Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla (7 page)

The train roared and rattled, steadily climbing now, lurching in its rough roadbed. At length the weary inspector sought his berth, slipped off his coat, vest and shoes, and settled down to a night’s vigil. He chewed on a dead cigar as insurance against sleep, stared out at the dark sky and darker hills, while little towns jerked by gray and ghostlike without the flicker of a single light.

Positive that he had not closed his eyes for a single moment, the inspector suddenly opened them very wide, sat up so suddenly that he banged his head against the upper berth. There was a hand reaching through the gap in the curtains, a brown clutching hand that moved toward his shoulder.

Oscar Piper seized it—and immediately found that he was holding the swarthy little porter in a grip of death. The little man blinked, squirmed and then produced a yellow envelope.

“Una mas telegrama, señor”
he said, shaking his head wearily.

It was a telegram from New York City for the inspector, received at Carneros, province of Coahuila. It was a short and surprising telegram, which the recipient read three times with growing asperity.

OBVIOUSLY ON WRONG TRACK PLEASE DO NOTHING UNTIL YOU HEAR FROM ME

HILDEGARDE

And the train rolled interminably on, up the tilted narrowing plateau that lies between the two great mountain backbones of Mexico. It rolled on through the night, through the bright morning and the blazing white heat of the day.

Steadily the sun-bleached stations went by, the bare, crowded, identical railroad stations of Mexico.

At Jesus Maria, Rollo Lighten and Al Hansen got down from the train to purchase copies of the Mexico City newspapers, shook hands happily over the news therein displayed, and then spent most of the morning in deep conclave, making many figures on bits of paper.

As the train went through Villa Reyes Miss Dulcie Prothero, still in the yellow dress, came into the dining car. She pounced upon the newspapers which Lighton and Hansen had left on the table there. Unlike those two gentlemen, she was disturbed and disappointed at what she found in the Mexico City press, for she sipped unhappily at her cup of black coffee, refusing to chat with Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Ippwing across the aisle, although that cheery and birdlike old couple assured her that they had a daughter just her age back home in Peoria.

At Pena Prieta, fresh as a daisy,
Señor
Julio Carlos Mendez S. joined her without an invitation. Over the orange juice he told her the story of his life. Over his eggs
rancheros
they discovered that their favorite movie actor was Donald Duck. By the end of the last cup of coffee Dulcie Prothero laughed out loud.

At Rio Laja Mrs. Adele Mabie, wearing smoked goggles to protect her eyes from the bright blinding sun, was on the point of buying a magnificent green parrot when her husband cried warnings about psittacosis. She compromised by bringing back aboard the train a small round wicker basket containing, she announced with great éclat, a genuine baby spotted lizard. Inspector Oscar Piper, lurking watchfully in the background, refused to admire the lizard, saying that reptiles human and otherwise made him sick.

At Begona the Pullman conductor, mopping his pumpkin face, refused to hazard a suggestion as to what baby lizards should be fed.

At Escobedo Alderman Francis Mabie became a kibitzer at the Lighton-Hansen checker game, intimating that he was no longer able to remain in the drawing room and listen to Julio Mendez teach Adele the interminable words of the song “Adelita,” to the accompaniment of his guitar.

At Queretaro Adele Mabie rushed out onto the platform to buy a garnet necklace, a riding whip, and a large gourd tray three feet across, painted in violent colors.

At Cambalache Julio Mendez bought ice-cream cones for Mr. and Mrs. Ippwing. There was no telegram from New York for the inspector.

At St. José de Atlan there was no telegram for the inspector.

At Teocalco there were three sets of musicians, a juggler, a fortune teller, and eight beggars on the platform, but there was no telegram for the inspector.

At Coyotepec Oscar Piper glanced at a crinkled newspaper in the dining car and saw there amid gray lines of unintelligible Spanish the strange face of a young man pictured on a hospital cot. Unacquainted with the gentle Mexican interest in the appearance of corpses in the day’s news, it came as something of a shock to him to realize that this young man was dead. The name beneath the picture was “Manuel Robles.”

“That settles it!” he said savagely.

