Murder on Wheels (14 page)

Evidently the urge for absolute scientific accuracy had smitten the operative, for the word
three-quarters
had itself been struck out, and
half
written in above it, in a script that was no longer neat, but somewhat wavering.

Across the bottom of the page, in letters half an inch high, wobbly as the trail of a seasick serpent, appeared the final notation—“
not so very stale
…”

I
T WAS ALMOST TWO-THIRTY
that afternoon when Miss Withers stopped her experiment for the time being, and hurriedly snatched up her overcoat and hat. She had been so engrossed in what she had been doing, or trying to do, that she had forgotten the passage of time, and leaving the apartment on West 76th Street she hailed the first southbound taxi-cab which came along. The apartment could stay as it was until she got back, and if the two other teachers who shared it with her didn’t like the looks of it now, they could straighten up for themselves. She had bigger plans afoot, plans which necessitated the opera glasses which she gripped firmly in her hand.

For the second time that day she strode in at the main entrance of Madison Square Garden. The same newspapers blared their headlines at her, reworded from the forenoon editions but still announcing that the strangler was “at large.” Indeed, the
American
went so far as to suggest that “
STRANGLER TER
RORIZES CITY
” which seemed to Miss Withers something of an overstatement. Hubert Stait seemed about the only person terrorized so far.

The two cats still hovered aimlessly about the door of the little Coffee Potte, but they were spending more time and energy dodging the footsteps of the crowd of passers-by than had been required of them that morning. The ticket kiosk in the center of the foyer was open now, and there was a line before it Miss Withers made no effort to get in on the weight of her official connection, whatever that might be, but put down her dollar-fifty for a box seat, and passed through the big doors that a janitor had left on the latch that morning. She was relieved of half her ticket and sent around the bowl to a distant aisle.

The Garden was about half full of spectators, a good matinee crowd in this year of A. D.—Awful Depression, as the Inspector called it.

Directly across the circus-like area of tanbark Miss Withers could see a line of high, boarded pens. Around the gateways of these pens a number of young men were moving busily. Most of them wore large Stetson hats, of the type known as two-gallon, handkerchiefs around their necks, and each displayed trousers strangely fabricated of sheepskin with the wool left on and the seat left out.

Suddenly loudspeakers all over the vast auditorium announced the fact that the next event on the program would be an exhibition of fancy shooting … “executed, Ladeez an’ Gemmun, by Mr. Laramie White with the assistance of the brave and fearless Miss Rose Keeley I thank you …”

It was the voice of the manager, Carrigan, Miss Withers realized as she saw him step away from a microphone located near the north barrier. He had replaced his derby with one of the inevitable Stetsons, she noticed. And then two huskies came running out with the dark screen background which she and the Inspector had noticed that morning, setting it up carefully under the flood-lights and bracing the back so that it couldn’t tip over under the shock of the punishment it was about to take.

The two men ran back toward the barrier, and at the same moment a door in one of the high board pens opened, and a girl rode out on a white horse.

The crowd demonstrated its approval by a smattering of applause. She was dressed all in silver-white, from the wide-brimmed hat to the high-heeled boots. Her low-bosomed shirt was of white satin, worked with designs in blue. A white leather belt, dotted with extra cartridges and weighted with a blue and gold-worked holster from which a pearl-handled gun protruded, held up her white silk trousers and the snow-white chaps which covered most of them.

The big white horse came out with its head held high, prancing and mincing, and lifting its feet high above the tanbark at every step. As the applause died away, the girl lifted her Stetson, displaying a mass of light blonde hair, and bowed to her public.

It was Rose Keeley, sure enough. But Miss Withers hardly recognized her. The daring costume had changed her—but more than that, the girl’s face seemed strangely paler than it had looked that morning. It might have been the dead white of her dress, but all the same Miss Withers started wondering. It was her business to wonder.

The white horse took up his stand, as if he, at least, knew his business, directly in front of the background drop, and stood steady as a rock. Rose Keeley, in the saddle, brought out a cigarette, displayed it to the crowd, and struck a match.

