning (Monday) demanding an immediate walk. Miss Withers patted his crisp curly forehead and told him to have patience. She bathed, donned her sober serge suit and made a sketchy breakfast. She sipped her coffee, though Dempsey trotted beseechingly from her chair to the door and back again. Luckily it was vacation time and there was no roomful of unruly little hellions for her to cope with. “I’d rather face a murderer any day,” Miss Withers had often said.

With Dempsey bouncing ecstatically around her she took down his lead and snapped it on. As an afterthought she added the muzzle which he hated so fervently, and thus equipped the two of them went out into the early morning sunshine.

Much to his surprise Dempsey got more of a walk than he had bargained for. By the time they reached Forty-ninth Street near Sixth, his tongue was hanging out so far he nearly trod on it.

Miss Withers paused under an odd sign which hung above the sidewalk. She had seen the sign many times, but now she stopped and stared up at it hopefully. Like a great misshapen comma it hung—somehow she felt at the moment that it should have been a question mark instead. The name was in gold letters—“H. JASPER.”

The shop was as small as the sign was large. There was a partition midway of the place and a counter ran forward to the show window. Behind this counter a freckled blond young man drummed his fingers on the glass.

“A gift for a gentleman?” he inquired.

Miss Withers shook her head. She stared at the crowded shelves. “It’s just an idea of mine,” she began, “but I need a little expert advice. I was wondering …”

From the back of the shop came the whirring of a lathe.

By leaning over the counter Miss Withers could see the rounded back of a fat little old man in a black linen apron. He was holding a tube of hardened rubber against a whirling brush, now and then raising it to the light to study the polish it was taking. Faintly above the sound of the lathe came the words of the soft old love song—
Du, du liegst mir im Herzen
….

“I would like to speak to him,” said Miss Withers abruptly.

The young man with the freckles looked hurt. He made it clear that he himself was more than able to take care of any of her needs. “My uncle is very busy,” he explained.

“I’ll speak to him all the same,” insisted Miss Withers. At length the old gentleman was prevailed upon to leave his lathe. He plodded to the counter, wiping the dust from his spectacles and exuding a strong smell of powdered latex.

“Vat iss?” he demanded.

Miss Withers tried vainly to pull Dempsey away from a succulent cigarette stub which he had discovered on the floor. It was a taste which he had inherited honestly enough from his mother, a winsome terrier bitch who had enlivened Miss Withers’s adventures in murder on lovely Catalina Island two years before. Finally dropping the leash, the schoolteacher laid upon the counter two rather similar-looking pipes which had been safely wrapped in her handbag.

“You make and repair pipes,” she said. “I’m trying to find out something which may make a great deal of difference to someone—it may send a man to the gallows or save him. To come to the point, is there any way you can tell whether both of these pipes have been owned and smoked by the same person?”

“Hmmm,” said Mr. Jasper. Uncle and nephew both bent over the counter. There were minutes of whispered colloquy, much nodding and many shakes of the head. Dottle and half-burned tobacco were dug out of each pipe and placed in separate little heaps on the counter.

At length the old man came back to Miss Withers. “You say it iss a matter of life and death, this detective business?” he inquired. “I hope it gives life, then. Because—it is very clear, what you ask.”

“Go on!” she gasped.

Jasper took up the first pipe. “This,” he began, “iss the pipe of a young man—or a man who has not smoked a pipe long. First, it is a cheap pipe. There iss inside a patent tube and a patent gimmick and a patent whatnot, all intended to make smoking sweeter.” There was fine scorn in the old man’s voice. “Foolishness! Such gadgets only trap the dirt so that it sours the pipe.” He held the pipe up to the light. “Notice the shape—not curved and not straight. That shape was not on the market until a year ago, but since then it has been sold in all chain tobacco stores. They even give such pipes away with half a pound of tobacco.

“But more than that,” he continued. “This young man, he does not much like a pipe. He would rather smoke the cigarette, because he is always letting his pipe go out. Not only iss the top of the bowl blackened and burned, but the cake does not go halfway down on the inside of the bowl. Again and again the smoker has filled his pipe, lit it … and let it go out. Also, he uses a strong Latakia tobacco which burns fast and bites the tongue of the heavy smoker. He iss nervous, ja. He bites with his teeth very hard here….”

“I noticed the marks on the mouthpiece,” Miss Withers agreed brightly.

The old man glared. “Mouthpiece? There is a mouthpiece only on an Oriental hookah and on a Bavarian student pipe. Such pipes as this—they have a
bit
!” He tapped the hard rubber. “A bit, and a shank, and a bowl rising out of the shank; that is all. Again, we know he is nervous because he raps his pipe very hard on all kinds of hard surfaces to get rid of the ash. Notice how the top of the bowl is chipped and worn away?”

“By rapping on stone walls—the same stone walls which do not a prison make, according to the poet,” Miss Withers said softly to herself. So much for the pipe which she had filched from the pocket of Don Gregg. “And the other?” she pressed.

The old man nodded and picked up the other pipe. He held it gently, almost tenderly, as he wiped away the faint remains of dried mud.

“This is a different kettle of fish,” said old Mr. Jasper. “This is a
pipe
!”

“But can you tell me anything about the owner of it?” Miss Withers begged. “Anything at all?”

The old man smiled. “Nothing, mine friend. Nothing except that the owner of this pipe iss probably a man of middle age; that he has traveled abroad; that he iss a man of excellent tastes with money to spend; that he is by turns thoughtful and careless; that he appreciates the fine things of life; and that he iss a chemist or comes in contact with chemistry.”

