Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla Read Online Free PDF Page A

inspector put the bottle back in his pocket. “No, you don’t.”
    The train was rolling across a waste of mesquite, now and then broken by the inevitable adobe hovel, fenced in with organ cactus, in front of which always stood a line of blank-faced Indians in clean faded cotton, drawn up to watch the one event of the day. Big black flies hovered over the huts, swept after the train, and droned endlessly about the two men on the back platform.
    Suddenly Piper made a snatch in the air, imprisoned one of the flies in his hand, where it buzzed like a bee. Then he cupped his fist over the upper end of the perfume bottle, loosening but not drawing the cork. He held it there while he counted twenty.
    “Look!” he commanded and opened his palm. The fly was still there, moving slowly along what palmists and fortune tellers call the Mount of Venus.
    “It’s not dead,” Mabie said. “See? What did I tell you?”
    They both saw. The big black fly suddenly let go the grip of its suction pads, tumbled down the slope of the inspector’s palm, and lay motionless, legs in the air, against the base of his thumb.
    “Heart failure,” Oscar Piper pointed out with a grim smile.
    The other man stared at him, haunted eyed. “Will you give me that bottle?” he begged. “Right now, before something else happens?” He pointed over the edge of the rail, down to the stony roadbed and the flickering cross-ties. “Smash the thing!”
    Piper shook his head. “That won’t do any good. I’ve got to smash what is behind this. Smash the murderer, not the weapon. Looks as if I pulled the boner of my career by not giving this to the authorities in Nuevo Laredo. Now it’s up to me.”
    “You mean that you still cling to the ridiculous idea that Adele …”
    The train whistled lugubriously, a long wailing blast which seemed endless. They were coming toward a station.
    They were barely at a full stop before the swarthy porter made his advent, looking inquiringly at the inspector. “Señor Piper?”
    “Well, what is it?”
    “Telegrama para usted,” was the announcement. The porter handed over an envelope.
    Alderman Mabie stood up as Piper took the message. “Think I’ll stretch my legs a bit,” he said and climbed over the rail and down the steps to the platform. He walked quickly away.
    The inspector wasn’t noticing, for the message surprised him. It was not quite what he had expected from Hildegarde Withers. She had wired him:
IF YOU ARE MIXED UP WITH A WOMAN ADVISE STICKING TO CANDY OR FLOWERS DONT PUT ANYTHING IN WRITING STOP PERFUME YOU MENTION WOULD NEVER APPEAL TO A LADY OF TASTE IT IS SOLD HERE FOR FIFTY CENTS AN OUNCE AND IS TERRIBLE BEST REGARDS
    HILDEGARDE
    It did not occur to the inspector that his tried and trusting sparring partner back in New York had misread his telegram and was imbued with a trace of jealousy. He was too busy with a new train of thought. Adele Mabie was a rich woman, rich in her own right. A woman of taste too. She wouldn’t be likely to go in for fifty-cent perfume.
    And if that hadn’t been her perfume bottle—
    He left the platform suddenly, started in through the car. And then he saw that Adele Mabie was coming toward him, rushing along the corridor. She caught his arm.
    “Have you seen my husband?”
    Piper motioned. “Stretching his legs on the platform, I guess. What’s wrong?”
    She shook her head. “Oh, nothing, I guess. But it does seem so odd. Probably I’m just jumpy …”
    “What seemed so odd, Mrs. Mabie?” Piper demanded.
    “It was the tea, the iced tea I had the waiter bring me,” she said. “I couldn’t drink it, because it was so bitter. And then just as we stopped I thought I saw a face at the train window. I don’t know who it was, or if I imagined it all. But it makes me wonder—”
    “It should make you wonder,” Piper snapped. “Come on, show me that tea.”
    “It’s still on the tray,” she said. “In the drawing room. I didn’t want to send it back