Puzzle of the Red Stallion (17 page)

But the inspector wasn’t so sure. He faced Barbara. “Say, who knew you were riding up this way?”

The girl shrugged. “There’s only the one curving path,” she pointed out. “You either ride in a circle to the right or the left and come back at the same gate …”

“Yeah, but what person in particular—” Piper was saying.

He was interrupted by the sound of galloping hoofs. Up the path came a small gray mare bearing on her back a heavy stock saddle trimmed with silver, and in that saddle a lean young man with a long sad upper lip. Latigo Wells was out of the saddle before the mare had stopped.

“Miss Barbara—you all right?” he gasped.

Babs pushed back a stray lock of auburn hair. Strange, Miss Withers thought, that the girl had been conscious of her appearance only when this young man came on the scene. Barbara was even managing a smile.

“I’m just fine,” she said. “Only I went on my nose like you said I would.”

“Oh, like he said you would!” Piper rasped. “Maybe we got a prophet in our midst!”

“Whoa, Salt old gal.” Latigo dropped the reins and his mare stopped. He took in the situation slowly, as if making a mental note of everything. Particularly did he stare at Eddie Fry, and there was no love in that stare.

“Accident, eh?” said Latigo. “Maybe so. It’s easy enough to fall off a horse, particularly a race horse that can’t forget how he was trained. But begging your pardon, folks, it’s not so usual for the saddle to go off too. Let’s have a look.”

They all had a look at the saddle which lay beside the spot where Barbara had fallen.

“Nice accident,” said Latigo, kneeling down. In his hand was the webbed cinch-band, which happened to be in two parts. “Fine time for the cinch to break,” he said heavily. “Worn out—have a look at it, Casey.”

The mounted cop took the cinch-band as the others gathered around. He whistled.

“Looks like the wear came all in one place, don’t it?” Casey remarked. Latigo nodded, biting his lip.

“That’s the kind of wear that could be made with a piece of sandpaper or a knife blade,” the mounted officer continued. “It sure looks like somebody
wanted
you to take a dive off that big red horse, miss.” Again Latigo nodded.

The inspector thoughtfully fingered the webbing. “When the horse shied, there was an extra strain on the band and she snapped?” He turned to Barbara, who was watching wide-eyed. “Who saddled this nag for you?”

“Why—it was the colored boy, the one they call High-pockets. He saddled Siwash….”

“Nobody else there?”

“Everybody was there,” Barbara went on. “You see, when I called up this morning to say I was coming down and take Siwash out, Mrs. Thwaite wasn’t very eager to have me. But she couldn’t refuse, because legally the horse is mine. When I got there Latigo tried to talk me out of it. But I said I’d ridden lots of horses on farms back home….”

“Why were you so determined to break your neck, young woman?” Miss Withers wanted to know.

The girl stared at her wonderingly. “Why—you gave me the idea! You told me when you left the apartment yesterday that I’d inherited a horse and that I ought to go down to the stables. So I took the hint!”

“That’s true,” Miss Withers admitted. “But I didn’t mean …”

“Well, I thought you did. Anyway, I had an argument with Latigo and Mrs. Thwaite settled it by saying that if I wanted to ride Siwash I could go ahead. She advised me to tie up the snaffle rein and just ride on the curb—the hard bit, you know. And her husband said to keep him to a trot….”

“Go on,” Piper told her. “Did she make any adjustments of the saddle or anything like that?”

Barbara shook her head. “No, but Latigo let out the stirrups for me. Then he rushed away somewhere and Mrs. Thwaite showed me the way to the park gate….”

“I went to telephone you,” Latigo said to the inspector. “Then I was afraid something might happen all the same so I went back to the stable and saddled old Salt to try and trail Miss Foley….”

“Then everybody had a hand in getting you started on the ride, didn’t they?” Piper asked the girl.

Barbara nodded, but Miss Withers cut in with “What difference if they did? This cinch or whatever it is could have been scraped and frayed at any convenient time yesterday or last night—”

“Yeah,” interrupted Piper. “Provided the person who did it was a clairvoyant and knew beforehand that this girl was going to ride today.”

He moved over to the squad car and opened the door. “Come on, Miss Foley, we’ll run you home. You’ve had a bad shaking up.”

But Barbara hesitated. Eddie Fry sprang into the breach. “If I’m not under arrest,” he said, “I’d like to drive Babs home. My old bus is right up on the roadway.”

