Free Puzzle for Pilgrims by Patrick Quentin

me the sort of wink that is associated with traveling-salesmen stories and hitched up his pants over his lean stomach. “Well, we live and learn.”
    His self-assurance was impertinent and faintly ominous. He lounged away from us through the room. There was a desk with a typewriter and a sheet of paper in it. He paused, looking down shamelessly, reading what was written.
    He glanced back at me. “Marietta here?”
    “Marietta?”
    He flicked a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “Yeah. This house belongs to a party called Mrs. Sally Haven, doesn’t it?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    He dropped into a chair, inhaling deeply, watching Iris as if she was a juicy number at a taxi-dance joint. “Sure Marietta isn’t here, Peter?”
    “Why should she be?”
    He shrugged the wrestler’s shoulders. “Here’s where she said she was coming. She’s crazy, that one, dragged me out of bed, told me I had to drive her to Taxco. Seems there was something she had to fix with this Haven dame. She’s her sister-in-law, isn’t she?”
    “Yes,” I said, feeling uneasy.
    “Came up here a couple of hours ago. Left me stuck in a bar downtown. I figured a couple of hours was long enough for any two girls to jabber at each other.” He threw out his big hands. “Here I am.”
    I said, “If Marietta was here, she’s gone. You must have passed her.”
    “Yeah? And this Sally Haven?”
    “She’s not here either.”
    He grinned at me. “Just you and your wife, eh? Hope I’m not intruding.”
    “Why should you be?”
    He started to whistle. He got up, glanced down at the silver slipper, and kicked at it with his toe. His sharp blue eyes moved to the white, overturned tuberoses.
    “Does she carry liquor, this dame? I’m dry as Arizona.”
    Iris was sitting very pale and stiff in a chair. Jake moved past her, so close that his arm brushed her. He paused, looking down at her curiously.
    “My, little lady, you look peaked. Maybe she’s got a bar on the terrace. Come on. I’ll rustle up a little of what ails you.”
    He bent over her and, taking her arms, lifted her to her feet. I pushed him away from her. He grinned his grin with the blue eyes wide open. “Now don’t get sore, Peter. No offense intended.” He put his hand on Iris’s sleeve. “Just offering the little lady a little snort.”
    He started toward the French windows to the terrace. Iris recoiled from him to me. He disappeared. Iris and I followed, for no particular reason unless we were trying to avoid being alone.
    The terrace was wide and white and long. It stretched the length of the house with a precipitous view of Taxco over a white-painted wooden balustrade. The lights were on now. They twinkled down the hillside like silver chains connected to the major brightness of the Zocalo. Santa Prisca had been dressed up for the fiesta. Strings of lights were strewed across its massive façade, and high up, between the twin steeples, sparkled a great Star of Bethlehem.
    Carrousel music drifted to us on the still night air. Jake was moving away from us down the terrace, peering for liquor. A small polished moon hung almost directly above us, adding its milk-blue radiance to the fiesta. Iris stood very close to me, taut, staring down the plunging view at the quivering beauty of the town.
    The carrousel was wheezing out “La Barca de Oro”. From far down the terrace, Jake started to whistle the ever popular song along with the music. Suddenly his whistle stopped. For a second the terrace was quiet as an abandoned church. Then Jake’s voice came, strange, harsh.
    “Hey, Peter, hey, you girl, come here.”
    I started toward him. Iris hesitated and then, coming after me, slipped her cold hand into mine. We passed low, shadowy porch chairs and divans. Jake’s large figure loomed ahead. He was standing with his back to us, peering down over the balustrade. And, as we drew closer, I saw that there was no balustrade there. Part of it had broken off, leaving a gaping