Miss Withers gasped. “Is that all?”

“Well,” admitted the old man, “there iss one more thing. This man has a denture—what we call false teeth.”

“Do you mind telling me how you figure all that out from a pipe which looks just like the other one?” demanded Miss Withers.

The old man was delighted. “First, this pipe bears the stamp of the very small but very famous London pipe-makers, Weingott. They are located in the Temple on Fleet Street where few American tourists ever go. Few of these pipes are exported—I can swear that this one was not, for it bears a serial number which I, without difficulty, can recognize as meaning that the pipe was made to retail in England.

“This is a straight-grain briar type of the finest. It must have cost twenty, perhaps thirty dollars or more. A man does not commission a friend abroad to purchase a pipe of such value, particularly when it is so much a matter of personal likes and dislikes. That is why I can say our unknown man traveled abroad; that he is a man of excellent tastes with money to spend.”

“But how could you tell his age?” Miss Withers wanted to know.

“Very simple. After this pipe was purchased, which could not have been more than a year or two ago, the owner had a silver band put on it. Since silver bands have been obsolete for a long time he was evidently trying to make this pipe look like some old favorite of his. Young men, you see, are more inclined to follow the fashions of the moment.” He looked at the other pipe.

“Band? I didn’t notice any band,” the schoolteacher protested.

“That is where the chemistry comes in,” said the old man with a smile. “The silver is very discolored and black. Sulphur, acids, a hundred things will tarnish silver this way.”

“And the rest of it?” she begged.

“The owner of this pipe has an appreciation of the finer things of life because he smokes one of the finest tobaccos in the world—not the most expensive, but one of the finest.” The old man indicated a brown paper package on his shelf. “Mixture Fifty,” he said. “Smells like vanilla, tastes like heaven. To continue, the smoker is by turns thoughtful and careless because he has kept the cake well cleaned from his bowl always, yet has allowed coal tar to thicken inside the shank, not to mention the corrosion of the fine silver band. As for the false teeth …”

“I was wondering about those,” Miss Withers admitted.

“That is the simplest point of all.” The old man pointed to the rubber bit of the pipe, which was wide and flattened at the end. “This is the only type of bit that men with dentures can hold in the mouth,” he explained. “Every pipe manufacturer keeps these in stock for each of his pipes, and I mineself make a specialty of fitting them to the favorite pipes of those smokers who have had to lose their teeth….”

He smiled. “That is all I can tell you. But you can rest assured that the man who smoked the gadget pipe never touched this one—for he would have left the mark of his gnawing teeth and his careless hand. Nor did Silver Band smoke the cheap pipe—the tobacco would have burned his tongue red, the patent devices would have maddened him, and most important, his manufactured teeth would have had to clamp so hard upon this round narrow bit that a serious jawache before the tobacco was well burning he would haf developed!”

“Thank you,” Miss Withers said fervently. She took back the two pipes and then, much to the amazement of the pipe expert, she scraped up the refuse which he had taken from each and made separate envelopes with penciled notations.

“It iss so important as that?” queried the old man wonderingly.

“You don’t,” said Miss Withers, “know the half of it!”

She took a taxi homeward, paused only long enough to feed Dempsey and lock him in the kitchen, and then she sallied southward toward Centre Street.

She found the inspector poring sadly over the morning papers. “Did you see it, Hildegarde?” he was complaining. “The stories are all right—the boys only dared to print what we gave them and that was little enough. But the headlines … Get this. ‘POLICE STUMPED BY BRIDLE PATH MURDER’ … and the
Mirror
of course makes a crack about Lady Godiva, under a head, ‘BEAUTY ON THE BEAST’!”

“Never mind your press notices,” snapped the schoolteacher as she leaned over the official desk. “What did you decide to do with young Gregg?”

Piper frowned. “You know, Hildegarde, I had to turn him loose. There weren’t any holes in his story that I could pick, and if he did kill his ex-wife you’d think he would have a better alibi than just to say he was in the sleeping room at a Turkish bath. Besides, I checked with the boys at alimony jail and they said he hadn’t an idea in the world that he was to be sprung that night. He’d actually ordered breakfast sent in from outside….”

Miss Withers digested the idea of breakfast. “Of course, if you think I ought to keep him in the cooler we can pick him up,” Piper said doubtfully. “He’s going up to his father’s place, he says….”

“Let him go,” Miss Withers said shortly. “Because he didn’t have anything to do with the murder. He doesn’t fit the description of the murderer!”

“Yeah? And where did you stumble on an eyewitness?”

“Why, I—” Being able to stall no longer, Miss Withers played her ace. “Oscar, the murderer of Violet Feverel is a traveler, probably middle aged, with money and luxurious tastes—he is thoughtful with flashes of absent-mindedness, he has false teeth, and is probably a chemist by profession or avocation….”

“What’s his name?” broke in the inspector eagerly.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers. She produced the two pipes. “From one of these, which I found buried in the mud where the body lay, I deduced all those details. With the help of a pipe expert, of course!”

“You what?” the inspector demanded.

“Deduced—like Sherlock Holmes, you know,” said Miss Withers belligerently.

The inspector shook his head. “Hildegarde, you’ll be the death of me—you and your concealing evidence and making deductions and what not! Besides—how do you know that pipe wasn’t dropped there by accident?”