“ANYWAYS,” SAID THE DEPUTY warden, “he’s flew the coop.”
Inspector Oscar Piper drew a deep breath. “Did you send out a general alarm—notify all radio cars, ferryboats, railroad stations …?”
The deputy warden shook his head sadly. “He got out of here about midnight, and by the time we discovered that the writ wasn’t kosher he’d had plenty of time to get across the river into New Jersey. And there’s no extradition for the offense of contempt of court. This is just a dis’plinary jail, not a penal institution,” he went on to explain. “It’s almost impossible to get out-of-the-state police to co-operate with us just to pick up a missing prisoner. Besides, we figured he might come back after he’d attended to some private business or other….”
“How I should hate to remain sitting upon a red-hot stove until young Mr. Gregg wanders back to alimony jail,” Miss Withers observed.
“Well,” decided the inspector suddenly, “I’ll authorize the general alarm for Gregg. There’s extradition to cover the crime we want him for!”
“For which we want him,” corrected Miss Withers absently. “But Oscar, even if Don Gregg is Suspect Number One, I wish you’d make haste slowly. I have a feeling that he isn’t far away, but if you make a loud noise you’ll send him scooting.”
“He’s got to be found, all the same,” insisted Oscar Piper.
Miss Withers told him that she would rather find the deputy sheriff who had appeared out of nowhere and freed the prisoner so handily. Piper seized upon the idea.
“Say, that’s right! Who was he?”
The deputy warden didn’t know. Milton, the hapless keeper who now awaited suspension or worse, was hardly more helpful. By dint of much questioning the inspector managed to build up a figure slightly less shadowy than nobody. It seemed that the stranger had been of medium height, had worn a hat and dark overcoat of blue or black, and was chewing gum. “That’s all I remember,” he insisted. “I wasn’t feeling so well last night.”
“Or were you feeling too well?” Miss Withers cut in. She remember her first impression—that the keeper and his charges had all appeared slightly hangoverish when she came in.
“Well,” said Milton slowly, “we’re not as strict here as most jails, and that’s a fact. But it’s my idea that Gregg knew he was going to be sprung, and he got the other boys to sort of cut up a bit and maybe get me rattled. They make a drink out of potater peelings and stuff, and they must have slipped some of it into the ginger ale I was drinking….”
“Good thing you kept your eyes open,” Piper said. “It was Saturday night in the jail-house and all of the boys were there raising merry hell, but still old eagle-eye here noticed that the deputy sheriff wore a hat and a coat. Wonderful!”
Milton frowned, scratched his head. “He looked like a deputy sheriff and he talked like a deputy sheriff—and he flashed a badge.”
“We could pick him out of a million with that description,” the inspector pointed out warmly. “Probably the badge was a tin shield with ‘Chicken Inspector’ on it. So all we have to do is to look for a medium-sized guy in an overcoat …”
“Who chews gum,” Miss Withers concluded. “I’m surprised at that. I rather thought he’d have smoked a pipe.” She gave Milton an innocent glance.
“A pipe? Say, that reminds me—he did smoke a pipe. Threw away the gum while he was waiting for me to bring down the prisoner and lit a terrible-smelling old hod.”
“Fancy that!” Miss Withers said softly and followed the inspector through the dismal portals and out into the street again. She put her hand upon his arm as he was about to dash off in the direction of the nearest telephone booth.
“Before you have young Gregg arrested for the murder of his ex-wife, don’t you think it would be a good idea to find out if it was murder?”
“Huh?” That brought the inspector up short. “Good Lord, Hildegarde, you yourself tipped us off….”
“I was only guessing, and I’m not the medical examiner,” she reminded him. “How about getting a report from Dr. Bloom?”
The inspector spent a busy five minutes at the telephone. “The case is still pretty much at a standstill,” he reported as he emerged from the booth. “No word from Bloom yet—we might as well drop in on him on our way uptown.”
“After all, there’s nothing like a social cup of tea at the morgue, is there?” Miss Withers agreed. They hurried to that grim building above the East River where life and death overlap.
