Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (7 page)

“I’ll give you a dollar,” bargained that canny lady. But the plump young man in blue overalls shook his head and returned to his studious perusal of yesterday’s newspaper. It was evident that he would just as soon stay where he was.

Miss Withers was at the point of weakening when a vibrant young voice beside her cut in.

“Two dollars it is,” said Phyllis La Fond. “Dollar apiece, sister—are you on?”

“I’m—er, on,” agreed Miss Withers. She surveyed her prospective bus companion carefully. “What’s this, another amateur detective in our midst?”

“God forbid,” Phyllis told her cheerily. “My baggage is still up at the airport, and I figure that the best way to make sure of getting it is to go after it. So we’ll kill a couple of birds with one stone, eh?” They were climbing aboard.

“Let’s not speak of killing,” requested the schoolteacher, as they sped away. “But I get the drift of your remark. You’re the pretty girl who was on the plane this morning, aren’t you?”

Phyllis took this as it was meant. “Uh huh. Unless you mean the redhead, and she’s a little thin if you ask me.”

“No figure at all, from what I saw of her,” Miss Withers agreed. She was not one to waste an opportunity. “I’ve already heard one version of that trip,” she remarked with the proper amount of casualness. “Mr. T. Girard Tompkins gave me his outline as he rode in with the body. But I’d like to hear your impressions. It must have been very exciting.”

“Exciting?” Phyllis held on tight as they rounded a curve at forty miles an hour. “It was about as exciting as riding an electric hobbyhorse. You can have my share, thanks.” All the same, Phyllis found herself giving a reasonably accurate story of the ride on the
Dragonfly,
with one important omission.

“And at the end, when we were all saying ‘Thank God that’s over,’ why, the man in the brown suit didn’t get up. You know the rest,” she finished.

“I’m not sure that anybody knows the rest,” Miss Withers told her. “Or that anybody ever will, though I’m going to try.”

“Here’s luck,” Phyllis said. They rode over the crest of the last hill in silence and finally after a toboggan-like descent were deposited beside the gate which led down to the villa and the airport landing.

The plump chauffeur slid out of his seat. He looked at the dollar watch which hung on a knotted shoestring from a buttonhole of his overalls. “I’ll get your bags, miss. Starting back in five minutes.”

“But—you’ll have to wait for me!” Miss Withers was indignant. “I won’t be ready to go back in five minutes.”

“Then you’ll walk,” said the man in the blue overalls. He went down the hill toward the office.

“Fresh guy,” said Phyllis comfortingly.

“I suppose you’ll be ready to go then,” said Miss Withers. “For my part, I came to have a look at the plane down there, and a look I’m going to have.”

“All I want is my bags,” Phyllis admitted. “But I’m in no hurry. Suppose I go down to the plane with you?—I can show you where each of us was sitting.”

“And you’ll walk back to town?”

“Walk—me? Never!” Phyllis proudly displayed a bit of twisted metal. “Let that fresh hayseed try to start his bus without us now. I’ve got his ignition key!”

Miss Withers’s eyes flashed. “Stout fella,” she said. “Come on.”

They moved down toward where the big red-and-gilt plane was standing, but as they passed the villa a voice called from the doorway. The fat youth stood there, with a bag in either hand.

“These the right ones?”

“Those are mine,” said Phyllis.

At the sound of her voice one of the bags emitted a doleful whine. “What in heaven’s name have you got in there?” Miss Withers wanted to know.

Phyllis snapped her fingers. “If I didn’t forget about Mister Jones!”

“Who?”

“Mister Jones—he’s a dog.” Phyllis crossed swiftly to the container and opened a snap. From the box bounded a small black-and-white terrier, which evidenced delight at seeing the light of day again by a series of shrill yelps.

“Did ums get tired all by himself so long?” asked Phyllis coyly.

Mister Jones’s only answer was to cavort wildly about the formal gardens of the airport, pausing to sniff at every shrub and cactus, and finally disappear in the bushes.

“Come to me, you bad boy!” called Phyllis hopefully. Mister Jones stayed.

Phyllis snagged a well-chewed leash from the interior of the container. “Come here, sir!”

Miss Withers coughed and lowered her voice. “I think he’s—er—”

“You mean gone to see a dog about a man?” Phyllis grinned.

“Come here, sir,” she called again.

