Puzzle of the Red Stallion by Stuart Palmer Read Free Book Online

upper lip. He clutched a battered guitar to his bosom and his eyes were closed as he sang.
    He stopped and put his feet on the floor with a crash.
    “Howdy,” he greeted them, sliding the guitar quickly toward its place atop the desk.
    “You’re the manager here?” queried Piper.
    “That’s me—Latigo Wells. And if you’re figuring to rent horses—”
    “Don’t be silly—do we look dressed for riding?” Miss Withers snapped. She smoothed her neat serge suit.
    “You never can tell,” Latigo Wells was saying. “I just had the dickens of an argument with a tough guy in a blue overcoat—he got sore when I wouldn’t rent him a fast horse. I told him he’d have to wear boots or chaps to ride any horse out of this stable. And these hacks in the stable get a hard enough life without going out under that kind of a hombre.”
    “We don’t want horses,” the inspector cut in. “We’re looking for—for a Miss Feverel. You know her?”
    Latigo’s gray eyes flickered. “Sure I know her. She’s not here. And if I were you I wouldn’t wait—she’s likely to be gone for some time.”
    Miss Withers sniffed. “I don’t suppose that you, working here, happen to know where she lives?”
    Latigo bristled at that. “Sure I know—I been up to her apartment. Last Tuesday night, to a swell party. She lives in the Hotel Harthorn, up on Broadway.” Then the westerner rose to his feet. “Say, what’s it to you folks?”
    “It’s this,” said Oscar Piper. He flashed his badge. “Miss Feverel was found dead on the bridle path about an hour ago.”
    Latigo didn’t say anything, but his neck reddened and he grew oddly white about the mouth.
    “Of course you’ve been right in this office all morning?” Piper continued casually.
    “Sure,” Latigo nodded. “Ever since I saddled her horse—that big red race horse she owns. I been sitting here …”
    “Why didn’t you answer the phone, then—and why did the colored boy say that you went out to breakfast?”
    Latigo blinked. Then he smiled apologetically. “I told him I was going and then I changed my mind. I been sitting here, just singin’ a little—and I guess I was too busy singin’ to answer that phone. I just let her ring….”
    He began to roll a cigarette. “You say Miss Feverel’s dead? Did the horse kick her?”
    Miss Withers looked at the inspector and her eyelid dropped a fraction of an inch.
    Piper nodded. “Looks that way,” he said. “Dangerous horse.”
    “Sure,” agreed Latigo. “Any fast horse is dangerous for a woman who can’t ride better than her. I warned her—no race horse makes a good saddle horse without a lot of training. But she wouldn’t spend the money to have the horse schooled right—I guess she was hard up. Didn’t pay her board bill on time, neither….”
    “Mrs. Thwaite made a fuss about that, didn’t she?” asked Miss Withers wickedly.
    Latigo shrugged. “Not that I know of. They were great pals, Mrs. Thwaite and Miss Feverel. And the doc, too—that’s Mr. Thwaite.” He faced them, twisting his cigarette. “Everybody was pals with Miss Feverel—that girl was strictly aces.”
    “Not quite everybody,” Miss Withers amended. Piper nodded.
    “Well,” Latigo admitted, “they did have their arguments. You see, Miss Feverel got the idea that Mrs. Thwaite wanted Siwash. She suspicioned that we were using her horse when we knew she wouldn’t be around….”
    “And of course she was mistaken in that belief?”
    “Well—” Latigo began.
    “Of course!” snapped a brittle and decisive voice. A door had opened just behind Miss Withers, disclosing a stairway filled at the moment by a very wide woman and a rather smallish man who sported a large mustache. The woman came first in practically everything—as she made clear.
    “I’m Maude Thwaite,” she announced. “What’s going on here?”
    It was rare for Miss Hildegarde Withers to take an instinctive dislike to a person on sight. In fact, as