The girl’s eyes wavered from his eager glance to where Latigo Wells was methodically gathering up the horses’ reins preparatory to leading them both back to the stable.

Her red mouth tightened faintly. “Thanks, but I’m not going home just now,” she said. She went over and took Siwash’s reins from the ex-cowboy. “I’ll walk back with you,” she said.

“Returning with her horse or on it, like the Spartan youths,” Miss Withers told the inspector. They watched the big red thoroughbred as he ambled quietly along in step with the little gray mare.

The inspector frowned. “Casey, you might trail along behind and see that no more accidents happen to Miss Foley on the way home.” He looked toward Eddie Fry. “As for you …”

Miss Withers whispered quickly in his ear.

“Huh? Okay….” The inspector climbed into the squad car. “Home, James,” he grunted. They moved noisily away in the direction of the parkway.

Miss Hildegarde Withers found herself alone with a very nervous young man in a loud suit. “I just prevented your arrest, young man,” she announced, stretching the truth a little. “You owe me some information.”

“I told you …” he began.

“Wait,” she said. “It’s about that gun in your pocket, for which you have such a nice legal permit. It’s an air pistol, isn’t it?”

Eddie looked blank. Then he took the gun out of his upper vest pocket and showed it to her. “Better protection than any air gun,” he explained. “I need an automatic, because sometimes I bring home a big wad of money from the race track.”

“You’re sure it isn’t an air pistol?” insisted the dubious schoolteacher.

He shot out the clip and showed her the thick, snub-nosed cartridges. She nodded. “Very well, I’ll trust you to drive me home. On the way you can tell me what, if anything, you found out about the matter of those race-track wagers I asked you to look up.”

It was little enough, as it turned out. Eddie Fry seemed sorry. “I thought I was going to wash up this case like nothing,” he began. “But your idea was a fluke, lady. I called up a pal of mine who works for Kyte, the big bookmaker. Finally he got the boss to come to the phone. But it was a false alarm….”

“What? You mean Gregg didn’t phone him?”

“He phoned him all right,” said Eddie. “Old man Gregg called Kyte a couple of weeks ago and sort of finagled around trying to find out the best odds he could get for a big wad of dough on the nose of a nag called Wallaby that’s running next Saturday at Beaulah. Only he didn’t place the bet with Kyte or anybody else because, if he had, the odds on that horse would have dropped and as it is they’re getting longer every day. A dollar bet on him will bring you thirty if he wins.”

Miss Withers nodded brightly. “And if he doesn’t win?”

“You’ll get nothing, of course,” the young man told her wearily. “Except the sleigh-ride.”

“That,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers, “is the trouble with betting on the races.”

They rode on for a few moments in silence, Eddie Fry bent glumly over the wheel of his little roadster. His foot was flat against the floor boards as they sped out of the park and southward….

“No hurry,” Miss Withers finally ventured to remark.

“There sure is,” Eddie retorted. “I don’t mind dropping you off, but then I’m going to get down to see Babs and have a good talk with her. That kid has got a lot of screwy ideas in her head.”

“I wouldn’t go to see her right away,” the schoolteacher suggested gently. “Let her cool off a little. Besides, I think it’s likely that she’ll have a caller at her home.”

“Huh?”

“I’m not a gambling man,” Miss Withers said, “but it seems a sure thing to me that Latigo Wells will take her home after they leave the horses at the stable. Just to make sure she’s all right, of course.”

“Latigo Wells!” said Eddie, managing to make the name sound like profanity. “His hair is full of hayseeds.”

“Hayseeds?” The word reminded Miss Withers of something. She saw a drugstore on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and hastily ordered Eddie to pull up to the curb.

“I won’t be a moment,” she promised. She rushed inside and sought a telephone booth. Luckily she had change in her purse, and without more than the usual delay she heard the clicking of receivers on a party line in upstate New York.

A distant operator rang four short rings, again and again. Finally a woman’s cheery voice chirped “Hello!” and the operator enunciated a crisp “Here’s your party!”

“Hello, hello,” cried Miss Withers. “Is this the Gregg home—is that you, Mrs. Thomas?”

It was nobody else. “This is very important,” said the schoolteacher. “When did your husband leave for New York?”

“What? You mean Abe?” Mrs. Thomas gave a muffled laugh. “Why, Abe didn’t leave for no place, he’s right here!”

