Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla

by Stuart Palmer

  “It doesn’t matter,” Dulcie told him.

  “It does! It was crazy of me, I know. But I just couldn’t do anything else but let you go on thinking what you thought. And I figured you’d go right back to New York and forget me, as I want to be forgotten.”

  “I had the money,” Dulcie told him. “I put it in the bank every week when you sent it. That’s why I came down.”

  He didn’t want to take it. “Maybe—maybe it isn’t too late!” said the Yonkers Matador, brightening. “Honey, I should have known that you wouldn’t give a damn if I’d flopped in the bull ring. You wouldn’t care what sort of a job I had.”

  “Yes, you should have known that,” Dulcie said evenly. She approached his outstretched arms.

  “I still love you, kid,” he said.

  “Hildegarde ought to be here, with her yen for happy endings,” the inspector said to himself. But then his mouth dropped open with wonder, for Dulcie Prothero was not enclosed within the arms of the Yonkers Matador.

  “You still love me,” she told him. “When I started down here that would have been the sweetest thing in the world to hear. Now it sounds like the title of a cheap song.”

  She placed a wad of money in the outstretched hand of Robert Schultz. Then she stepped around him to kneel beside the fallen gladiator, lifting his head to her lap.

  “If you’ve hurt him …” she said. “Oh, go away, go away!”

  As amazed and bewildered as if a canary had spat in his face, the Yonkers Matador went slowly along the hall, too dazed to notice that ahead of him a grizzled Irishman was hurrying down the stairs.

  The inspector knocked softly on the door of 307 and then grasped the knob and entered. Miss Hildegarde Withers, to his great surprise, was busily turning the key in the connecting door of the bedroom. She was alone in the big sitting room, alone with the disarranged furniture and the rows of curios.

  Oscar Piper stared at his old friend. He had never claimed to be the seventh son of a seventh son and would have been the first to disclaim any clairvoyant ability. But all the same, as sure as her name was Hildegarde Martha Withers, this lady was up to something.

  She barely listened to his questions, cut short his account of the battle of the century and its reverse-action finish. “Listen, Oscar, do you hear anything?”

  He didn’t. “Look here, Hildegarde, I don’t see why you send me on such crazy errands—breaking into vacant rooms upstairs and all the rest of it. I try to play ball with you when I can, but this case is in a worse muddle than before. And if you expect me to wait here in hopes that your mysterious murderer will be fool enough to fall into a trap …”

  She shook her head.

  “Besides, there’s a hall door to the bedroom. Anybody striking at Adele would go in that way.”

  “The door is locked, and I have that key too,” Miss Withers said.

  He stared wonderingly. “Hildegarde, I’m tired of being in the dark. If you’re going to play riddles I’m going to bed. I’ve had—”

  “Shhh, Oscar. Do you hear anything now?”

  Obediently he listened again. “No, and I don’t …” Then it came, the muffled spat of a pistol in the bedroom.

  “I heard that!” he said dryly and plunged toward the connecting door. But quick as he was, Miss Withers was quicker. She barred the way, arms outstretched.

  “You’re not going in there,” she told him. “Not now.”

  “Are you completely batty?” He leaned forward, staring with blank amazement in his eyes. “Somebody’s been and killed Adele Mabie!”

  “What if they have, Oscar?” she said simply.

  XVI

  Tilted Scales

  THE TELEPHONE BEGAN to ring—short, angry, insistent signals.

  “Will you answer it, Oscar?” Miss Withers pleaded.

  “Why?”

  “Oh, do hurry and answer it! It must be the desk downstairs. Somebody’s reported the shot. Tell them it was a mistake, that a gun was being cleaned and went off by accident.”

  “I’ll do nothing of the kind.” It was the closest that the two old friends had come to open warfare since their meeting in the mazes of the aquarium mystery.

  “I know what I’m doing,” she said. There was something new and desperate in her voice. “Answer it, Oscar. We can’t have the police coming in until you can think up a story to protect us both.”