There was a short wait and then Charles Bloom, veteran medical examiner for the Borough of Manhattan, came out of the back room and closed the door carefully behind him. Miss Withers wrinkled her nose at the faint odor of formaldehyde and wished she were elsewhere.
“Nice of you both to drop in,” said Dr. Bloom, blowing his nose heartily upon a square of fine Irish linen which showed both a monogram and a ragged tear. “Just finished—want to have a look?”
Piper shook his head. “Well?”
Dr. Bloom nodded. “It was murder, right enough.” He rolled something thoughtfully in the palm of his hand. “One of the neatest jobs I’ve seen for some time. I’m writing down the cause of death as internal hemorrhage caused by rupture of the main throat artery with—with this!”
He showed them what was in his palm—a tiny pellet of lead slightly flattened.
“What? Killed with a BB?” gasped Piper.
The doctor nodded. “Just an old-fashioned, ordinary BB shot, made to be fired from a kid’s air rifle.”
“But the wound—there wasn’t a wound on her!” Miss Withers cut in incredulously.
“I didn’t say there wasn’t a wound, I said none was apparent,” Dr. Bloom explained. “With a missile so small there’s often no exterior bleeding, and the wound was no larger than a pin prick. But that’s how the job was done, and death was almost immediate. Exact time of death—well, it must have been about three quarters of an hour before I first examined the body, say approximately quarter of six this morning.”
Miss Withers was dubiously shaking her head. “It doesn’t ring true,” she insisted. “How could the murderer be sure he’d hit a vital spot with a toy weapon like that?”
Bloom was moved to laughter, stroking his wispy beard. “Vital spot? Dear lady, it’s worse than that. I’ll guarantee that there is no other spot on the body where Violet Feverel could have been shot with a BB and killed. Or even badly injured, except in the eye. No ma’am, that BB had to strike her throat just as it did in order to harm her. The killer played a long outside chance….”
“And had hell’s own luck behind him,” Piper observed.
Miss Withers remembered something else. “Doctor, did you happen to notice that the dead girl had something gripped in her hand?”
Bloom nodded. “You have sharp eyes! Yes, there were a few reddish hairs, horse hairs I’d say offhand. Looks like she felt herself falling and grabbed at the horse’s mane to stick on.”
“That would mean that the shot was fired while she was mounted,” Miss Withers said thoughtfully. “Which makes the marksmanship all the more remarkable, doesn’t it? All the same …” She subsided.
The schoolteacher was somewhat annoyed at the inspector’s jubilance as they came out of the morgue. “I see it all now,” he somewhat optimistically announced. “Violet Feverel was in the habit of taking out her horse at that hour. Gregg knew it. And since all riders in the park take the same general route along the bridle path, he knew where to lie in wait for her. Somewhere he got hold of an air gun and as she rode up toward the viaduct he rose out of the bushes which cover the slope and—bingo! Then Gregg does a quiet sneak—”
“You’re referring to young Don Gregg, I presume?”
“Who else? Naturally he had a grudge against the woman who had kept him in alimony jail for months. His first thought on getting out was to pop her off. He shot from the bushes and was out of sight before she hit the ground….”
Miss Withers shook her head. “No, Oscar. The killer came down and stood beside the dying woman.”
“Huh?” Piper was incredulous. “Then—there were footprints?”
She shook her head. “By the time I got there the path surrounding the dead girl was pretty well trampled by the flat feet of your radio officers.”
“Then how in the dickens …”
But she didn’t want to tell him, not yet. The briar pipe which reposed in her handbag was her ace in the hole, to be displayed at the proper time and place.
“Guesswork, Oscar,” she said. “Where are you off to?”
“I’m going to take this taxicab to the nearest eastside subway station,” explained the inspector wearily. “Then I am going to take a subway train down to headquarters. I am going to light a cigar, put my feet on the desk, and then send out a drag-net for Mr. Don Gregg that will bring him in if he’s halfway to China!” He grinned. “Is that okay with you?”
