Puzzle of the Silver Persian (32 page)

“When Miss Otis was dead and safely gone to hell, madam—

They found her a spot where the fires were hot—as hell,

As she writhed in the fearful heat

She gently rubbed her blistered seat and cried, ‘Madam,

Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today!’”

He was rudely shouted down by a chorus of demands that he say good night to Violet, good old Violet.

“Why should I?” demanded Eddie.

“Because Violet’s going bye-bye on a big horsey!” cried the red-faced youth. “She’d rather ride a horse than make whoopee with us in Harlem.”

“Violet,” pronounced Eddie solemnly, “is nothing but a menace to navigation. Someday the Coast Guard will explode her with d-dynamite. She’s an old frozen iceberg, that’s what Violet is, But boy! Am I glad right now that it doesn’t run in the family!”

Somebody nudged him quickly, but not quickly enough. Violet Feverel had heard. She came over and flung open the door of the taxi.

“Eddie—you swine! Did you let Babs sneak in here—as soon as my back was turned?”

The girl on Eddie’s lap raised her head from his shoulder. Except that she wore a white lace evening dress and a last-season’s bunny-wrap, she was just a later edition of the girl who now faced her accusingly. Babs had the same warm reddish curls, the same light-brown eyes. She also had youth, lots of it.

Now she laughed nervously. “Don’t be like that, Sis!”

Violet Feverel bit her lip and her voice was thinner than ever. “I told you you weren’t going on to Harlem with these—these soaks! I told you to stay home and go to bed. Now come out of there!”

As the younger girl hesitated Violet leaned forward and caught her wrist, half dragging her from the taxicab.

Barbara did not resist, but her face had suddenly gone white as chalk. “I’ll pay you back for this!” she said softly.

Her elder sister still gripped her wrist with long painted nails that dug into the flesh. The young man known as Eddie started protestingly out of the taxi but Violet Feverel slammed the door in his face and told the driver to go on. There was a scream of gears and the yellow taxicab rolled on after the first one.

Barbara jerked her arm free. “I’m not a baby—I’m old enough—”

“Back in Syracuse you can do as you like,” Violet snapped. “But here with me you’ll do as I say. And I say you’ve had enough gay night life for one evening … and enough of fooling around with Eddie Fry. When I left I thought you were going to stay there and clean up the apartment, and then go to bed where you belong!”

“Eddie said he’d wait for me with the second taxi after you’d started,” Barbara protested. “It was going to be such fun—and now you had to spoil everything. We were going to a place in Harlem where a big colored woman fries chicken and sings songs….”

Violet knew that chicken and those songs. “You’re going straight home, my darling kid sister. You can get a taxi at the corner….”

Barbara stared at the older girl, her lips hard. “I won’t!” she flared. “You can’t make me. I know—you’re sour on everything because
you
went and made a terrific flop out of romance—”

Violet Feverel struck her young sister across the mouth, as hard as she could.

The marks flamed red on white skin. “Some people would say I had that coming to me,” said Barbara evenly. She turned and walked swiftly back down the street.

“Babs!” cried Violet Feverel. But the girl did not turn. After a moment Violet shrugged her shoulders. She wheeled and pressed a bell marked “Office” under a faded sign, “Thwaite’s Academy of Horsemanship—saddle horses boarded and for hire.”

There was no answer and she pressed again savagely. Then a mild and drawling voice sounded, close enough to startle her.

“You shore got a fast right hand, Miss Feverel.”

She whirled to see a long lean young man attired in blue overalls who leaned upon the lower half of a divided stable door. He had sandy hair, a face tan as a boot, and a long sad upper lip.

“Nobody in the office yet—no use ringing,” he told her. He swung the stable door hospitably open. “But come on in.”

Violet Feverel eyed him. “Latigo! How long have you—”

Then she broke off short. Coming across the cobbles into the dark and odorous warmth of the stable, she caught the scent of rank Burley tobacco.

“Does Mrs. Thwaite know you smoke in here, Latigo?” she asked.

Latigo Wells ground his heel upon a handmade cigarette. He flushed. “Not exactly, ma’am. But there ain’t—there isn’t any real fire hazard with these cement floors. I wasn’t expecting any riders quite so early. You wouldn’t tell her, ma’am?”

