Puzzle of the Red Stallion (18 page)

“Really?” Miss Withers looked surprised.

Piper nodded. “Him and a friend of his—a little guy who fits the description of the phony deputy sheriff. They had their rubdowns about two in the morning and the rubber wrapped them up each in a sheet and put them to bed in adjoining cots. They were still there in the morning….”

“And they couldn’t have got up and gone out, together or separately—and then returned?”

“The people at the baths said not,” Piper admitted. “But they admitted business was pretty slack that night … so they weren’t on their toes.”

“It sounds like a genuine alibi,” Miss Withers admitted. “They could easily have faked a better one than that. I always suspect a watertight alibi, Oscar. All the same …”

“I don’t figure Mrs. Thwaite as the killer,” Piper went on. “Even though she wants that Siwash horse pretty bad. Seems that she’s set on riding him in horse shows or something. Besides, she wouldn’t smoke a pipe….”

“Her husband might,” Miss Withers retorted. “He’s the sort of man who’d do what he was told.”

“And if Mrs. Thwaite wanted murder done, she’d do it herself,” Piper snapped back. “She wouldn’t trust it to the little vet. As for your little friend Eddie, he has an alibi. He was with Barbara, they both swear. And Latigo Wells—where would the motive come in? Besides, he rolls his own cigarettes instead of smoking a pipe.” The inspector shook his head. “No, Hildegarde, this murder is tied up in seventeen layers of smoke screens.”

“I’d cut through them quick enough if I knew just who in this case wears false teeth!” Miss Withers insisted obstinately. They were interrupted as the outer door opened and a frowsy, plump little old woman poked in an ingratiating face.

Over one arm she carried a basket. “Apples today, gentleman? Nice apples?”

Piper fished in his pocket and found a dime. “Keep the apple, Auntie,” he said kindly.

But Miss Withers’s face wore an expression of ecstasy. She snatched her purse and produced two dollars. “I want to buy all the apples you have!” she announced.

She said afterward that it was worth the two dollars to see the look on the inspector’s face.

“A
NYWAY,” MAUDE THWAITE WAS
saying, “I’m going to try it.” She was stalking up and down the office, her hands stuck deep in the pockets of her well-worn riding breeches. Her husband was engaged in the delicate operation of squeezing pomade from a tiny lead tube, which he then daubed thickly upon the twisted ends of his mustache. He leaned closer to the wall mirror.

“I don’t know,” he said dubiously. “He’s not a jumper.”

“Any horse can be broken to the jumps,” the woman told him. “If he can’t be schooled into form enough for the horse shows there’s still the steeplechase meets. With his speed …”

“He’s light in the leg,” Thwaite reminded her. “That horse is racing bred—needs heavier bone to make jumps safely.”

“If he breaks a leg it’s his hard luck,” the woman said. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking an egg or two. Anyway I’m going to take that Siwash horse in hand and see what I can make of him.”

“Wait until you get him, my dear,” counseled her husband.

She nodded. “I’m going to get him, all right. Who’s to stop me?”

“Who indeed?” broke in a clear New England voice. “Except perhaps the owner of the animal.”

The Thwaites whirled to see Miss Hildegarde Withers framed in the doorway of the inner hall. “I hope I’m not intruding,” she went on cheerily as she entered the office and sank gratefully upon a chair, depositing her bundle in her lap. “I went into the stable looking for Mr. Latigo Wells, and not finding him there …”

“See here!” began Thwaite angrily. But his wife gave him a look.

“Sorry I can’t help you—because there’s nothing I’d rather do than aid the police in this investigation,” she intoned rather speechily. “But you see, Latigo asked for the rest of the day off. I think he said something about going to the dentist.”

“Really?” Miss Withers smiled brightly. Her mild blue eyes peered around the room, noting the blank space on top of the desk. “How thoughtful of Mr. Wells to take his guitar along—I’m sure his dentist must appreciate the musical accompaniment.”

Maude Thwaite looked at the desk top and then back at the schoolteacher. There was surprise and annoyance in her eyes and the faintly blue tinge of her complexion was deepening.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” she remarked conversationally, “if Latigo sang himself right out of a job one of these days.”

Miss Withers nodded. She could understand that. “I suppose you are a little annoyed with Mr. Wells for being so quick to point out that the cinch-band had been tampered with this morning,” she said. “Casts certain reflections on the stable, doesn’t it?”

