Free Puzzle of the Red Stallion by Stuart Palmer

it?” the inspector asked.
    She nodded slowly, looking over his shoulder. “It certainly does, Oscar! There’s another entrance to this room!”
    They both gazed upon a narrow stairway at the farther end of the room, an open stairway of unpainted pine which led to a trap door in the ceiling.
    But before the two intruders could investigate this stairway, they heard Abe Thomas and his fat wife come rushing down the hall.
    “He’s gone, of course,” cried Thomas, approaching the bed. “No—he’s breathing! If he can only hang on a few minutes longer—the operator just managed to locate Dr. Peterson—” Thomas shook his head. “It’ll be too late for him, that I know.”
    Mrs. Thomas quivered and a big tear rolled down either cheek. “The poor old man—to meet his end with no loving hand to stroke his forehead, and no loving voice in his ears … and me not dreaming that he wasn’t right as a trivet, or anyways as right as his excitable nature would let him be….”
    “Has he been ill long?” Miss Withers asked.
    Both Thomas and his wife loudly insisted that Mr. Pat Gregg had been in reasonably good health yesterday. “For a man of his age, that is,” Thomas explained.
    “And the last time you saw him, then, was it in the evening?” Piper questioned.
    “Yes, sir. About seven o’clock, I guess. I helped him upstairs, because his rheumatism was bothering him more than usual. Then I heard him lock himself in—he had the only keys. You see, he was used to Rex sleeping under his bed and since the dog was poisoned old Mr. Gregg has been mighty nervous-like.”
    Piper nodded. Then he faced the fat woman, who was still staring toward the bed with an expression of mingled horror and fascination on her face. “Mrs. Thomas—remember carefully, and don’t lie—”
    She stared at him with a wounded expression. “How could I hold anything back from a member of New York’s Finest, sir?” Her voice was very serious.
    “Eh? All right, all right. You heard nothing, noticed nothing wrong last night?”
    She shook her head, but chose to stare at a picture on the wall. “Not a sound, sir. But Abe and me, we sleep at the other end of the house. On Sunday morning, particularly when Abe goes away like he did this morning, I usually like to rest my bones in bed until Mr. Gregg rings for his breakfast. And this morning he didn’t ring at all….”
    Miss Withers whispered something to the inspector. “Oh, yes.” He turned back to Thomas. “Then it was last night that your employer told you to take the message to his former daughter-in-law?”
    Abe Thomas hesitated, then nodded. “But I didn’t leave until early this morning,” he explained.
    “And you have no idea why he wanted to see Miss Feverel?”
    Thomas hesitated again, looking quickly from the man on the bed to his inquisitor. “I couldn’t rightly say,” he began. “But my own opinion would be that it had something to do with his son, young Mr. Don. You see, he and his wife were divorced with a lot of hard feeling, and when Mr. Don got behind with his alimony Miss Feverel—as she always called herself—had him put in jail. That worried Mr. Gregg, if I may say so.” The little man’s expression was pained, unhappy.
    “I should think it would have worried young Mr. Don too,” Miss Withers suggested dryly.
    She was interrupted by the tooting of an auto horn in the driveway outside. “The doctor, praise be!” gasped Mrs. Thomas, and they heard her go pounding down the stair.
    Dr. Peterson, unlike the general practitioner whom Miss Withers had visualized, was a crisp and tow-headed young man in his thirties. He came into the bedroom, frowned at the patient, and then tugged thoughtfully at his wispy mustache.
    “Another attack, eh? Thomas, would you mind getting my kit out of the car? And one of you ladies get a pan of hot water….”
    Miss Withers wanted to ask why modern doctors were so disinclined to carry anything larger than a pad of