“Godspeed,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers. But she climbed swiftly into their waiting taxi. “You won’t mind walking to the subway, Oscar?” she called out through the top of the door as she rolled away. “You see, I have an appointment with the only witness to this murder.”
Somehow the excessive quiet of Sunday afternoon in Manhattan did not extend to the dark and aromatic confines of Thwaite’s Academy of Horsemanship. In their box stalls the boarded horses moved restlessly, neglecting the hay which hung over the sides of their deep mangers. Across the alley the hacks fretted against the narrow sides of their stalls, pawing at the worn floor boards beneath their bedding. One of them, a sympathetic little gray mare known to her child riders as “Salt” because her disposition was that of the salt of the earth, raised her wise old head and whinnied shrilly.
Even Satan, the black tom whose manner usually indicated that he considered this stable his, from the tiniest mouse to the largest horse, had withdrawn after the unfathomable manner of his kind to the farthest corner of the harness room where he crouched beneath a saddle and waited.
Came the voice of Maude Thwaite: “Bring Siwash out, Highpockets!”
The colored boy quavered uncertainly: “I dunno, Mis’ Thwaite….”
“Bring him out, I say!”
“Now, Maude …” began the little veterinary surgeon placatingly.
“Hurry up!” commanded the woman, her voice harsh as broken glass. And Highpockets led the big red horse out of his box stall.
“Put that twist on his nose!” snapped Mrs. Thwaite. Highpockets protested again. “I can’t do that, Mis’ Thwaite. This Siwash horse and me—we’re pretty good pals….”
“Don’t be a fool! Do as I say!”
Shaking his head, Highpockets slipped a curious instrument over Siwash’s nose. It consisted of a short loop of rope run through a hole in the end of a stick of wood.
Still Mrs. Thwaite was not satisfied. “Around his upper lip, you fool. And twist it so he can’t break away!”
Shaking his head again the colored boy tightened the twist. Siwash bobbed his head and his ears swung back against his neck….
“Latigo, get the strap!” commanded Mrs. Thwaite.
But Latigo Wells shook his head. “I ain’t paid to do that,” he objected. “Besides, I—I got work to do in the front office.” He stalked forward down the runway. As he reached the hall which led to the office he was almost trotting and beads of sweat stood out on his face.
Once in the office he threw himself down in the swivel chair. From the top of the desk he took his guitar and struck a very sour chord.
“Damn that old heifer to hell!” he prayed fervently. “For pure unadulterated meanness …”
He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. A succession of sad and weary chords sounded in the lonely room, and then he began—
“Good-bye, old Paint, I’m a-leaving Cheyenne….
Good-bye, old Paint, I’m a-leaving Cheyenne….
I’m leaving Cheyenne and I’m off for Montan’ …
Good-bye, old Paint …”
In spite of the singing Latigo could hear the voice of his employer shouting, “Go on, do as I tell you!”
But Highpockets didn’t want to wield the strap. “You don’t understand,” he was half sobbing. “This big sorrel horse, he’s just like a brother to me….”
“Hold him then!” said Maude Thwaite through clenched teeth. “I’ve got to be the only man in this place, as usual!” And she thrust the rope twist back into the hands of the colored boy. Then she took up the strap which he had thrown aside.
Siwash, eyes staring, nostrils twisted away from his big front teeth, danced sideways. But the cruel rope around his lip tightened….
Sparks flew from the cement floor as he pawed with his front feet. “Kick, will you?” said Maude Thwaite. “I’ll teach you to kick, you red bastard!” Which, to a horse whose ancestry could be traced back to one of the first Arab mares imported into England, was a singularly ill-fitting appellation.
She took up the length of heavy strap and with front teeth biting into her upper lip until she could almost taste her own blood, Maude Thwaite swung it across the rump of the red horse.
Siwash reared against the twist and vented—from injured pride rather than from the pain—a shrill and almost human scream.
“Maude, don’t you really think …” began her husband, backing against the farther wall.
In the front office Latigo Wells gritted his teeth and then swung more loudly than ever into the later verses of the ancient ballad of the range…
“I’m leaving Cheyenne, I’m off for Montan’….