Only Miss Withers, because of the powerful glasses before her eyes, and the word of argument which she had overheard that morning, distinguished the fact that Rose Keeley did not draw that cigarette from the pack which she held in her other hand, but slipped it out of her palm as if it were thin and breakable glass.

Only Miss Withers noticed that the business of lighting it was a clever fake, and that no smoke came from the girl’s pale lips.

Rose Keeley raised her hand, and the crowd was silent. Then suddenly one of the gates across the area was opened, and there danced into the ring a fat little red and white horse whose colors seemed to have been put on by the accidental crash of a painter’s ladder. He bucked once or twice, as if to reassure himself that his rider was able to stick on in all kinds of weather, and then suddenly bunched himself up and set out down the tanbark at a full gallop.

The rider, a lean and lanky young man, gripped the reins loosely, and around his right forefinger he spun a heavy Colt.

The little red and white horse ran as if he had a personal grudge against the ground which bumped his heels—all the same his gait steadied as he passed the white horse and rider at a range of some hundred feet.

The Colt spat noisily in the hand of the lanky young man. But Miss Withers had her glasses trained on the blonde Valkyrie who waited, like a silver statue. Therefore she saw the short jerk of the girl’s other arm which, at the end of the connecting thread which Miss Withers could only guess must have been there, tore the largest part of the dummy cigarette from between her pale lips.

The bit of white paper fluttered to the ground, and Rose Keeley leaped down from her steed and displayed the fraction of an inch of butt which remained.

The crowd roared its approval, whether of the stunt itself or of the somewhat voluptuous figure displayed Miss Withers could only guess. Rose Keeley ran a good bit to bosom and hips, and the tight silk shirt and the somewhat sketchy chaps did not bury her light under a bushel.

Laramie White was standing beside her, his Stetson waving in the air. Miss Withers turned the glasses on him, and saw that he had replaced the plaster over his eye with a narrow bit of flesh-tint adhesive tape. She also saw something else.

As the two turned to each other, on their second bow, and shook hands, Miss Withers noticed to her astonishment an interchange of looks between them which, in her own words, was enough to blister an andiron.

There was hearty dislike in Laramie’s eyes, and something more that Miss Withers could not understand. But it needed no mind-reader to see what Rose Keeley thought of her partner. If he had been a particularly noxious rattlesnake she could not have flashed contempt, hatred, and disgust any more clearly … for that second. Then they faced the crowd again, and Rose Keeley’s lips were curved in a wooden smile.

The number was continued with Laramie’s blazing away at some colored glass balls which the girl tossed in a continuous parabola before the bullet-proof screen, and here the cowboy’s shooting must have been better, for he managed to explode four out of five of them.

But Miss Withers did not remain in her seat to watch the second half of the event. Next on the program, she saw by the bill in her hand, was “Roping a three-horse team in full gallop—Mr. Buck Keeley …”

For some reason or other, Miss Withers wanted very much to get a close view of this Buck Keeley. There were still a few seats vacant in the boxes at the other side of the area. By a judicious combination of bullying and bribing, she managed to plant herself in a seat at the very ringside edge of the barrier, almost within reaching distance of the end pen. From its direction came the strong smell of horse, together with a muffled oath or two, and the rattle of shod heels against timber.

One of the two handy-men who had carried the backdrop for the shooting event now appeared on the scene bearing a big silver-mounted saddle on his shoulder, and a couple of coiled ropes under his arm. He entered the end pen, and immediately reappeared.

Laramie White and the girl had already made their exit, and the manager was approaching the loudspeaker again. “Ladeez and Gemmun, the next event …”

The handy-man dropped the saddle and the ropes, and ran along the pens. “Keeley,” he called. “Hey, Buck! Here’s yer props, come saddle yer hoss …”

Somebody else took up the cry … “Where’s Keeley?” Cowboys appeared in the exit ways, and sombreros were shoved up above the tops of the pens. “Buck! Time to get on!”

They kept up the cry for a few minutes, and then a messenger ran towards where Carrigan was still orating into the microphone.

