Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla (23 page)

He burst out of the door.

“I don’t like that young man,” Mrs. Ippwing said loudly and clearly. “I was going to ask him for his autograph, but now I won’t!”

Captain de Silva, obviously bewildered at the turn events had taken, made valiant efforts to proceed. “If you have no objections,” he said to Miss Hildegarde Withers, with an intended sarcasm which passed like water from the back of the proverbial duck.

“Go ahead,” she said. “I was only trying to clear up some of the cloudy angles of this case. At noon today I decided that if I had the answer to six questions I would have solved this entire muddle. When I came here there were only four unanswered, and no doubt before we finish this heart-to-heart talk, the other ones will be cleared up.”

She tried to look particularly wise and omniscient. The captain nodded to his assistant with the notebook, began all over again. “Now, Mrs. Mabie,” he said, “will you be good enough …”

The lights flickered and went out. There was a pause, a noisy demanding of matches, and then the lights came on again.

“Hotel Georges service!” quoted the inspector wickedly.

Then the lights went off again and stayed off. There was a long expectant period during which everyone sat and waited, exchanging remarks about home-generator plants and Mexican mechanics.

Miss Hildegarde Withers heard a faint rustling movement in the pitchy dark behind her and suddenly slid out of her chair. It was a movement so automatic that it surprised even her. She remained on the floor, hardly daring to breathe.

“Hasn’t anybody got a match?” she demanded at last. Finally they all realized that the lights were not coming on again, and matches and pocket lighters produced several luminous spots. There was light enough to see that everyone was in his proper place—everyone except the schoolteacher.

Adele Mabie screamed and pointed. “Look!”

The inspector hurried, helped Miss Withers to her feet. “You all right?”

“Of course I am!” she insisted.

There was light enough now that Adele had found the candles so that they could all see Julio Mendez standing in the doorway, blinking with surprise. Behind him was Dulcie Prothero.

“Playing Hide in the Dark?” the Gay Caballero inquired.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Dulcie said quickly. “I didn’t know you were having a meeting—and as I came back I met Mr. Mendez in the lobby.”

“She works very hard,” Julio put in. “She wraps and packs all afternoon, and she even forgets to eat. So I take her over to Prendes and buy her one good meal.”

Dulcie nodded. Miss Withers knew that the girl had been laughing. There were signs of laughter around her mouth, and if the eyes lacked it that might come later.

“Too bad you were not here a moment ago,” the schoolteacher said. “We had a friend of yours call, Dulcie.”

At that moment the lights came back on again, with a blinding glare like that of a magnesium explosion. They winked, went off, came back, and stayed.

Everyone laughed nervously. “Now if this had been a mystery on the stage,” Inspector Piper said, “we’d have found one member of the party lying dead in the middle of the floor.”

Miss Hildegarde Withers caught her breath. “Yes, wouldn’t we,” she agreed, her voice strange and tight. “If this were a mystery thriller …”

She was looking at the back of her chair. Then everybody looked and saw that through the cloth, through the fiber and upholstery of the thin chairback, there was a tiny triangular hole.

“Of course!” cried Adele Mabie hysterically. “That’s why the lights went out—but why was it meant for you instead of for me?”

“Because,” Miss Withers said, “I happen to know the answer to the last question!”

It was Julio Mendez who spoke first. “Bad business,” he observed. “Sticking knives at people’s backs. Maybe”—he looked inquiringly at the captain—“maybe we ought to be turning out our pockets, no?”

De Silva accepted the suggestion at once. “Lock the doors,” he commanded. “I am sorry, but everyone in this room will have to submit to a search.”

“I’m not going to have anybody pawing me!” began the alderman.

“And of course,” Miss Withers suggested, “anyone refusing to cooperate will be making a sort of confession, won’t he?”

There was quite a good deal said on the subject pro and con, but finally everyone was taken in turn to the bedroom and searched thoroughly. Captain de Silva took the men, and at his suggestion the ladies submitted to the attentions of Miss Hildegarde Withers. Mrs. Mabie, Mrs. Ippwing—even Dulcie went through the ordeal. But the proceeding took a long time, was embarrassing for everybody concerned, and drew an absolute blank. The men, most of them, had pocket knives, but none with a blade which was anything the shape of that triangular stiletto mark.