Good mornin’ young ladies, my hosses won’t stand …
Good-bye, old Paint—”
He broke off suddenly, glad of any interruption, and went to the front door. Back at the rear of the stable Maude Thwaite swung the strap again, with all her strength.
Siwash screamed and tried to lash out with his hind legs. Again the woman promised that she would teach him to kick. “Maybe with half the hide burned off your back you’ll learn some manners,” she gasped. Again she raised the strap … and Siwash winced in anticipation, half crouching on his hind legs.
But the brawny arm of Maude Thwaite stopped short in midair. “Hit him again,” promised a cultured if not too calm voice just behind her, “and I—I’ll stick this pitchfork into you!”
Mrs. Thwaite whirled to stare into the face of an embattled spinster whose blue eyes now flamed green and chill. In one hand Miss Hildegarde Withers held aloft a pitchfork as if it were a javelin, the sharp tines gleaming wickedly.
“I mean it,” she finished. Latigo Wells, who lurked behind her still clutching his guitar, knew that Miss Withers spoke the truth. So did Thwaite, who backed still farther into the shadows.
For a long, long moment the two women stared at each other. Maude Thwaite spoke first. “At your time of life I’d think you’d learned to mind your own business,” she said, her voice a little dry, a little throaty. Her eyes flickered doubtfully.
“I happen to be a member in good standing of the S.P.C.A.,” said Hildegarde Withers. “Apart from that anything that involves a poor dumb animal is my business—so put down that strap!”
Maude Thwaite put it down.
Instantly Highpockets loosened the twist and Siwash burst past him and into his empty stall. His heels kicked twice against the side wall, sounding hollow as a drum.
Mrs. Thwaite smiled with a certain amount of difficulty. “I can understand how this looks to you,” she said, her voice spreading with honey. “But there never was a horse who didn’t need a sound beating once in a while. And Siwash just tried to kick and bite me at the same time when I was saddling him.”
“Since his owner is dead,” Miss Withers said evenly, still clinging to the pitchfork, “I don’t see why you found it necessary to saddle him.”
Mrs. Thwaite’s smile was even more strained, but it still showed. “I was going to have some pictures taken mounted on Siwash,” she explained. “For our advertising booklet. My husband rented a camera….”
She pointed to a heap of wreckage which Miss Withers with difficulty identified as the remains of a Graflex and a flash-gun. “Siwash just missed my husband and got the camera,” she explained. “I considered myself perfectly justified in using Siwash—after all, his board bill hasn’t been paid in three months.”
“He’s still not your horse,” Miss Withers pointed out. “He belongs to Violet Feverel’s sister now, and I shall use my influence with that young lady to have him taken out of your hands at once!”
“Splendid!” said Mrs. Thwaite. “But first you can tell the young lady who has inherited this red demon that his board bill is over two hundred dollars!”
“One hundred seventy-five,” said Latigo Wells feebly.
“Hmm,” murmured Miss Withers. “That’s a lot of money for a horse.”
At last Mrs. Thwaite agreed with something. “Especially for an outlaw,” she snapped. “Siwash is beautiful and he has lovely gaits, but he’s just plain outlaw….”
“Since when?” inquired Miss Withers, borrowing a phrase from her current crop of young hopefuls at Jefferson School.
“Well,” said Mrs. Thwaite, “he’s been worse today, but I always said he had a mean streak in him. Didn’t I, dear?”
Thwaite hurriedly came forward, insisting that his wife had talked of nothing else but Siwash’s hidden traits.
“You didn’t happen to notice a spot of dried blood on his flank, did you?” inquired Miss Withers casually. “Today, I mean.”
“Certainly not …” began Mrs. Thwaite. Even Latigo shook his head. But Highpockets burst in.
“I sho did, ma’am—and that big red horse, he didn’t like it when I sponged him off, neither….”
“Well, if all you experts will get together and make an investigation,” Miss Withers snapped, “you’ll find that Siwash is carrying a bullet under his skin. Which, though I admit I’m nothing but a rank outsider, would seem enough to make even a pet horse cantankerous when bumped.”