Mister Jones trotted out of the bushes, once more a docile and well-behaved citizen. With head and ears cocked to one side, whiskers waving in the breeze, white forepaws wide and sturdy, the little dog approached its mistress with the utmost confidence.

“What kind of a dog is it?” Miss Withers wanted to know. She had always preferred cats, but there was something definitely appealing—something a little hungry and searching—in the roguish eyes that met her own.

“He’s a pedigreed wire,” Phyllis announced. “Wirehaired terrier to you. Supposed to be worth a lot of money. But you can’t prove it by me—I’ve only had him three days, and I’m no expert.” She snapped the leash on the little dog’s collar. “I suppose I ought to exercise you, useless,” she remarked, as she bent over the wriggling animal. “Mind if he comes along?”

“Of course not.” Miss Withers rubbed her fingers across the tight twisted wool. “You’re a fine fellow, aren’t you, boy? A little fat, I should say. But a fine fellow.”

“I named him Mister Jones after the man who gave him to me,” confided Phyllis amiably. “He went broke, and the pup was all he could give me when he moved out.”

“Miss Withers raised her eyebrows and then nodded. “Sort of a diamond-bracelet dog, eh?”

“Sort of. Only I’d trade him for one, any day.” Phyllis laughed and tugged at the leash. The terrier, who had discovered an interesting crackerjack box, trotted obediently after them, dragging the prize. Now and then, Mister Jones was confident, it would be possible to swallow a succulent morsel or two of cardboard on the way.

They approached the red-and-gilt
Dragonfly,
hesitating a moment before the narrow door. But they found it unlocked. Phyllis swung it open, and Mister Jones leaped gayly up the steps.

Hildegarde Withers had often read of the psychic sensitiveness of dogs and cats. If she had expected any reaction from the terrier in this narrow cubicle which she was confident still reeked of murder, she was sadly disappointed. The fat little dog strained on the leash, sniffing delightedly at the myriad new odors of the cabin, even discarding the treasured crackerjack box in favor of new findings.

Phyllis patiently explained the situation of the seats and their various occupants on that morning’s plane trip. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’ve got an idea that somebody killed that fellow Forrest, or whatever his name was. But I don’t see how it could have happened.”

“Nor do I,” said Miss Withers. “That’s no proof at all that it didn’t happen.” She was busily making a diagram of the interior of the cabin. “And you say the dead man sat here?”

Mister Jones, entering into the spirit of the thing with a whole heart, leaped upon the blue leather seat, pressed two dusty paws against the plate-glass window, and then dropped to investigate the floor again, sniffing noisily.

It was at this moment that the exploring party was interrupted by a stern voice from the door.

“Plane doesn’t leave for the mainland till four-thirty,” said Lew French. “You’ll have to wait in the waiting room—nobody allowed aboard here.”

They left the
Dragonfly.
“We were through with it anyway,” said Miss Withers. The sunlight was blinding after the semidarkness of the plane.

Up the slope, in the red bus, a perspiring young man was searching vainly for his ignition key.

“Oh—is this what you’re looking for?” Phyllis inquired innocently. She displayed the key. “I just found it a moment ago.”

The driver found himself at a complete loss for words. He inserted the key and raced his engine.

Miss Withers was already seated in the bus. Phyllis handed up Mister Jones and started to follow. Then she stopped.

“What, again?” she asked wearily. The little dog was wriggling uncomfortably.

Miss Withers turned around, jarred from the train of thought which had been taking her nowhere—fast.

“What’s the trouble?”

“Mister Jones wants to
go,”
Phyllis informed her. She lifted down the little dog.

“He doesn’t look to me as if he wanted to go,” Miss Withers observed. Mister Jones had lain down in the dust of the roadway, an abject picture of discomfort.

“Come on, snap out of it,” Phyllis commanded. She caught the dog by the scruff of the neck and lifted it to the flat top of the gatepost. “Let’s have a look, nuisance. What’s troubling you?”

“Dr. O’Rourke is a pretty good vet,” offered the driver. “Better take him in town to the doc.”

Phyllis nodded. But Hildegarde Withers was climbing out of the bus. “Wait,” she insisted. “Look at him.”

Mister Jones was shaken by tremor after tremor. Then followed a series of choking coughs.

“If you want to be sick, be sick,” Phyllis admonished the dog.

“If he wants to be sick, keep him often the bus,” put in the driver.