Then the sitting room was given a thorough once-over by Captain de Silva, while Julio Mendez looked on and made lighthearted comments.

Mrs. Ippwing sought out the schoolteacher and whispered cautiously in her ear. “That young man and the girl were in the doorway when the candles were lighted,” she was saying. “I don’t suppose there could be a chance that
they
got rid of the knife in the hall?”

The hall was searched, but, since it was simply a long bare stretch without furniture or any other possible hiding place, that possibility was speedily eliminated.

“I know, maybe!” Julio Mendez offered suddenly. “The window, yes?”

“Just what I was going to suggest,” snapped Captain de Silva. But the window was firmly closed, and when finally it opened there was so much noise in its sliding that this possibility, too, had to be forgotten. The bedroom door, likewise, squeaked on its hinges.

“It’s a cinch that knife is in this room,” Inspector Oscar Piper declared. “We’ll look again, eh?”

They looked again, under the rug, behind the desk, in the cushions of the davenport.

But there was no knife.

Rollo Lighton said unpleasantly that he didn’t suppose anybody in the room had ever heard of a secret drawer in the furniture.

“Of course!” Miss Withers agreed. “The murderer is really a woodworker, and some time ago he sneaked into this hotel and put secret drawers into the furniture just in preparation for this evening!” She sniffed. “Well, what next?”

“Must there be more?” said Dulcie Prothero. The girl stood leaning against the table, and the color which had been slowly coming back into her face through the day was gone again.

“I think maybe we get out of these place, no?” Julio Mendez suggested. “Before the lights go out again.”

“Yes, for heaven’s sake,” Mrs. Ippwing pleaded. “As it is, Father will keep me awake half the night muttering in his sleep about clues!” Captain de Silva had no choice but to order the door unlocked.

There was a general exodus from the place, everyone anxious to put distance between himself and that room with its dreadful potentiality. The missing stiletto was a sword of Damocles, only, as Miss Withers observed, it hung by a thread in the fourth dimension.

Even the alderman moved uncomfortably, looked at his wife. “Adele, would you mind? I—I think I need a drink, and the bar up the street is still open.” His fat white hands were trembling.

She didn’t mind. “I’ll be back early,” he promised.

“Sure, I’ll see he gets back early,” Al Hansen said. He was smiling his usual smile, but it was frozen on his round face. “I’ll have Pedro mix up some cocktails that’ll make you forget your troubles past, present and future, eh, Alderman?” He looked at Rollo Lighton. “Coming?”

“No, I’m going,” said Lighton and then hurried hastily down the hall, no doubt weak from the effort of will exerted in turning down a drink.

Julio Mendez was beside Dulcie. “Just to making sure that you get there without some more monkey-shining happening, how about I take you up to your room, yes?”

“Please do!” she begged, and they went. At last everyone was gone, everyone but Miss Withers, the inspector—and Adele.

“It wasn’t entirely a failure, this convocation,” the schoolma’am said thoughtfully. “And the evening isn’t over yet. I wonder—”

“I see the plan. I see exactly what you’re driving at!” Adele Mabie suddenly blurted out. She was stalking up and down the room as if it were a cage. “What if I don’t agree, what then?”

Miss Withers was very innocent. “Agree?”

“To being a lure, a bait!” Adele continued, with her voice growing shakier and shakier. “Everybody knows now that I’m leaving tomorrow, and that tonight is the last chance …”

“Yes,” agreed the schoolteacher.

“You just think of catching the murderer; you don’t mind risking human lives!”

“Not even my own,” Miss Withers advised her. “As the inspector here can tell you.”

“Yours or anybody else’s. You’re so sure of everything! You think you can stand by and interfere before they succeed in getting me!” Adele was almost hysterical. “Nobody interfered up at Nuevo Laredo, when that nice Mexican boy died right in front of me. Nobody interfered at the bullfight, and another man died. Twice they missed me by purest accident, and don’t think they’ll miss the third time.”

“We’ll do our best. Angels can do no more,” Miss Withers told her, a little stiffly.

“If you think,” Adele blurted out, “that I’m going to stay here in this room alone for even an hour—”

“Wait a moment,” said the schoolteacher. “I have an idea. Oscar, this is a purely feminine matter. Would you mind leaving us alone for half an hour?”