“Nonsense …” began Mrs. Thwaite. But her husband had stepped into the stall and was gingerly approaching the nervous thoroughbred. He touched the horse’s side and Siwash winced.
“Sensitive, surely,” he muttered. “But there’s no wound!”
“Blood doesn’t drip from heaven,” Miss Withers told him. “It comes from a wound—sometimes from a very tiny one.”
Thwaite polished his glasses and tried again. “There’s inflammation anyway,” he announced. “Highpockets, go get my kit out of the office!”
“I know you’ll do all you can for the horse,” Miss Withers continued happily, “because of his late mistress. Miss Feverel was a very lovely girl, I understand.”
There was a faint sniff from Maude Thwaite, but the little veterinary nodded. “Beautiful … charming …” he said. “One of the most—” He stopped short and licked his lips. “Or so she seemed. Not that I’d know …” he laughed nervously.
“Wouldn’t you?” Miss Withers pressed on wickedly. Thwaite’s neck had turned a bright red as he leaned against the horse, but his wife stepped into the breach.
“Whoever told you that there was anything between my husband and that Feverel girl was a liar,” she said. The honey was all gone from her voice and the glance she gave Latigo was not pleasant. “They were seen together only during the time we were schooling Siwash to the saddle and naturally my husband rode out on the bridle path with Miss Feverel on the days when I couldn’t go….”
“Naturally,” said Miss Withers. “By the way, Mrs. Thwaite, where were you at quarter of six this morning?”
There was another long pause, this time a pause which snapped and crackled.
“I was in my bed, in my bedroom upstairs,” said Maude Thwaite angrily. “Where else would I be?”
Miss Withers looked toward Thwaite, who was already beginning preparations for the minor operation on poor Siwash. “Is that right, Mr. Thwaite?”
He looked up startled. “What? No—I mean yes. I really don’t know, I mean to say …”
“Your windows, Mrs. Thwaite, open out on the street?” went on Miss Withers.
“Yes,” snapped the woman. She looked longingly at the strap which lay beside her as if she could think of another use for it.
“You didn’t happen to notice that as usual your earliest rider was Miss Violet Feverel, did you?” the schoolteacher went on.
“I did not,” snarled Maude Thwaite. “Not until I was awakened by the quarrel between Violet Feverel and her sister. They made noise enough to wake the dead.”
Miss Withers digested this information. “Thank you very much,” she said. “Oh, by the way, are you a good shot with an air rifle?”
Maude Thwaite suddenly went stiff as a poker. “I’m a good shot,” she admitted through lips like cardboard. “But when I shoot I don’t monkey around with popguns!”
“I got it!” Thwaite suddenly cut in upon them. He came out of the stall, rolling in the palm of his hand a tiny pellet of lead slightly flattened. “Nothing but a BB, after all. But it must have felt big as a cannon ball to old Siwash, for it was lodged in a nerve center.” The veterinary seemed to find it very funny. “Haw!”
Mrs. Thwaite felt she had stood enough. She faced Miss Withers suddenly. “Are you a police officer?” she demanded.
“Not exactly….”
“Then I must ask you to come back someday when we’re not so busy,” she was told. “Latigo, will you be good enough to show Miss. What’s-her-name out of here?”
Miss Withers put down the pitchfork which, until this moment, she had clutched like grim death.
“I’ll be back,” she said softly. And she followed the young man to the door.
He eyed her with respect. “Say, how did you get wise to that fact that Thwaite made eyes at Miss Feverel?” he wanted to know.
“Simple as A B C,” Miss Withers told him. “Given a little man with a waxed mustache and a big dominant wife—let a beautiful girl come into the picture …”
“Listen,” Latigo said seriously, “don’t get Miss Feverel wrong. She may have lived a fast life among her own ritzy friends, but down here at the stables it was Siwash and nobody else she was interested in. There was never an icier dame in the world than she was. And she wouldn’t have touched Mr. Thwaite with a ten-foot pole….”
