Read Online Puzzle of the Red Stallion by Stuart Palmer - Free Book Online

I come from, I once saw a man run out of camp because he’d killed some dingoes that way—and the wild dog dingo is the most worthless creature in God’s world. I tell you—”
    “Save it,” said Piper. He caught Miss Withers’s eye and saw that she was nodding emphatically. “We’ll go—but I’m betting it’s a snipe-hunt.”
    Barbara, in the background, was now putting on her hat. The inspector shook his head. “Sorry, miss,” he told her. “You’ll have to remain in town and face a very unpleasant duty.”
    She looked up and nodded. “I know. I’ll have to identify my sister’s body, isn’t that it?”
    Her voice was controlled and even. Miss Withers noticed all the same that there were fine little lines of tension around her mouth and nostrils.
    Piper nodded. “There’ll be a departmental car to take you down to the morgue. Better get it over with as soon as you can.”
    “I’m taking you down there, of course,” cried Eddie Fry. He took his position jauntily at the girl’s side.
    Her slim white fìngers touched his sleeve for a moment. “Please, no,” she said. “I want to go alone.”
    “Don’t weaken!” the young man told her anxiously. “You need me more than ever—we’re still going to be sealed, aren’t we?”
    Everyone looked at Barbara. “I—I don’t know,” she breathed. “I don’t think so. Isn’t that funny, really? I was going to marry you just to run away from Violet, and now—and now I don’t have to marry anyone….”
    She began to laugh, thin brittle laughter like the high notes of an untuned violin. Her wide eyes were misting over.
    Miss Withers sniffed. “It’s about time she had a good cry,” said the schoolteacher softly. “Stay and comfort her, young man.” Eddie nodded. He was already doing it to the best of his ability. “And don’t worry over anything she says now; the girl is all upset,” Miss Withers counseled as she followed the others out of the room.
    Thomas, leading the way at a walk which was almost a trot, was halfway to the elevator, but the inspector lingered and grinned at his co-worker. “Well, if it isn’t Miss Lonelyhearts!” he greeted her. “Still singing rah, rah, rah for moonbeams, Hildegarde?”
    She made a wry face. “Don’t be a sour old misanthrope, Oscar. Just because I’ve guessed wrongly in the past 1 is no reason why I shouldn’t lend a helping hand to young love when I can. You know, Oscar, I feel sorry for that girl.”
    Piper lit his cigar, using four matches. “A harum-scarum piece she is, too,” he observed.
    “Nonsense! She’s at an age when there’s something sacred about having FUN, in capital letters. She was all starry-eyed and breathless about her good time in Harlem, and then it had to turn out this way!”
    “You don’t suppose,” observed the inspector thoughtfully as they came out under the canopy, “you don’t suppose that having FUN in upper-case type was so important to little Babs that she killed the sister who spoiled it for her?”
    “I do not—at least, I don’t think I do,” Miss Withers came back. She was surveying, without enthusiasm, a rickety-looking station-wagon flivver which waited at the curb, with the nervous little Abe Thomas crawling behind the wheel.
    “Oh, is this what we travel in?” she asked hesitatingly.
    Thomas nodded heavily. “You’ll find it rides comfortable as a hearse,” he promised.
    “How delightful,” murmured the schoolteacher as she clambered aboard. The inspector swung in beside her and they were off amid a clatter of gears.
    The summer sun seemed almost directly overhead by the time the roar of the engine died away. New York City was far behind them, lost over the rim of the horizon. Miss Withers drew a deep breath of the fresh country air. “Well,” she asked the driver, “are we there?”
    Thomas shook his head. “No, ma’am. I just turned off the ignition to save gasoline—had to fill the tank in the city, at seventeen cents a