In a moment his voice was booming again through the vast auditorium, informing the assembled devotees of sport that a slight readjustment of the program had been found necessary, and that instead of fancy roping by Mr. Buck Keeley, the next event would be a roping contest … involving another artist and a wild yearling steer.

But Miss Withers did not remain to observe the subjugation of the wild yearling steer, who was already bellowing in one of the farther pens. She was making a fast sneak for the exit, with a shapeless something bundled beneath her coat.

Perhaps Mr. Buck Keeley had done his last job of fancy roping. But tucked to her bosom the schoolteacher held the lariat which he was to have used—the lariat which the handy-man had dropped beside the saddle in amazement at not finding Keeley in the pen with his horse.

Once more her cotton umbrella had stood Miss Withers in good stead, for the crooked handle had been just long enough to snag a loop of the rope. The saddle did not matter, she had seen one like it before … decorated with the same silver mountings and blue working. It had been hanging on the wall of the room shared by Lew and Laurie Stait.

She thought that she had seen a facsimile of the lariat, too. But that had not been in the room shared by Lew and Laurie … it had been wound firmly around the neck of a fair-haired young man who had leaped backwards into the air one evening at dusk … and had thereafter lain still. Laurie Stait had worn a rope like this for a cravat.

There was the same kind of running knot here as in the death noose, and somewhat similar blue thread binding the other end to keep it from fraying. Perhaps it didn’t mean anything. But Miss Withers was wondering.

All the way up to Seventy-sixth Street she wondered. There wasn’t any sense in going ahead with this case until they knew how Laurie Stait had been killed. In spite of the medical examiner’s report after listening to the Inspector’s coaching, there was no real evidence here that a murder had been committed. If it was a murder,
How?
—not
Who?
—was the first question to ask.

Could an especially prepared noose have been dropped over the victim’s head as his car passed another, bound in the opposite direction? Perhaps. Only it would take a true expert to drop a noose with such deadly accuracy. And there were circumstances here which made Miss Withers wonder if that were possible.

Besides, if the noose had been hurled from another car, why would the dead or dying man have been seen by the one observer to leap
up
in the air before falling to the pavement? Miss Withers resolved to refer once more to her early notes on the testimony of the little taxi-driver, Leech.

She had had time to type out only a few of her notes as yet, and the sheets were lying on her desk in her apartment.

She unlocked the door with her own key, and saw Inspector Oscar Piper, taking the privileges of a regular caller, and seated in the one comfortable easy chair of her living room. In his mouth was a fuming perfecto, in his hands were the notes which she had begun to transcribe, and all around him was the sea of feathers which Miss Withers had not had time to clean up before she left.

“Good evening, Hildegarde,” he said cheerfully. She tossed the coiled rope which she had stolen into the clothes closet, and hoped he had not seen it—yet. There would be time enough for that later.

“Do you know,” the Inspector observed with heavy sarcasm as she entered the room, smoothing her hair, “do you know, there’s nothing, after all, like a little spick-and-span nest where a man can relax! Hildegarde, do you mind telling me why in the name of all that’s holy you choose to carpet your floor with these nasty feathers? I’ve got feathers in my nose, feathers in my eyes, feathers in my pockets. Have you girls varied the monotony of spinsterhood by having a duel to the death with pillows, or what?”

“I’ll show you what,” she told him. “I spent three hours today making a little experiment, Oscar Piper. I failed, which in a way I consider success. Now I want you to try it. Here!”

She opened a table drawer and suddenly whipped a gleaming blade out at him.

“I don’t suppose you noticed,” she said with a certain acidity in her tone, “that the pillows up at the Stait house were all stuffed with the best and softest goose down. Well, I’ve been trying to throw this knife through one of my own goose pillows that my mother took west with her from Boston before I was born, and I haven’t got anywhere.”

She indicated a pillow which she had propped up against the wall on a sofa across the room. There were a dozen or so slits in the linen slip, and feathers were spewed everywhere around.

“I’m not a knife thrower,” she told the Inspector. “See what you can do.”