Puzzle of the Pepper Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

here and there with natives. As the infirmary door was closed firmly in their faces, they began to billow against the windows, their muffled and excited voices filtering through onto the scene like an offstage-crowd noise. The big man cast at them no backward glance.
    “Hello, Doc! How’ya, ma’am?” He nodded cordially in the direction of Miss Withers. “Now what seems to be the trouble here?”
    “Trouble enough,” Miss Withers told him. “If you ask me, I’m of the opinion—”
    “Of course,” agreed Chief Britt consolingly. “Certainly.” He peered around the room and finally discovered Exhibit A. “Dear, dear! What is it, Doc?”
    “Tourist croaked while the Dragonfly was coming out,” said the doctor. “This lady thinks it’s assassination.” He snorted and began drying himself with a convenient towel. “Simple case of heart failure.”
    “Naturally,” agreed the chief. He approached the white-covered figure. “Naturally,” he echoed himself.
    Miss Withers had the impression that his thoughts were very far away, perhaps back in the curio shop which was losing its noon tourist trade. Then the chief suddenly surprised her.
    He leaned both pudgy hands on the back of a chair, and blinked. “Who did?”
    “Who did? what?” The doctor snapped.
    “Who died?” Britt inclined his head toward the body.
    Miss Withers looked at the doctor, and he looked back at her. “I don’t think anybody inquired into that,” admitted O’Rourke.
    “May make a difference,” beamed the chief. “Shouldn’t wonder.”
    He rubbed his hands together and moved ponderously toward the body. “Funny he was all alone,” Britt offered, as the nurse drew back the covering again. “They usually come over here with friends.” He hesitated a moment, as if reluctant to violate the secrecy of the dead. “Got to find out who he is before we can tell his folks,” he finished, almost apologetically.
    With a certain clumsy system about it, he removed from the pockets of the dead man a heterogeneous collection of odds and ends, which he juggled helplessly in his hands until he sighted a small table against the farther wall of the room, where he dumped them.
    “Ought to make a list,” he announced. Miss Hildegarde Withers already held sketchbook and pencil in her hands.
    “I can take shorthand,” she offered, eager to assist. But Chief of Police Britt held out his hands for the book and pencil.
    “Thank yuh,” he said. Then he began a studious enumeration of the dead man’s chattels.
    He wrote:
Blk leather billfold, no calling cards, contents fifty-five dollars in fives and tens, parking ticket Terminal Garage, receipt for plane ticket, two newspaper clippings, one eight-cent airmail stamp.
    Two letters addressed R. Roswell, Hotel Senator, Los Angeles, unopened. Postmark New York City. One smelly pink paper, the other letterhead legal firm Fishbein, O’Hara, & Fishbein, Park Place, Manhattan.
    Change—twenty-dollar gold piece, Canadian quarter, dollar fifty in silver.
    Pair of red dice [the chief rattled these thoughtfully as he wrote], fountain pen with initials R.T.F., expensive make, brown silk handkerchief in breast pocket, unmarked. Key ring with two Yale keys and folding corkscrew.
    “That seems to be the story,” finished the chief. “Name’s Roswell. Lives over to the Senator in Los Angeles.”
    “If his name is Roswell,” pointed out Miss Withers, who was leaning over his shoulder, “then why the initials on his fountain pen?”
    The chief of police stared solemnly at the initials R.T.F. “Cuts no ice,” he decided, after ponderous thought. “Prob’ly borrowed it off somebody. Never manage to keep one of the things myself.”
    From the hip pocket of his dingy white linen suit, Britt removed a large blue bandanna handkerchief, in which he dumped the articles which he had listed. Then he tied the corners together.
    “Got to notify his hotel,” he announced. “Doc, you make out a certificate of