Free Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla by Stuart Palmer Page B

night in jail. But Julio gallantly took the arm of the vinegar-blonde hostess, led her away, and spoke soothingly in Spanish. A moment later he was back, smiling in triumph.
    “Everything is okay,” he announced. “But maybe we go now, eh?”
    They came out to the street again. “Anyway, it’s luck again for you, Mrs. Mabie,” the inspector suggested. “The way it turned out.”
    “By the way,” cut in Miss Hildegarde Withers, “just who was it that gave you the baby lizard?”
    Adele, still a little white around the mouth, shook her head. “Nobody! I bought it at Rio Laja from a man on the platform.”
    “Oh yeah?” snapped the inspector. “Yeah?”
    “Could be!” Julio Mendez came to her aid suddenly. He had seemingly taken the whole group under his protection. “Sometimes the Indios bring snakes up from the Gulf, from the swamps south of Tampico. They hope to sell to naturalists. But no Indio is going to mistaking a culebra de coral for a lizard, a harmless lagartito.” Julio shook his head solemnly. “Not much!”
    “But this one did!” Adele cried. “You must believe me!”
    “Was it an Indian?” the schoolteacher asked.
    “Why—why, I don’t know! He had one of those dirty old blankets over his head. I didn’t pay much attention to him. He just recited something about ‘prettee leezard ten pesos.’”
    “Then you couldn’t swear that he wasn’t an educated Mexican or an American playing a part?” Piper shot at her. Adele shook her head blankly, unable to swear to anything.
    “My wife buys almost everything in sight,” the alderman put in. “It’s pretty obvious that somebody took a clever way of striking at her through the snake, either by dressing up in a serape or by hiring some Indian to lie about his wares.”
    Miss Withers nodded. “And your wife was supposed to get familiar with the thing, perhaps take it out of its basket, and …”
    Adele seized her husband’s arm. “I—I think I’ll go back to the hotel room and lie down for a little.”
    “When you go to your room,” Miss Withers said seriously, “don’t forget to look under the bed. And if you take my advice you’ll cut this visit to Mexico as short as you can. They have planes to New York in twenty-four hours, you know.”
    Adele Mabie nodded, murmuring, “Yes, but—”
    She started to cross the street, left her husband for a moment to come back and say fervent words of thanks to young Julio Mendez. “You’ve saved my life,” she told him.
    Then Julio nodded, touched his beret, and said: “See you all some more, eh?” And he strode off down the street.
    Miss Withers and the inspector stood alone on the sidewalk, alone except for half a hundred itinerant vendors of lottery tickets, blankets, carved boxes, handkerchiefs, and shoeshines. They spoke to each other in small shouts, due to the fact that the Avenue Madero was packed with taxicabs from sidewalk to sidewalk. No Mexican chofer has ever succeeded in making a red light turn green by hooting his horn at it, but it is not for want of trying.
    “Well,” said the inspector, “this means we can eliminate Julio, anyway. If he’d planted that snake he wouldn’t have appeared and shot it.”
    “No? Don’t be too quick in absolving that mysterious young man. Why was he hanging around anyway? Besides, he didn’t appear until the snake had failed of its purpose and was running wild. It might be that the gay youth with the comic-opera accent didn’t want another murder by accident!” Miss Withers shook her head. “On the other hand, wouldn’t this seem to clear Dulcie Prothero? Because she couldn’t disguise herself as an Indian, nor could she deal with the Indian snake seller. I learned from her landlady that Dulcie doesn’t know a word of the language!”
    They started to cross the street during a lull in traffic and then were suddenly cut off in midstream, dodging among the fenders of the massed cars. They had one intimate glimpse of a taxicab