Mrs. Thwaite smiled, showing a great many excellent teeth.

“Possibly,” she admitted. “Provided there was tampering, which I won’t admit until the police let me look at the saddle. But of course it must have occurred to the police that Latigo was awfully quick to notice things—almost miraculously quick unless he knew beforehand….”

Miss Withers stared at the little veterinary who was twirling his mustache full steam. “Yes, I think that occurred to the police,” she said.

“Well, it’s clear enough,” Thwaite broke in. “If you’d asked me I could have told you! Latigo’s mixed up in this whole thing. Probably tried to get rid of the girl this morning because he thought she suspected him of the job yesterday. He was always making calf’s eyes at Violet Feverel, until he found out she only looked on him as a stable boy….”

“Rufus,” said Mrs. Thwaite patiently, “did I tell you that Boots has a saddle sore? It needs attention.”

He nodded. “In a moment, my dear. I tell you, that crooning cowboy could have killed Violet Feverel out of jealousy—he’s not as innocent as he looks. You should have seen him gaping at her when she happened to wear a tight sweater one morning….” There was a reminiscent look in the veterinary’s eye.

He caught his wife’s glance. “All right, I’m going,” he said, taking up an instrument case from the floor. “But remember what I say, all the same.”

Miss Withers promised that she would. “Have an apple before you go,” she offered, opening the bag on her lap.

Dr. Thwaite took the red fruit, shined it on his trousers, and then, much to Miss Withers’s disappointment, put it into his pocket. He said, “Thanks—not between meals,” and hastily departed. Mrs. Thwaite declined an apple, but that was no disappointment to Miss Withers.

“You’re awfully anxious to add Siwash to your string of horses, aren’t you?” the schoolteacher plodded on.

Mrs. Thwaite was making visible efforts to be pleasant.

“Yes, I am,” she admitted. “Not that he could ever be worth anything as a sprinter again—unless he was given a spot of heroin on the tongue before each race, and the judges are getting wise to that. But there’s something about him …”

“You just naturally love him, don’t you?” Miss Withers looked at the Thwaite woman and they both remembered the episode of the strap.

“I don’t
love
any horse,” snapped Mrs. Thwaite. “And nobody can say that I’m unkind to ’em either. When they begin to break down at hacking, I sell ’em to the glue factory, which is quick and merciful. Siwash has two or three years as a top saddle or show horse ahead of him and then I can hack him for a couple more….”

“Perhaps Barbara Foley will have something to say to that,” Miss Withers put in.

“Perhaps she will,” Maude Thwaite retorted. “But I haven’t seen any signs on her part of paying the back board bill. And when she led him in a little while ago, after he tossed her off, she swore she’d never ride him again.”

Mrs. Thwaite made no effort to conceal a look of satisfaction. “Was there anything else?” she inquired.

“Not at the moment,” Miss Withers answered. She rose to her feet. “I must be on my way.”

“I wonder if you’d mind telling that detective out in the street,” Mrs. Thwaite suggested, “that if he wants to shadow this place he might as well come right inside. He makes me nervous lurking out there.”

“Really!” Miss Withers resolved to speak to the inspector about this blunder. Then from the outer doorway she saw that the man who loitered so inartistically across the street was not an operative at all—it was Mr. Don Gregg.

She withdrew hastily. “I think after all I’ll go out through the stable,” she said. Maude Thwaite stared woodenly after her as the schoolteacher hurried down the passage into the stable.

Highpockets went past her, carrying an armful of straw. Miss Withers asked him the whereabouts of Dr. Thwaite and the colored boy nodded in the direction of the rear stalls.

The veterinary was leaning over the gate of Siwash’s stall. He looked up and grinned as the schoolteacher approached. “Watch this, it’s going to be good,” he said.

In one hand he held the apple which Miss Withers had hoped to see him bite—or refuse to bite. “Here, boy, here you are,” he was saying.

Siwash tossed his head dubiously and skittered sideways. “Come on, eat it!” commanded the doctor.

Siwash came closer and then danced away again. “Finicky, eh?” Thwaite tossed the apple into the horse’s feed box. “He wouldn’t take it from my hand, but watch him now!” said Thwaite.

Miss Withers, puzzled but pleased at this unexpected evidence of friendliness, drew closer. She saw the big red thoroughbred nose the apple, then pick it up daintily between his teeth and munch. …

“Watch him!” gasped Thwaite, bubbling with repressed laughter. “Just watch him, that’s all….”

