Free Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla by Stuart Palmer

but finally they found themselves seated at a round table in the center of Pangborn’s restaurant, the inspector mellowing a little under the prospect of eggs and coffee.
    “Well, Hildegarde?” he faced her. “Glad you came. But why?”
    “I,” she said, “am Jack Dalton of the United States marines, galloping up at the last moment to save the day. Your telegram, Oscar! All about that little Prothero girl—fiddlesticks! I investigated farther than the drugstore. I went to her home. And any girl who can win the affections of a New York landlady—owing back rent too—has a noble nature. Besides—”
    “Facts, Hildegarde, facts!” he demanded.
    She still shook her head. “Besides, Oscar Piper, my real interest in the case is this. When I went to the Prothero girl’s room I found a class photograph among her belongings—taken on the steps of Jefferson School. Shortly afterward I looked over my class records, and I find that Dulcie Prothero was for one year a pupil of mine—and an honor pupil too! So …”
    He shook his head wonderingly. “So she couldn’t do anything wrong ten or fifteen years later! But, anyway, now I see how you got her to hand over the papers she filched out of my pocket while I was sleeping in my berth.”
    “Correction, Oscar. Will you please get it out of your head that Dulcie Prothero stole your precious papers? I didn’t get them from her. I haven’t seen her. She isn’t staying at the hotel, though almost everybody else is. Mr. Mabie, by the way, had your baggage sent there. But when I arrived from the airport this morning, looking for you, I came to the Georges. There was an envelope left at the desk in your name. Of course, everyone was talking about what had happened to you, so I immediately took the papers to the authorities.”
    “Left at the desk—for me?” Piper frowned. “But that could still have been the girl!”
    “They were left by a man, a young and handsome man.”
    “Yeah? What was his name?”
    “Heaven only knows,” confessed Miss Withers. “I didn’t see him, and the girl at the desk wouldn’t tell me a thing when I tried to pump her. Only—”
    “How do you know he was handsome, then?”
    “Elementary, my dear Oscar. I knew that by the way the girl giggled when I asked her how he looked. But never mind that. If we want to solve this mystery it has to be done in some other way than by hounding a suspect. Why not concentrate on the intended victim? If this is really a plot to murder Mrs. Adele Mabie, why not watch her and nab the killer at the psychological moment?”
    “Theories, Hildegarde!”
    “Well, your much-vaunted facts and common sense didn’t get you anywhere but in jail, did they? I tell you, the thing to do is to watch Adele Mabie like a hawk!”
    Piper chuckled. “If you’ll turn your hawk eye over your shoulder you’ll see the lady in question coming in the door.” It was Adele Mabie, carrying a small wicker basket hugged to her breast, and followed by her husband. They caught sight of the inspector, waved, and came threading their way through the maze of tables.
    “Well, if it isn’t the jailbird!” greeted Alderman Mabie.
    “You poor man,” said Adele. “What you must have gone through!”
    The inspector invited them to sit down. “You’ve already met Miss Withers here, who has—”
    “Been hearing the most exciting things about your weird adventures on the train!” the schoolteacher put in, neatly kicking the inspector under the table. You could trust him, she thought bitterly, to advertise her when she wanted to keep quiet, and to introduce her as his secretary when she wanted to appear in authority.
    Alderman Francis Mabie picked up the menu, squinted at the long lists of American food with Spanish names. “What’s good?”
    “God knows,” Piper said. “We haven’t got a waitress yet.” He snapped his fingers, but the impassive and bulging women with their huge trays went serenely by, like expresses past a