At Lecheria he took the bull by the horns and sent a telegram to the
Jefe de Policía,
Mexico, D.F. It was a crisp and definite message, indicating that immediately upon arrival he wished to turn over to agents of the department of public safety proof that the death at Nuevo Laredo of customs examiner Manuel Robles yesterday was not a natural death, together with party indicated as responsible for same.

At Tacubaya, fifteen minutes out of the capital, five faintly harried-looking men in plain clothes boarded the train and were taken by the conductor to the seat wherein Inspector Oscar Piper waited. One of them, it appeared, could speak English.

They were, he announced,
agentes de la Seguridad Publica.
And what was all this about?

The inspector, a little regretfully, named Miss Dulcie Prothero as suspect number one. He mentioned the possible motive for her having attacked her former employer, a grudge motive. He touched upon the suspicious actions of Julio Mendez. And he produced the bottle of Elixir d’Amour.

At last the
agentes
showed real interest. They seemed to have no doubt at all of the identity of that faint bittersweet odor of almonds which the perfume had half concealed. They took the bottle, studied it gingerly and with great respect.

“One of your suspects is in the day coach,” Piper said. “The other—and I’d give him a good going-over—must be up there with the girl, because he ducked out of this car as you came in.”

They translated for each other, made copious notes. And then, as the train pulled into the Mexico City station, it was requested of the inspector that he produce his credentials.

“Gladly,” he said. From his coat pocket he took a large envelope, well stuffed. But when he saw that it was stuffed with a folded railway time-table instead of his pink tourist card, instead of the splendid letter from the Mexican consul in New York which commended him to the civil and military authorities of the Republic, instead of his police identification card, his letter of introduction to the
jefe
from the commissioner of New York—when he saw that this sheaf of invaluable impedimenta was gone, the inspector murmured words and phrases quite untranslatable.

He felt in his vest pocket with anxious fingers, but there was no gold badge where it should have been. Billfold, American and Mexican money, silver, his watch—all were intact. But he had not the faintest proof of his identity. The train was coming to a stop now.

The
agentes
drew closer, conferring in liquid Spanish which he could not understand. They were suddenly very grave, very stiff and distant. Perhaps if the gentleman would accompany them … One motioned toward the front of the car.

Piper went up the aisle. And then his companions started down the steps toward the platform instead of going toward the girl in the day coach. They waited for him to advance.

He twisted his arm away. “What in hell …”

“A few minoots,
señor,
and no doubt everything can be explained,” said the agente.

“What? Do you know what you’re talking about?”

“But yes,
señor.
Possession of poison by an alien, concealment of evidence for twenty-four hours, lack of the required tourist card …”

Even then it might have been smoothed over somehow had not the inspector quite lost his temper and taken a poke at the nearest of the bland, ununderstanding faces. Before he could say “Jack Robinson,” or anything more suitable to the occasion, Oscar Piper found himself whirling through the murky streets of Mexico City faster than even a taxi could have taken him, found himself whisked down the Calle Revilla-gigedo and put behind the bars of a large, dark, and extremely solid-looking cell.

He was still fuming there at eight o’clock next morning when he heard the sound of quick resolute footsteps in the corridor. Someone rapped sharply upon the cell bars, and the weary and disgusted inspector looked up to behold an apparition.

It was certainly a mirage, a fantasy born of his sickness of soul. There was no sense, no reason, in this sudden appearance of the visage of a plain, angular spinster, tinted a pale Nile green from the effects of twenty-four bumpy hours in the air.

Miss Hildegarde Withers peered at the three bedraggled and alcoholic
Indios
who were his cellmates. Then, as the inspector rose from his cot and came bewilderedly forward, she cleared her throat.

“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

“I
COULDN’T REMAIN IN
New York and let you railroad Dulcie Prothero into a Mexican jail,” Miss Withers advised the inspector a few minutes later, thoughtfully poking her finger at a massive steel bar.

“Wait a minute!” gasped that gentleman. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but who’s in this Mexican jail? I go to a lot of trouble to investigate a murder case, and these idiots turn the suspects loose and put the detective in the cell! Beat it while you can, Hildegarde, or they’ll have you in here too. And we’re crowded as it is.”