  He shook his head, but under the insistent stare of those sad blue eyes he obeyed. Lifting the receiver, he spoke authoritatively to the night clerk. Then he turned. “Hildegarde, who’s in that room?”

  Miss Withers barely moved her lips. “Adele Mabie.”

  “Dead?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “But why?”

  “You must listen to the whole story,” she told him. “Sit down, there’s no need to hurry now.”

  “The hell there isn’t …” he started to say. But gradually he lowered himself into a chair and listened.

  “It all goes back to two years ago,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers, “when a pretty young woman sold out her chain of beauty parlors for a million dollars and started on a trip around the world to have some fun for a change.”

  “Yes, I know all that!”

  “But you didn’t know that, as passengers on the Empress tours have the privilege of doing, Adele Mabie left the ship at a Pacific port and crossed Mexico to rejoin it later in the Caribbean—by way of Mexico City?”

  “Guessing, Hildegarde?”

  She shook her head. “The proof was in that packet of photos the dear old Ippwings showed us in the lobby. Remember the one showing them sliding down a roller coaster labeled ‘Luna Park’ ?”

  “I guess so, but—”

  “You didn’t connect it with the picture you took out of Adele’s luggage on the train, which you told me proved that she’d taken a trip to Coney Island? You didn’t realize that Adele had missed that picture, which was why she was so anxious Dulcie shouldn’t go to Xochimilco? She didn’t want word to get back to us—she didn’t want us to realize that she had been in Mexico City!”

  “Good grief! Then—”

  “Wait, Oscar. Adele Mabie was a visitor to Mexico City, and she met a man. Somewhat unconventionally, no doubt—she regretted it later, which was why she cut his face out of the picture.”

  “All right, suppose she did meet a man?”

  “Suppose—suppose that the man was Michael Fitz? Who seems to have spent a good deal of his time picking up pretty tourists.”

  He supposed for a moment. “All right, but in the few days that she could have stayed in Mexico City while her ship went through the canal there wouldn’t be time for much—”

  “I wonder, Oscar. Remember, she was on a trip to forget work, to have fun. And tropical climates—or so I’ve been told—are very stimulating to romance. Equally stimulating must have been the money which was burning a hole in Adele’s pocketbook, as far as Mr. Fitz was concerned. He was just the type to combine business with pleasure.”

  “You think he nicked her then?”

  “Heart and pocketbook, Oscar. And Adele Mabie couldn’t forgive that, Oscar. Remember that she prided herself on being smarter than men in business. She looked upon herself as a mastermind of finance, on account of her success with the beauty parlors. Her pride was wounded, Oscar. The wound rankled while she went on around the world, it rankled after she married a nice stupid politician to whom she could always feel superior.

  “She seemed happy, yes. But a man had gotten the best of her. A man was laughing at her. And then she found out that her new husband was contemplating a political junket to Mexico.”

  Piper nodded. “Mabie told me he hoped to travel with a bunch of the boys, but that his wife sort of horned in. But you aren’t trying to lead up to saying that Adele Mabie came all the way down here just to get revenge on Fitz?”

  “Hell hath no fury, Oscar. Adele came for a reason. It was an accident that she hired as a maid an inexperienced girl anxious to g
et to Mexico and find her missing sweetheart. It was another accident that Dulcie, when discharged in Laredo, left behind her a bottle of cheap perfume because it was worthless.

  “But, Oscar, it wasn’t an accident that Adele Mabie had with her a quantity of prussic acid, a little gift she was taking to someone. When time came to cross the border she was carrying that poison concealed in the perfume bottle, the safest hiding place she could devise. It would have been perfect if poor Manuel Robles had not picked it up, no doubt making some joke about bringing perfumes into a country where tourists always come to buy it. He sniffed of the bottle before she could interfere—and he died!”

  “But she collapsed too!” he protested.

  “Fainted, Oscar. From fear that her secret was out, by an unlucky accident. She knew she was in danger of arrest. And then fate played into her hands. The Mexican doctor was unfamiliar with the poison, whose characteristic odor was partly concealed by the smell of the perfume. And you leaped to the conclusion that some veiled enemy had struck at her—and missed.”

