Free Cold Poison by Stuart Palmer Page A

only a couple of hours, and then got on the phone to arrange plane passage and money. He had eight dollars in his wallet, and he remembered the old story—California is the land of gold, and you’d better bring the gold with you.
    There was finally a friendly bartender on Third Avenue who thought he could dig up a quick $500….
    Back on the lower left-hand corner of the nation, Miss Hildegarde Withers awoke at dawn, feeling somewhat like a worn-out dishrag and very disappointed with her dreams; it was so often true that the watched subconscious never boils. She had an increasing feeling that somehow she had been maneuvered into playing somebody else’s game with somebody else’s rules.
    A worthy antagonist—if this were only a battle of wits. But four people had been promised death, and one of them had received it. Somebody was playing for keeps. Over her breakfast coffee the maiden schoolteacher made a sudden decision; she would play hooky from the studio today. Her quarry lay there, but she had a feeling that the mystery would be solved, if at all, from a completely different angle.
    There had been a woman who had died under the wheels of a rented limousine—or what amounted to the same thing, though it had taken weeks to make an end to that grim cycle. Perhaps it was too late to ask questions, but Miss Withers was determined to ask them all the same. She dressed herself in a conservative blue serge suit and donned a hat which the Inspector had once said reminded him of an abandoned owl’s nest; she locked Talleyrand in the patio with a pan of water and some dog biscuits and took off. A moment later she turned back again, to write a note and pin it to the door.
    Inspector Oscar Piper, slightly pale around the gills from a fast and bumpy plane trip across the country and from an almost equally fast and bumpy taxi ride into Hollywood from the Los Angeles municipal airport, found the note at around eight o’clock that evening. The grizzled little Hibernian read it by the flickering light of a match, bit through his ever-present cigar, and read it again. “Oscar, the key is under the mat. If I’m not back when you get here, look for me at the Morgue.”

5.
    “Savage I was, sitting
    in my house, late, lone…. ”
BROWNING
    O SCAR PIPER DID A double take, spat out his cigar, and then—knowing Hildegarde of old—sighed and bent down and found the key, then went inside. Turning on the lights, he suddenly was reminded that he was not alone; the worried bewhiskered face of Talleyrand the poodle appeared in the pane of the patio door, emitting plaintive sounds. The Inspector let the dog in, shook hands and paws half a dozen times, and finally managed to get loose and find the phone directory. He drew a deep breath when he discovered that Hildegarde had been at the Morgue and evidently made somewhat of an impression on the attendants, as was only to be expected, but had not remained there permanently on one of the marble slabs.
    He plunked himself down in an easy chair, lighted a fresh perfecto, and took out the file on the Zelda Bard case. It had been a very special murder, and one in which for various reasons he had a very special interest; not very many victims of homicide had been so beautiful or had lived so fully or died so terribly. There was a long list of her boy friends, the potential suspects, all of whom had been more or less cleared. That lady had certainly got around….
    Miss Withers returned home somewhat after nine to find the Inspector and Talley both sound asleep, the dog upside down on the couch and Oscar sprawled uncomfortably in the chair, snoring gently. “Well!” the schoolteacher observed tartly. “Men sleep while women work; so runs the world away. Hello, Oscar.”
    He sat up, blinking. “Huh? Oh, hello. What have you been up to until this hour—riding your broomstick around the rooftops?”
    “I’ve been up to plenty.” She came closer and observed him critically. “Oscar, you need a