“Maybe his wife didn’t know that,” said Miss Withers. She leaned closer to the bronzed young westerner. “Promise me one thing, young man—if that woman tries any more whipping parties, let me know.”
Latigo nodded. “But you don’t need to worry, ma’am. Mrs. Thwaite knows her stuff. After she’s got a horse well broken she never is very mean to him. Why, I’ve even seen her give sugar to her pets—oftentimes to Salt, that white mare over there….”
Miss Withers looked where he pointed. “Hmm … one of the hack horses, eh? What a difference between her and Siwash!”
Latigo laughed. “You think so? Well, Salt came to this stable a year and a half ago looking better than Siwash does. She’d been a crack polo pony. But eighteen months of hacking sort of brought out her ribs and brought down her spirit….”
Miss Withers’s clear blue eyes clouded. “Life is rough on horses, as it is on people,” she admitted. “We all have to be broken. Even that fresh-faced sister of Violet Feverel’s—she has to face it….”
The schoolteacher’s gaunt and kindly face was bland. Latigo nodded. “Plenty of spirit in that little filly,” he said.
Miss Withers smiled. “Then you did witness the scene between the two sisters! You know, I rather like you for not talking about it!”
Latigo fidgeted. “I got to be getting back into the stable….”
“Of course you have,” Miss Withers counseled. “I don’t suppose you have much time for the gayer things of life—girls and so forth.”
“Well, I dunno …”
“I only thought,” the schoolteacher sailed calmly on, “that there’s a little girl who is in need of a friend right now. I mean Barbara, of course—Violet’s sister. I happened to find out that she thinks you’re a pretty nice young man….”
“Awk!” said Latigo. He rubbed one shoe against the other, staring thoughtfully at the ground. He gulped. “Say—that’s right. Barbara didn’t laugh, like the others did—at my Sunday suit. I mean, the night her sister asked me to come up to her apartment. I thought—well, I was mighty tickled with the invite. But when I got there I found out all they wanted was for me to sing cowboy songs and I didn’t have my guitar.”
“A word to the wise!” quoted Miss Withers happily and took her departure.
For a minute she hesitated on the corner. It was getting late in the afternoon, and her meals and toilet had been most sketchy this day. Moreover, she knew that at home a little muzzy-faced dog named Dempsey was by now awaiting her impatiently, with dinner and a long walk foremost in his mind. But something else came first. She was on the hot scent of murder and could no more turn aside than she could have allowed that strap to fall once more across the red thoroughbred’s glossy back.
So it was that Miss Hildegarde Withers came hurrying into the lobby of the Hotel Harthorn. As she debated whether to be announced or to go directly to the apartment she noticed a brightly clad and familiar figure standing near the desk. It was Eddie Fry, puzzled and disconsolate.
“Miss Foley says she is so sorry,” the clerk was intoning, “but she can’t see anyone today.”
Foley—of course, that was Barbara. Somehow Miss Withers liked the name far better than Feverel. She came up beside Eddie and nodded brightly.
“Never mind,” she said cheerily, “the girl has had a great shock.”
“Yeah?” Eddie looked dubious. “It shouldn’t be such a great shock to lose a half-sister that you haven’t seen for fifteen years or so. I can’t figure what’s got into the kid. She wouldn’t let me go down to the morgue with her and now she won’t let me see her….”
Eddie thrust both hands deep in the pockets of his topcoat, which seemed to have been cut out of a material designed originally for horse blankets.
“G’bye,” he said hopefully. But Miss Withers was not so easily discouraged.
“Young man,” she began, “even if Barbara doesn’t want to talk to you, I do.” She half dragged, half led him toward a settee. “Don’t you realize Barbara feels guilty about you? Her sister is dead—and Barbara took you away from her.”
“Wait a minute,” protested Eddie. “You got it all wrong. I was the boy-friend as far as going places was concerned, but with me Violet was always an icicle. Down at the stables among her horsy friends she was different. But I never got to first base. It was just see her to the door, that’s all there is, there isn’t any more. So when I meet up with her kid sister, who is as good looking as Violet ever was and friendly besides …”
“You wanted to marry her!” concluded Miss Withers.