  Piper said, “Yes, because of the poisoned tea that somebody smashed with a bullet before I could save it to analyze!”

  “Naturally. But the tea was never poisoned, and Adele smashed the glass herself. She only wanted to lead your mind—and her husband’s—to the idea that she was in danger. The bullet was to make it look more real—she took it from one of her own cartridges, threw away the gun. She knew you would search her baggage.”

  “She had a gun?”

  Miss Withers nodded. “She told me so. But wait. Things developed to help her cloud the issue when it turned out that the discharged ‘maid’—with a real grievance—was on the train. There was a suspect made to order, and a further red herring was drawn across the train when you spied on the alderman and his fumbling gesture of paying Dulcie secretly the week’s salary that was due her!”

  Miss Withers shrugged wearily. “It worked, Oscar! You were bamboozled by the theory she had inspired in your mind. The Mexican authorities were slow, or seemed to be, and so the party continued to Mexico City.”

  “Where I went to jail because somebody had pinched my papers!” he put in. “But was it Adele who did it?”

  The schoolteacher smiled. “Why should Adele care if you got the girl arrested or not? I’m afraid it was young Julio Mendez, a gallant young man who had fallen for Dulcie and saw a way to keep her from being arrested on your say-so until he could dig up something to prove her innocence.”

  “Then he was just another amateur detective? And that was why he was prowling around all the time! That’s why he popped up to shoot the snake?”

  Miss Withers nodded judicially. “The snake was to have been still more tangible proof of the plot against Adele’s life. It was to cinch the thing. She bought it knowing exactly what it was, produced it where it would get the most display value. There was no risk for her—if Julio hadn’t shot it someone else would.”

  The inspector objected. “You’re doing it all backwards. What about the deal Hansen and Lighton were in on with Fitz?”

  “Coincidence, Oscar. But not so great a coincidence as you think. It was just that Michael Fitz was well known as the kind of a man to call upon for such sharp practice as this corner in lighting plants demanded. He had been skating on thin ice down here for years.

  “But when he received the telegraphed money from Lighton and Hansen—and the alderman, who was a silent partner—he took the money to a cockfight, probably seeking to build up the fund. Instead, he lost. And he was so furious at losing that he brought home the defeated rooster, killed it if it was not already dead, and even planned to eat it!”

  Piper made a wry face, as if he tasted something unpleasant. “A nice guy, huh?”

  “Murder is murder, Oscar. Fitz paid heavily for his sins. But first he picked up Dulcie Prothero at the consulate. The girl suspected his intentions, being no fool. But she was in desperate need of help that she thought he could give her. She knew he would have no sympathy if she were searching for a sweetheart, so she made up the story about the brother and the emeralds. And he swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.”

  “Confidence men always fall for somebody else’s game,” said Piper. “I never knew it to fail.”

  Miss Withers nodded and went on swiftly. “He believed her story so implicitly that he looked upon Dulcie’s ‘emerald’ as a heaven-sent answer to his financial troubles. He stole it, tried to have it turned into cash with which to quiet the demands of his partners—”

  “Only it was glass—a good joke on him.”

  Miss Withers sniffed. “Life was playing its last grim, practical joke on Michael Fitz. As he sat in the front row at the bullfight, wondering why the girl he had brought had abandoned him without a word to chase after somebody in the bull ring, someone moved stealthily up behind him.”

  “Adele Mabie? But, Hildegarde, she was with us when Fitz died!”

  “Yes? Listen, Oscar. What autopsy surgeon can tell the difference five minutes would make in a corpse? Adele knew that her husband, being a soft and kindly person unused to cruelty, would be too squeamish to watch the spectacle. She appeared early at the bullfight, keeping in the background. But she admitted seeing Dulcie jump over the rail—an event which took place some time before Adele ostensibly arrived. She waited until there was great excitement in the ring—no doubt the exact moment when young Nicanor was tossed by the bull—and struck!”