He grumbled a little. “I don’t know if it’s safe.”

“Then lend us your revolver, Oscar,” Miss Withers suggested. “That ought to be protection enough.”

Adele Mabie said, “But I don’t know how to shoot very well.”

“I do,” said the schoolteacher, taking the pistol and holding it gingerly at arm’s length. “You run along, Oscar.” She followed him to the door, whispered some very peculiar last-minute instructions in his ear.

When they were alone she turned toward the frightened woman. “You are in worse danger than you realize,” said Hildegarde Withers, her voice full of sympathy. “Worse than anybody realizes.”

The face was drawn now, no longer pretty. “I know,” said Adele softly. “I ought to go away tonight instead of tomorrow!”

“The danger you are in will follow you,” Miss Withers pronounced, “It will follow you around the world. You are what the newspapers call a marked woman—unless—”

“But what can I do? Adele broke in. “It’s the waiting that is so terrible.”

“I’ll tell you what you can do, with my help,” said Hildegarde Withers. “You must …”

Adele screamed as a heavy missile struck the floor beside her, bounced across the floor. It was an inkwell, with a piece of paper fastened to it by means of a rubber band.

Both women rushed to the window, which de Silva had left open. Down at the side door of Pangborn’s restaurant a man was getting into a taxicab, but they could not see who it was. They watched the taillight of the taxi disappear.

It was Adele who picked up the missile and opened the folded message.

There were only four words, written with red crayon in a firm Spencerian hand. “It is Zero Hour!” was all it said.

The inspector, walking stealthily along the deserted hall of the fourth floor, stopped suddenly and listened. There were sounds of loud and angry voices coming from the direction of the rear of the building. He frowned, turned away from the stairs, and went on back, more stealthily than ever. He turned a corner and suddenly flattened himself against the wall.

Dulcie Prothero stood at the door of her room, one of the few of these smallish top-floor rooms which appeared to be occupied. Before her in the corridor two young men faced each other, unmistakably belligerent.

“You’d better go,” Julio Mendez was saying quietly, his voice without a trace of accent. “Don’t be a fool.”

The other, a pale young man with large ears and a determined jaw, did not move. “I’m going to talk to Dulcie,” he said. “What’s it to you?”

“The lady doesn’t want to talk to you,” Julio said.

“It’s no skin off your nose, is it?” The Yonkers Matador was in a snarling mood.

“Go on, get out,” the other ordered. His big pearl-handled automatic appeared suddenly in his hand. “I’m not fooling.”

“Please go, Bobsie,” the girl said.

He shook his head. “You’ve got to listen to me.”

“She doesn’t have to do anything,” Julio Mendez said. “Go on,
vamos
! If you come any closer I’ll blow you apart.”

The mouth of Robert Schultz was twisted and bitter. He invited Julio to shoot and be damned to hell. Then he took a step closer.

“Oh no!” Dulcie said quickly. “Please stop, please—both of you. I won’t have this!”

“He’s leaving,” Julio said.

“Go on, shoot,” invited Schultz. “I don’t care. I may be afraid of a bull, but I’m not afraid of you and your gun. You can shoot, but I’m going to knock that silly smirk off your puss first.”

“One more step,” Julio said simply, without expression, “and you will get it.”

The inspector found himself torn between a feeling that it was his duty to interfere and a strong hunch that this meeting was important, that it was destined by fate.

Schultz took one step more, two more. Dulcie cried something, started forward, but her voice was as the wind in the treetops. Down the hall somebody opened a door, peered out, and closed it with a bang. In Mexico people learn to mind their own business, and the inspector followed suit.

Instead of pulling the trigger Julio Mendez suddenly tore off his belt and holster, threw gun and all against the wall.

“All right,” he said. “Come on.”

“Greaser!” vented the ex-matador, and he rushed. Mendez met the rush with a quick sidestep, caught his man in a clever jujitsu hold. The inspector nodded approvingly, for it was one that he had been taught by a Japanese instructor in police school.

But Schultz twisted, rolled suddenly on his heels, and broke the armlock. He flung a fast left, and Julio, cursed as are all Latins with an inability to fathom the brutal truths of fist on flesh, countered it awkwardly.

He left himself open for a straight right hand, and it shot to his chin. Still smiling a surprised smile, Julio Mendez went down and stayed down.