It was Miss Withers who analyzed the situation first. She did not hesitate. Swiftly she caught up Mister Jones in her arms and ran toward the shore, with Phyllis dazedly following and the bus driver staring at them as if they were all demented.

The animal’s heartbeats were like the pounding of a drum. “Poisoned!” gasped Miss Withers, as she ran. “I’ve seen it happen before, when neighbors get to fighting over their pets in the city.”

“What should we do?”

Miss Withers’s sensible heels were clattering over the pebbly shore.

“We ought to have salt and warm water. But there’s no time for that. Here—you hold him.”

Mister Jones was pathetically easy to hold. Phyllis held on as Miss Withers demonstrated, with the whiskery jaw open.

Then the schoolteacher took her two cupped hands and proceeded to dip up portions of the Pacific, at the expense of her shoes, stockings, and dress. Mister Jones gagged and fought weakly as the bitter salt water drenched mouth and stomach. But Miss Withers kept on.

“All right, you can put him down,” she said finally. Phyllis found a large and flat-topped stone and laid the unhappy dog on its side.

It was just in the nick of time, as Mister Jones chose that moment to get rid of sea water, breakfast, crackerjack bits, and, as the auction bills say, “other articles too numerous to mention.”

“You’ve just made him all the sicker,” Phyllis complained.

“He had to be sicker before he could be—weller,” said Miss Withers. “See—he’s all through.”

Mister Jones gave her the lie by instantly becoming more unwell than ever.

The two women surveyed the sufferer in perplexity. “Maybe we should have taken him to Dr. O’Rourke after all,” admitted Miss Withers.

Finally Phyllis picked up the little dog and started back toward the bus, where the plump young man leaned on his horn.

“I hope he doesn’t go and die on me before we get him to town,” Phyllis murmured as they came up the walk. “Tell me, do you really think he was poisoned?”

“I do.” Miss Withers was very definite.

“And you think it was the same—the same as the man on the plane?”

Again Miss Withers was sure.

“Poor little Mister Jones,” Phyllis cooed. “Does he feel better now?” The little dog wriggled in her arms. “Oh, Lord! There it goes again!”

Hurriedly she put the dog down. But this time the invalid made no efforts to die, nor was there a single retch. As the two worried women bent over the tottering animal, they saw what it was that had impelled Mister Jones to want down.

With twin sighs of relief, they hurried on toward the bus while Mister Jones trotted soberly behind with the prize.

The bus swung away from the airport, leaving the landing to the motionless red-and-gilt
Dragonfly
with its dark secret. Overhead the gulls were screaming, and their dark shadows swept crazily across the faces of the two women who were riding back toward the city, a sadder but not wiser little dog cuddling between them with a crackerjack box beneath its paws.

T
HE WIND THAT BLOWS
nobody good blew, upon that sunny August afternoon, a gratifying rush of business through the wide-open doors of Catalina’s approximation of a grand hotel, the St. Lena.

“You might as well get off here with me,” advised Miss Hildegarde Withers, as the red bus which bore Mister Jones, Phyllis La Fond, and herself came down out of the canyon and skirted the hotel grounds. “It’s the best and only hotel.”

“And I always stay at the best hotels,” Phyllis said. “Heaven only knows how.” She signaled the plump youth to stop.

“Unless I miss my guess,” went on Miss Withers, “We’ll have company before long. For Chief of Police Britt has put his foot down upon the idea of anybody leaving the island—anybody who was on the
Dragonfly
this morning.”

“It ought to be a regular old-home week here,” Phyllis remarked, as her bags were being carried through the door and up the stone steps. “We’ll sleep well, anyway—knowing that one of the party is a murderer.”

“Then you agree with me?” Miss Withers was gratified.

Phyllis grinned and enclosed an unwilling Mister Jones in the leatherette container. “I might as well agree with you,” she admitted. “You seem to be a person who is usually right, and I’m wrong nine tenths of the time. All the same, I don’t see who could have bumped off that little guy with all of us sitting right there in the plane.”

“That’s for him to know, and us to find out,” Miss Withers concluded. “When you register, young woman, insist that the clerk give you a five-dollar room. He has a few—the one next to mine was vacant this morning—but he’ll try to sell you one on the third floor for eight.”

“Yeah? Well, listen to me, sister. If that clerk at the desk was ten years younger and if I wasn’t so tired from that ride in our fresh friend’s wheelbarrow of a bus, I’d show you how to get a room on the third for five, or maybe even three-fifty.”