Violet Feverel pressed her lips together. “Saddle Siwash for me—quickly, please!”

Latigo nodded gravely. “Couple of minutes, ma’am. He hasn’t been curried down yet.”

“What? Where’s that boy Highpockets?”

“Yesterday was Saturday and that’s payday here,” explained the other. “That colored boy just runs hog-wild when he gets a few dollars in his pants. That’s why I had to come down and open up the stable this morning—that and because I figured you might be here to take your horse out. You see—” Latigo stammered a little. “You see,” he began, “I wanted to explain about the other night. When you asked me up to your place, I sort of took it for granted—” Latigo seized a convenient pitchfork and sighted along the handle as if it had been a rifle. “I naturally figured—”

“So I noticed,” said Violet Feverel shortly. Her wide eyes were expressionless.

“I didn’t want you to think I was sore or anything,” Latigo stumbled on. “I guess I must have looked pretty silly to you and your swell friends. If I’d known, why, I’d have fetched along the old guitar….”

“Forget it—and get Siwash saddled, will you?” she cut in.

Latigo moved unhappily away down a long corridor. Here and there a horse thrust its long inquiring muzzle over the top of a stall. As always they were quick to sense the mood of the human they knew best.

On the last of the box stalls sacred in this stable to the boarded horses was a card ornately lettered “Siwash.” Latigo opened the gate and slapped roughly at the shoulder of the big chestnut thoroughbred who lay sprawled in the straw.

“Come on, Si—rustle out of the blankets!” As the big horse reared to his feet Latigo set about brushing the red-bronze flanks with a currycomb. “You would have to go and sleep laying down, you lazy stray,” Latigo chided him. “More trouble than you’re worth. If you were mine I’d have you sent to the refinery and boiled down for your grease!”

Siwash danced daintily sidewise upon tiny hoofs and then nuzzled at the man’s shoulder affectionately. After a few moments they went out of the stall, when there took place a certain routine disagreement over whether Siwash was going to take the bit in his mouth or not. He finally gave in and champed on it dubiously.

“Next time I’ll have it flavored with wintergreen for you,” Latigo promised him sarcastically. A light saddle and pad were produced and tossed over the big red rump.

Siwash winced and then leaned back and nipped lovingly at the stableman’s arm. He nipped again, harder this time, as Latigo tightened up on the cinch.

“You’re a plumb locoed cannibal and you’ll come to no good end!” Latigo reached for the stirrup leather and then dropped it suddenly as Violet Feverel came up behind him.

She took the strap in her gloved hand. “I thought so!” she cried bitterly. “Maude Thwaite has been riding my horse, hasn’t she?”

Latigo stammered a little.

“Don’t bother to lie,” she told him. “I’m not blind. I can see for myself that somebody had to have the stirrups taken up two holes shorter than I use them—somebody with short legs.” The red mouth curved unpleasantly.

“It must have been Highpockets exercising your horse yesterday,” suggested Latigo in the tone of one who does not expect to be believed.

“Him? He rides a longer stirrup than I!” She took the strap and snapped the buckle back into its proper place, then crossed behind Siwash and did the same for the off side, as Latigo moved too slowly to do it for her.

“When I come back I’m going to have a showdown with Maude Thwaite,” Violet said. “I know she wants this horse to give a little class to her stableful of hacks, but she’ll get him over my dead body!”

Siwash was led down the concrete runway. On the right peered forth the friendly faces of the boarders, whose owners kept them in the luxury of box stalls, monogrammed blankets and bins of carrots. Across the way were the dejected tails and the scarred rumps of the rent horses in their narrow cubicles—the horses who were kept here for hire, their mouths slowly growing callous under the pull of every inexpert hand.

Siwash clattered along the concrete, ignoring boarders and hacks alike, for he was an Irish thoroughbred and knew it. He lifted his arched neck and perked up his ears at the burst of fresh moist air which swept in through the open door.

Violet Feverel stroked his nose and then mounted with a snap of her heels. Latigo opened the door wide. “Take it careful today,” he advised as she sent the thoroughbred out across the cobbled driveway. “Those paths are still soggy and I’d hate to see you thrown.”

She did not answer. Latigo stared after her for a moment and then hitched up his pants. He turned suddenly to see a puzzled colorado-maduro face which had thrust itself next to his in the doorway.