Siwash chewed. Suddenly he stopped chewing and the apple fell in slobbered fragments to the floor. His ears waggled and he shook his head savagely. It is impossible for a horse to spit, but Siwash came as close to that act as he could. His teeth ground together and he reared high in the air. Great tears rolled out of his brown eyes.

Thwaite was roaring with laughter. “Quinine!” he finally managed to explain. “A tablespoon full of quinine stuck into the core of the apple….”

Miss Withers looked blank. “I didn’t know he was sick,” she said.

“He wasn’t—but he is now!” Thwaite gasped. “Did you see the look on that nag’s face?”

Thwaite didn’t see the look on Miss Withers’s face. “You mean that was a practical joke?” she asked calmly.

He nodded. “That red horse is so particular about what he eats you’d think he was human,” Thwaite explained. “It isn’t often I can fool him.”

“Hmm,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers. “By the way, where did you attend public school?”

Thwaite looked blank. “What?”

“You were never a pupil at Jefferson School, on the east side?”

He shook his head. “Too bad,” said Miss Withers, somewhat wistfully. She was thinking of a two-foot rule that she kept in the top drawer of her desk.

“By the way,” said Thwaite in a low voice, “no use saying anything to my wife about this, you know. She’s an excellent woman, but she does take everything too seriously…. I have to break loose once in a while….”

“We’ll just keep it a merry little secret between us two,” Miss Withers promised. “Won’t you have another apple … for yourself?”

“Thanks,” said Thwaite, and took one. Miss Withers waited a little while longer and saw him bite into the fruit. Finally she went away, vaguely surprised and disheartened.

Highpockets was sweeping the runway as she came back toward the front of the stable. On an impulse the schoolteacher stopped. “Young man,” she said accusingly, “I want to ask you a question.”

“Yas’m?” Highpockets immediately became the picture of guilt.

“Were there ever any—any carryings-on between Dr. Thwaite and Miss Violet Feverel—that you happened to notice?”

The eyes rolled. “Tha’s what Miss Thwaite like to know, I bet you!”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” snapped the schoolteacher, who realized that she was very close to being a meddlesome busybody. Yet she supposed that the end justified something or other.

“Well,” decided Highpockets, “I wouldn’t say yes and I wouldn’t say no.”

“Didn’t Dr. Thwaite like Miss Feverel?”

Highpockets could answer that. “Yas’m! Everybody like Miss Feverel. She was a mighty fine lady—gave me a red-hot tip on that big race next Saturday. She tell me how to win myself a barrel of money.”

“And you’re going to bet on the horse she suggested?”

“I sho am! That is,” he corrected, “if that Wallaby horse has the right number on him. I can’t bet on no two or three—but if it’s seven or eleven! Zowie! Miss Feverel was always lucky.”

Miss Withers thought of Violet Feverel as she last had seen her and shivered a little.

“Thank you,” she said, preparing to depart. She saw the colored boy staring hopefully at her paper sack full of apples. “Oh—have one?”

“Yes, ma’am!” said Highpockets. He took a large red apple, opened his mouth very wide and bit it in two. Both halves disappeared almost instantly. He grinned.

Miss Withers looked gratified. “Too bad you’re not on my list of suspects,” she said cryptically. “I could cross you off.”

She went out of the stables into the street again, stopping long enough to have a good look all around. But there was no sign of the young man she had expected to find lurking there. It had not been her intention to warn him off—indeed, the more the various characters in this mixed-up affair spied upon each other the better she liked it. This broth needed a good deal of stirring.

She hurried over to Broadway, descended underground and rode past three subway stations, and came up into the daylight again. Yet as she approached the bulk of the Hotel Harthorn Miss Hildegarde Withers had a vague feeling that the daylight was not as bright as usual. “I’m getting the fidgets over nothing,” she scolded herself. “This is no work for a person with nerves.” Yet all the same she kept looking over her shoulder.

The desk clerk knew her by now. “Miss Foley came in about an hour ago,” he proffered. “With a gentleman. Shall I announce you?”

“Take your hand off that telephone,” Miss Withers told him, “or I’ll see that your announcing days are over.” She flounced on toward the elevator. Once she stopped and waited behind a pillar, but nobody seemed to be following her.