So he was, for he took the telephone. “When did you get back from the city?” Miss Withers kept on hopefully.

“Me? Say, I haven’t been anywhere. Not since I drove back with you folks yesterday.” The gloomy little man seemed oddly annoyed by the suggestion.

“By the way”—Miss Withers tried a new tack—“how is the sick man?”

“Mr. Gregg is lots better,” Abe Thomas announced.

“So much better that he left the house this morning?” prompted Miss Withers. She waited breathlessly.

“Say, what’s—I beg your pardon. Mr. Gregg is up and around, but the nurse won’t let him out of the house.”

“Could you call him to the phone, then?”

She learned that Mr. Gregg could not descend the stairs to the telephone, in spite of his miraculous recovery. Her shot in the dark had scored a clean miss. “Then will you please ask Mr. Don Gregg to come to the telephone?” she said.

This time Thomas hesitated for a moment. “Mr. Don Gregg,” he said distinctly, “is not here.”

“Where is he then?”

Thomas didn’t know. He insisted that he had seen neither hide nor hair of his young master these many moons. “His father is mighty anxious to see him too,” Thomas added.

“Thank you so much,” Miss Withers told him. She put down the receiver and said, “… for nothing!”

Weary and disappointed she came out of the phone booth. “At least I have Eddie,” she reminded herself. “And he knows more than anybody has been able to get out of him yet.”

But it was distinctly not her lucky day, for when she came out of the drugstore she found that Eddie Fry and his little roadster were unaccountably missing.

She came upon the inspector at his desk brooding over a meager assortment of clues. There was the tobacco pipe with the discolored silver band, a slightly flattened pellet of lead which had cut a girl’s throat, and a garden hoe with a horseshoe oddly fitted to its blade. These were all.

“Having fun, Oscar?” she greeted him. “‘And all my toys about me lay, to keep me happy through the day,’” she quoted. “How are you doing?”

He shook his head. “No prints on any of this stuff, of course. Water kills ’em; so does mud. Hildegarde, we haven’t got anything yet.”

“Haven’t we!” She told him about the bets which Gregg had not made on the forthcoming race at Beaulah Park. “The old man was all set to put a small fortune on a certain horse,” she explained. “Something or someone made him change his mind.”

“And you figure
that
someone is our murderer?” Piper shook his head wearily. “I can’t go out and arrest everybody who didn’t bet his shirt on the big race, Hildegarde.”

“I know you can’t,” she said. “Anyway, you’d do better to arrest all the people in this investigation who have false teeth!”

“What?” The inspector grinned. “Still harping on what they told you about the pipe, eh? Supposing your hunch is correct—I can’t go out arresting people wholesale and making them show their teeth. There was a time when you could spot a set of phony teeth a block away, but not any more. They’re making them better. And what a story for the feature sections—” Piper snorted. “‘POLICE SEEK KILLER WITH TEETH AS FALSE AS HIS HEART’ … no, Hildegarde….”

“There ought to be a way of finding out without arresting the suspects and tugging at their teeth,” the schoolteacher came back. “But meanwhile can’t we look over our list of persons involved and figure out who might fit the description of the man who smoked that pipe I found under the body?”

Piper cocked his head on one side. “Yeah? Well, everything was general except the part about the teeth. He might be middle-aged, probably a man with money, world traveler, very nervous … luxurious tastes …”

“It could fit the old man, Mr. Gregg,” Miss Withers suggested. “Though I didn’t find any signs of tobacco, not even a pipe cleaner, in his desk.”

“It could fit that Abe Thomas,” Piper told her. “At least, he’s the right age. You know, I don’t like that gloomy little guy. He’s hiding something—and remember, he said he drove into town in the morning and we know he left the farm before sunset. There’s a break he made.”

Miss Withers nodded absently. “Thomas is lying, certainly. But so are a lot of others in this case. No, we can’t solve it by spotting lies….”

“Only I can’t figure out how Thomas had a
motive
to kill the Feverel dame,” Piper continued soberly. “Maybe it was loyalty to the family, only I can’t quite swallow that. Old man Gregg had a motive and so did the boy who was in alimony jail. Only the old man could hardly kill her and have an attack of whatever it was all at the same time. And the boy—we’ve checked his alibi. He really was in the Turkish bath that night—he was sleeping soundly in one of the cots at the time the girl was killed.”