Highpockets’ voice was thin and querulous. “Mista Latigo, why you tell me to keep out of sight in the stall? If you’re sweet on that white gal, why you tell her I’m too drunk to show up here, huh? Suppose she tell Missus Thwaite and I lose my job?”

Latigo began to roll a cigarette as the stableboy ran out of breath. The big eyes widened.

“Say, you better not let that white gal see you smoke in here—she’ll tell Old Lady Thwaite on you!”

Latigo scratched a match on the seat of his overalls and applied it to the handmade cigarette. “That highnosed Miss God-almighty Feverel won’t tell anybody—anything!” he pronounced with great finality. “Go on, Snowflake, get busy with the pitchfork. You got work to do.”

“So has you!” Highpockets retorted. But he moved disjointedly away toward the stalls shaking his head. Latigo Wells remained at the door letting his cigarette ash fall from unheeding fingers.

As the hoofs of the big red thoroughbred rang out upon deserted Central Park West a man in a tight dark overcoat moved back into the shadows of a doorway, but Violet Feverel did not notice him. She was looking beyond the park gateway to see the glimmering of dawn in the sky above the towers of Fifth Avenue. She drew a deep breath of the damp sweet air and held it.

As they went up the slope into the park Siwash bent his heavy-sculptured neck and touched a velvet muzzle to his mistress’s leg, leaving a wet mark on the jodhpur cord. He whinnied softly, remembering mornings like this in earlier and better days, when at Saratoga and Hialeah and Churchill Downs he had been breezed gloriously around the track with only stableboys and handicappers to watch, and with a monkey-like little man perched on his withers and crooning soft encouragements in his ear.

Siwash liked the soft feel of the mud underhoof. He tossed his head, wishing as always that the woman who straddled him would lighten the pull of the curb on his mouth. There was something about mud that always made Siwash want to go. During his four years as a race horse it had always been on a slow track with better horses floundering and slipping all around him that he had chalked up his victories. It was against mud that the power in those muscled red shoulders really came into play and the long trim legs thrust hardest.

He broke into an easy canter as his rider leaned forward and gave him a fraction more of the rein. Siwash was a horse who liked to get there—anywhere. Being only a horse he had no premonition of the strange destination toward which he bore his lovely but heavy-handed mistress this morning.

It seemed warm for this sunrise hour. Violet Feverel pulled the stock from her throat, trying to let her body swing easily with the rolling gait of the big thoroughbred. But she still held the curb hard against his mouth. Siwash knew, as horses always know, that his rider was afraid.

Across the green reaches of the park, beyond the towers of the Avenue, the sky was reddening with the sunrise. Violet Feverel remembered something from her childhood, a line she had once read in an old almanac—“Red sky at morning, sailors take warning….”

Then, almost as if she heard the beat of invisible hoofs on the path behind her, she shivered and urged the big horse forward, so that they went galloping northward through the wet loneliness of the deserted path beneath the blind shuttered windows of the great apartment houses of Central Park West, as if in a wild effort to escape. But it was only herself that Violet Feverel wanted to leave behind that morning.

So horse and rider went northward at a full gallop, to keep an appointment in Samarra.

The sun was still well behind the towers of the Avenue when through the doorway of an old brownstone house on West Seventy-fourth Street emerged a small and bouncing terrier of the wire-haired clan. His nose was a black pin-seal button surrounded by shaggy whiskers which gave him an air of waggish respectability—an air belied by the twinkle in the hot brown eyes which peered through at the world. His shaggy white paws scrabbled over the doormat as the terrier sought to fling himself headlong down the steps to the sidewalk.

At the other end of a bright green leather lead he dragged a prim-looking schoolteacher of uncertain age and certain temperament, who wore at the moment a look of mingled sleepiness and resignation.

“Relax, you restless brute!” chided Miss Hildegarde Withers as the little dog led her in irregular and undignified plunges down the street. She shook her head and her blue eyes twinkled. “It seems to me, Dempsey lad, that there ought to be at least one wisdom tooth among all those fangs in your mouth!”

Miss Withers was convinced that she preferred cats to dogs, just as she preferred a quiet scholastic life to the exciting adventures in applied criminology into which fate—and a longstanding friendship with an inspector at Centre Street—had drawn her so often.