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

experience had taught her, she was prone to the other extreme. Yet she felt an instinctive surge of loathing rise in her being as she looked upon the proprietor of this riding academy.
    Mrs. Thwaite was wide and muscular—qualities not necessarily unattractive in a woman. But her eyes were small and beady, and her complexion was a gray-blue, heavily mantled with light powder.
    She was dressed in formal riding attire—fitted jacket, light jodhpurs and heavy shoes. In one hand she held a heavy crop with a silver cap and she switched herself on the ankles as she spoke.
    “I said—what’s going on here?”
    “Yes, what’s going on here?” echoed her husband. Even shaggy worsted failed to give him bulk, either physical or mental. He waxed his mustache as he spoke.
    “Only a few questions about Miss Feverel,” said the inspector hastily. “You know her?”
    “Of course—” Rufus Thwaite began. His wife drowned him out.
    “Yes, we know Violet—a very good friend and a valued customer,” she said. “She has stabled her horse with us for the last six months.”
    The inspector was a great believer in direct frontal attack. “Well, she won’t be a customer any longer,” he remarked. He displayed his badge. “You see, she was killed about an hour ago on the bridle path.”
    “Murdered!” added Miss Withers, just to make it more definite.
    Dr. and Mrs. Thwaite looked at each other. Then they both said the proper things.
    “Naturally, you’ll be glad to help us in the investigation?” Piper went on.
    But the Thwaites were doubtful. “You see,” explained Mrs. Thwaite, “we didn’t know her except as a customer—a client, really. She was in the habit of coming very early in the morning to exercise her horse, before either myself or the doctor was up….”
    “Doctor, eh?” Piper looked at Thwaite. “Medical or divinity?”
    “I am a veterinary surgeon,” explained the little man. “As we were saying, we won’t be able to help you much.”
    For once his wife agreed. “All we know is that Miss Violet Feverel lives—I mean lived—at the Hotel Harthorn.” She sneered slightly. “No doubt Latigo here has told you more interesting facts about her—I understand he moved in her social circle….”
    Latigo Wells looked excessively uncomfortable. “I was only up to her place one evening, and then I only stayed a few minutes,” he hastily explained.
    “Well—” said the inspector.
    Miss Withers nudged him. “Come on, Oscar—before these people convince us that they never heard of Violet Feverel.”
    Dr. Thwaite opened the outer door for them. “If there’s any little thing you want to know, just call on us!”
    “It’s the big things that we want to know,” Miss Withers told him. “We’ll be back. Hotel Harthorn, you said?”
    They passed out into the street and the office door closed behind them. The inspector started toward the sidewalk, but Miss Withers crouched beside the door, motioning him back.
    Together they listened. They heard Latigo being sent on into the stables with a message to Highpockets regarding a rubdown for Violet Feverel’s horse. Then, after a moment of silence, Maude Thwaite’s voice came clearly, with a note of placid satisfaction.
    “Well, my dear, this ought to settle the problem of Siwash!”
    “There,” said Miss Withers, as she led the inspector hurriedly down the sidewalk, “there is a woman who would eat her young!”
    It was still early morning—particularly early for a Sunday morning—when they reached the Hotel Harthorn. To Miss Withers the place seemed a typical apartment hotel, identical with half a hundred others which lined Broadway and the crosstown streets of the neighborhood.
    But the inspector was more closely in touch with the city. “Hotel Harthorn,” he observed as they stood outside the near-marble entrance. “Average monthly record—one racketeer arrested, two suicides of girls diving from high windows, one dope peddler picked up and