“Don’t be so subjective in your viewpoint,” she chided him. “On the plane coming down here I got to thinking that the trouble with your theory is—”

“Hildegarde!” he broke in, speaking with a painful distinctness, “Hildegarde, please! Will you
do
something? For God’s sake wire the commissioner in New York or get in touch with Washington or something. Haven’t we got an ambassador in this country?”

Miss Withers smiled wryly. “From what I hear there are two schools of thought on that subject. It appears—”

“If I was a British subject they’d have a gunboat in the harbor inside of twenty-four hours,” he declaimed.

But Miss Withers reminded him that Mexico City has no harbor. “I, Oscar, am your gunboat,” she consoled him. “No remarks, please, about my superficial resemblance. But I have the matter well in hand. Unless I miss my guess this person coming down the corridor has the keys to your cell.”

The jailer, a bowlegged man with sweeping mustachios, puttees and a denim jacket, unlocked the gate with much ceremony, stood back as the inspector stepped out, and then barred the way to the remaining prisoners.

“G’by, boys,” the relieved Piper called back to them.

They responded with wide smiles and a united “¡
Adios, señor! Hasta luego
!”

“That means ‘Until we meet again’,” Miss Withers obligingly translated for him as they went on down the corridor.

“Yeah? Well, suppose you tell me what this means. Am I turned loose, or do they line me up against a brick wall?”

It turned out to be a little of both. A reception committee met them in the hall, just inside the main gate of the
Delegatión.
The inspector found his hand shaken by a number of officials in business suits, by an officer or two in uniform. The spokesman, a worn, youngish man with a prematurely bald poll, introduced himself as no less than
Capitán
Raoul de Silva, aide and assistant to the lieutenant colonel of police. There were explanations and apologies.

“If we had but known,
señor
!” There was much shrugging of shoulders. “To know is to forgive, is it not? Never in the world would we have given the slightest inconvenience to a representative of the police force of Nueva York, a fellow warrior in the endless battle against the forces of the underworld. But how could our men know? By the way, it is that the
Señor
is feeling much better this morning, is it not?”

“Huh?” grunted Piper. “I wasn’t …”

Miss Withers nudged him sharply in the back, as Captain de Silva sailed on. “I have the honor—we all have the honor—of extending to you the courtesy of the
ciudad
!” Piper found himself fingering a small card embossed with the red, white and green flag of the Republic. “If during his vacation in our midst the
Señor
finds his pleasures”—the spokesman cleared his throat—“finds his pleasures interfered with by overvigilant officers, he has only to display this card!”

“Thanks,” Piper said. “But I don’t see—”

“We also wish to extend to you,
señor,
the most cordial invitation to make the
jefatura
here your home-away-from-home while in our city. As we say in Spanish, my house is your house. The unfortunate episode of last night is forgotten.” There was a chorus of smiles and nods from the other members of the committee.

“Forgotten, is it?” The inspector managed a faint, one-sided smile. “Thanks. And any time you boys come up to New York City we’ve got some things we can show you too. Make you right at home in the back room …” He winced again under Miss Withers’ bony thumb.

Then, as a parting gift, Captain de Silva handed over a wad of papers which looked familiar to Piper. “All in order,
señor
!”

Oscar Piper ruffled them, then buttoned the identification papers carefully inside his coat. He was wearing a new, rather pleased expression. “So you did nab that girl, then? Found that I was right after all, didn’t you? She
had
swiped my papers trying to avoid arrest? Get a confession yet?”

“A confession,
señor
?”

“You know,” he insisted. “The girl I wanted picked up as a suspect in the murder case at Nuevo Laredo.”

“That matter,
señor,
is being taken care of by the lieutenant colonel personally, who flew north yesterday to investigate. An arrest is expected at any moment.”

Piper found himself being escorted to the street door. “Good morning to you,
señor.
Good morning,
señorita.”

“Wait a minute,” objected the inspector. “If they haven’t picked up the Prothero girl, then how in blazes did they get my identification papers?”