Eddie shrugged. “I know,” he began to apologize, “but everybody gets married once in a while. And she is a cute kid.”
Miss Withers turned her blue eyes upon him. “As a gambler you were willing to take a chance?”
He nodded. “Then,” said Miss Withers, “I wish you’d give me some advice about betting.”
Eddie grinned. “You too? That’s just what Violet said a week or so ago. Seems like she got a tip on a certain horse running at Beaulah next Saturday and she wanted to know how to put down a lot of dough on him without spoiling the odds….”
Miss Withers dug in her handbag, finally producing the announcement of the race with its penciled notations which she had filched from the desk of old man Gregg. “Can you tell me what this means?”
He frowned. “Bard … Kyte … Roberman….” He nodded. “That’s easy. Those babies are big-time bookies at the Beaulah track. No pari-mutuel up there, you know—all bets are made with bookmakers. Evidently somebody was interested in the big race next Saturday and spent some time checking up to see which bookie would give the best odds on a large wad of dough put down on the line.”
“You couldn’t tell me the name of the horse?” Miss Withers pressed. Eddie frowned. “It’s a long shot, certainly, to get those odds of better than twenty-to-one.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “At present quotations I’d say the horse would be Santa Claus, Prince Penguin, or maybe Wallaby. The others are all better nags and lower odds.”
Miss Withers studied the list of horses on the front page of the announcement. “Easter Bunny, Verminator, Toy Wagon, Santa Claus, Head Wind, Tom-Tom, Good News, Prince Penguin and Wallaby,” she recited thoughtfully. “What kind of horse is Santa Claus?”
Eddie warmed up a little at the idea of being asked for expert opinion. “Lady, Santa Claus needs six reindeer to pull him around the track,” he told her. “If you’re set on betting in the handicap put your money on Head Wind to show. He’s the favorite and you can’t lose much.”
“Was Head Wind the horse Violet Feverel asked you about?” Miss Withers went on.
Eddie shook his sleek head. “She had a wild tip on a rank outsider,” he told her. “A plug that’s never even raced on the flat in this country and one that hasn’t done much since he fell down in the big English steeplechase. His name is Wallaby and for some reason or other Violet was set on betting her shirt on him. Seems like some guy who owed her some money paid it and then tried to borrow it back to bet on that horse, and so she thought she might as well plunge herself.”
“I see,” said Miss Withers, who did not see at all. “Perhaps Violet was fond of wallabies. As one race track fan to another, what horse would you advise me to plunge on next Saturday?”
Eddie was thoughtful. “Well, you see it’s like this…. I’m betting Toy Wagon to place because when I was a kid I had a toy wagon and”—the young man grinned—“I’m not always such a scientific better after all. You got to play your hunches in this game.”
“We all have to play our hunches,” said Miss Withers thoughtfully. “Sometimes even when we haven’t got any hunches.” She looked up and saw that the brightly clad young man was moving away.
“Where are you going?” she wanted to know.
“I’m playing a hunch right now,” he came back. “I think Babs really wants to see me and I’m going up and knock on her door. If I can talk to her …”
Miss Withers thought fast. “Young man,” she said with one of her most meaningful glances, “do you want to help or injure the police in this murder investigation?”
He looked surprised. “Me? But what have I got to do with it?”
“Nothing, I hope,” said Miss Withers. “But after all, you are a suspect. You were paying a good deal of attention to Violet Feverel and then suddenly you transferred your affections to little Babs….”
Eddie’s face hardened subtly, showing an expression of complete woodenness. “So that’s how you figure it?”
“No,” said Miss Withers heartily. “I’m just telling you how it might look. After all, you and Barbara both claim to have been in each other’s company at the time the murder was committed.”
“Yeah?” Eddie countered.
“Yes. And so it would create a good impression if you co-operated with us all you can. Right now I’m faced with a problem which is right up your avenue, as the slangsters put it. I’ve got to know why it was that Mr. Pat Gregg made these notations about the odds on that horse race. And I want to find out if he placed the bets or changed his mind. Can you help me?”