  “Now, Hildegarde, do you expect me to believe that?”

  “She did, anyway. Under cover of the umbrella, which would effectively hide the actual deed from those behind them.”

  “You mean to say that shrimp of a woman stuck a dart five inches into a man’s back through his clothing when I couldn’t stick it half that far into a dead pig?”

  “Yes, Oscar. I’ll come to that in a moment. She left the dart sticking into the back of her victim, who slumped forward against the rail. But she didn’t want him discovered until she was well away, so she calmly placed her rented umbrella over the shoulders of Fitz, just as if he were holding it, and hurried away!”

  “She had that much nerve?”

  “Yes, Oscar, and more. Women are superior to men in many things, and certainly at murder. How about Mrs. Wharton, and Cordelia Botkin, and Mrs. Vermilya and her pepper pot—and dozens more? Adele Mabie hoped that she had convinced everyone of her being the intended victim of these crimes, and that we would jump to the conclusion that Fitz was just one more innocent bystander who had caught something aimed at her!”

  “I still want to know,” Piper said doggedly, “how she managed to kill a man with a dart!”

  “She didn’t, Oscar!”

  “But you just said—”

  “Not with the dart. The word banderilla means ‘little flag’ in Spanish. It isn’t to kill with. It is only a frilly decoration. Just some way of insulting the bull, really, in the lovely Latin manner. In the ring, the bull is killed with a long thin blade, and Adele used the same method.”

  Suddenly Piper pointed to the back of a chair across the room. “The blade that made that hole?”

  “Yes, Oscar.”

  “But was the woman a magician? Where could she hide a weapon like that?”

  “A question I’ve been asking myself for some time. You’ll remember, Oscar, that when Adele came to the bullfight she carried with her a shopping bag filled with the day’s purchases?”

  “Remember? Say, I lugged it home for her. But there wasn’t any sword in that.”

  “Wait. As we left the bull ring she purchased a pair of banderillas. A clever dodge, to make us sure never to suspect that she had also purchased a pair on her way in!”

  “But you just said Fitz wasn’t killed with a dart!”

  “Listen. She carried another weapon with her that day, a weapon that fooled me and would fool anybody. The clue came to me when I was watching a cobbler make sandals. He used one tool to make the hole, another to take the waxed thread through.”

&nb
sp; “You mean the dart went in so easily because it followed the track of a previous wound?”

  “Right, Oscar. A blade, swiftly withdrawn and leaving only a few drops of blood—and then came the banderilla to fool everybody, obliterating the previous track.”

  “That is one on me,” Piper said. “I suspected Julio.”

  “And I, Oscar! Especially after I got the idea of the blade that might have been concealed in an umbrella or walking stick. I might never have thought of the answer had not Adele made one of her few mistakes. She hid the weapon—then the moment I noticed it was missing from this room, she returned it—for she dared not draw attention to it.”

  “Well, what was it?” Piper demanded. “Do you intend to keep me dangling?”

  “Dangle no longer,” said Hildegarde Withers. “This was the weapon that Adele carried in her shopping bag on Sunday. It was here on the table in plain view when we searched the place this evening. See?” And she handed him the heavy riding whip of alligator leather.

  He took hold of the shaft, and Miss Withers suddenly pulled in the other direction with a sidewise twist. And then the inspector found himself holding only a limp leather sheath ending in the wristloop of the crop. The schoolteacher gripped a long triangular sliver of steel which had run the full length of the whip from handle to tip, a good fourteen inches!

  “Why,” he cried, “that would go in like a hot knife into butter!” He tried the blade gingerly against his thumb, felt the needle point.

  “Yes, Oscar. It was meant to go into me tonight in the dark, because Adele was afraid that I would again ask Dulcie a certain question—the answer to which, she knew, would damn her. It would make Dulcie a certain witness against her in court, hang her actually.”

  “Yeah? What question?”

  “Simply this. Where had Dulcie thrown the perfume bottle she admitted discarding? The answer, of course, was that she had simply left it behind when Mrs. Mabie fired her at Laredo.”