“Well,” admitted Eddie Fry, “I know Toby Kyte pretty well. He’s a square bookmaker. He might tell me….”
“Good!” said Miss Withers. She almost shoved the young man out of the lobby. “Don’t let any grass grow under your feet and if you find out anything report to me at this telephone number. After all—if we discover anything that leads us to the real murderer, that will clear you—and Barbara!”
“Yeah,” admitted Eddie Fry, still somewhat unconvinced. “That’s right, it will, won’t it?”
He wandered out into the street again lighting a cigarette. For a moment Miss Withers stared after him, shaking her head. Then she turned, and avoiding the clerk at the desk, she went back to the elevators.
Hesitating for a moment she pressed the bell of what had been Violet Feverel’s apartment. She pressed it hard and long, the sound dying away in vibrating echoes. There was no answer, there was no sound of voices or of scurrying footsteps, and yet Miss Withers was ready to swear that the apartment was far from empty. There was an atmosphere of tension filtering through that closed door—an eerie air of poised and breathless waiting….
She rang again, holding her thumb on the button for a long time. Then she knocked, calling softly—“It’s I—Miss Withers….”
Just as she was about to try for a third time the door opened in her face. There was Barbara Foley, innocent and smiling. She had changed from her white lace evening gown to some gay green and lavender pajamas which the schoolteacher guessed had belonged to her sister Violet.
“Come in!” she invited. “I didn’t answer because I thought it was Eddie.” The girl had needle and thread in her hand, and over her arm were a couple of light silk stockings.
Miss Withers entered the long living room and looked about her. The smile on Barbara’s face was a little too open and a little too set.
The schoolteacher sniffed.
“I—I was smoking,” said Barbara quickly. She crossed to the window and threw it wider. “Violet never liked me to, but my nerves are jumping like anything.”
That was no lie, as Miss Withers could see for herself. She sank into a comfortable chair and took off her hat. “I thought it was time that you and I, child, had a heart-to-heart talk….”
“Yes, of course,” said Barbara. She drew up a straight chair and perched on the very edge of the seat. “I’ve been thinking and thinking, but I’ve told you all I know. Are you—have you learned anything?”
“I don’t know, but I think so,” Miss Withers said half to herself. She was staring at a near-by ash stand.
“It’s not as if Violet and I had been brought up together,” the girl was rambling nervously on. “I didn’t know her very well, not really. And I wouldn’t have come to her here if I had had any other home to go to…. All the same I’ve been trembling ever since I got back from that dreadful place where they took her.”
Miss Withers nodded sympathetically. But her eyes were still glued to the ash stand and to what it bore in the tray. She looked over at Barbara, her blue eyes sad and doubtful.
“I hate to see a girl your age smoking,” she suddenly broke in. Barbara looked surprised.
“Why—just a cigarette—”
Miss Withers got up and went over to the ash stand. “I didn’t really think you’d been smoking this,” she said taking up a still-warm tobacco pipe in her fingers. “At least not while you were doing anything as feminine as needlework.”
There was a brittle silence, during which the girl took a long and shuddering breath. Her soft lips parted. “I wasn’t smoking it,” she admitted. “But—”
“Better ask the young man to come out of the closet,” Miss Withers suggested sweetly. “We’ll have a three-cornered heart-to-heart talk.”
“There’s nobody in the closet—” Barbara began. She wasn’t lying, because at that moment the kitchenette door opened and a man came into the room. He was a plump young man and might have been handsome if his face had not been so pale, and if his expression had not been faintly pouting. Over one arm he carried a dark and mud-stained blue overcoat which he immediately tossed onto a chair.
He kept one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his lips were pale and gray. Miss Withers blinked foolishly at him for a moment. This was a surprise. Even without getting up to look in the bottom of the bird-cage she recognized this young man. “Good afternoon, Mr. Don Gregg,” she said. “It’s high time you were joining us.”
He didn’t say anything but he took his hand out of his jacket pocket.