Puppet on a Chain

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘What’s so upsetting about that?’ I asked. ‘He’s very interested in barrel-organs, isn’t he, Astrid? I wonder why. It is curious. He’s musical, perhaps?’

  ‘No. Yes. Ever since he was a little boy—’

  ‘Oh, be quiet. If he was musical he’d rather listen to a pneumatic drill. There’s a very simple reason why he dotes on those organs. Very simple and both you and I know what it is.’

  She stared at me, not in surprise: her eyes were sick with fear. Wearily, I sank down on the edge of the bed and took both her hands in mine.

  ‘Astrid?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re almost as accomplished a liar as I am. You didn’t go looking for George because you knew damn well where George was and you know damn well where I found him, in a place where he was safe and sound, in a place where the police would never find him because they would never think to look for anyone there.’ I sighed. ‘A smoke is not the needle, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.’

  She looked at me with a stricken face, then got back to burying her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook as I knew they would. How obscure or what my motives were I didn’t know, I just couldn’t sit there without holding out at least a tentatively comforting hand and when I did she looked up at me numbly through tear-filled eyes, reached up her hands and sobbed bitterly on my shoulder. I was becoming accustomed to this treatment in Amsterdam but still far from reconciled to it, so I tried to ease her arms gently away but she only tightened them the more. It had, I knew, nothing whatsoever to do with me: for the moment she needed something to cling to and I happened to be there. Gradually the sobs eased and she lay there, her tear-stained face defenceless and full of despair.

  I said: ‘It’s not too late, Astrid.’

  ‘That’s not true. You know as well as I know, it was too late from the beginning.’

  ‘For George, yes, it is. But don’t you see I’m trying to help you?’

  ‘How can you help me?’

  ‘By destroying the people who have destroyed your brother. By destroying the people who are destroying you. But I need help. In the end, we all need help you, me, everyone. Help me and I’ll help you. I promise you, Astrid.’

  I wouldn’t say that the despair in her face was replaced by some other expression but at least it seemed to become a degree less total as she nodded once or twice, smiled shakily and said: ‘You seem very good at destroying people.’

  ‘You may have to be, too,’ I said and I gave her a very small gun, a Lilliput, the effectiveness of which belies its tiny .21 bore.

  I left ten minutes later. As I came out into the street I saw two shabbily dressed men sitting on a step in a doorway almost opposite, arguing heatedly but not loudly so I transferred my gun to my pocket and walked across to where they were. Ten feet away I sheered off for the pungent odour of rum in the air was so overwhelming as to give rise to the thought that they hadn’t so much been drinking the stuff but were newly arisen from immersion in a vat of the best Demerara. I was beginning to see spooks in every flickering shadow and what I needed was sleep, so I collected the taxi, drove back to the hotel and went to sleep.

  EIGHT

  Remarkably, the sun was shining when my portable alarm went off the following morning – or the same morning. I showered, shaved, dressed, went downstairs and breakfasted in the restaurant with such restoring effect that I was able to smile at and say a civil good morning to the assistant manager, the doorman and the barrel-organ attendant in that order. I stood for a minute or two outside the hotel looking keenly around me with the air of a man waiting for his shadow to turn up, but it seemed that discouragement had set in and I was able to make my unaccompanied way to where I’d left the police taxi the previous night. Even though, in broad daylight, I’d stopped staring at shadows I opened the hood all the same but no one had fixed any lethal explosive device during the night so I drove off and arrived at the Marnixstraat HQ at precisely ten o’clock, the promised time.

  Colonel de Graaf, complete with search warrant, was waiting for me in the street. So was Inspector van Gelder. Both men greeted me with the courteous restraint of those who think their time is being wasted but are too polite to say so and led me to a chauffeur-driven police car which was a great deal more luxurious than the one they’d given me.

  ‘You still think our visit to Morgenstern and Muggenthaler is desirable?’ de Graaf asked. ‘And necessary?’

  ‘More so than ever.’

  ‘Something has happened? To make you feel that way?’

  ‘No,’ I lied. I touched my head. ‘I’m fey at times.’

  De Graaf and van Gelder looked briefly at each other. ‘Fey?’ de Graaf said carefully.

  ‘I get premonitions.’

  There was another brief interchange of glances to indicate their mutal opinion of police officers who operated on this scientific basis, then de Graaf said, circumspectly changing the topic: ‘We have eight plain-clothes officers standing by down there in a plain van. But you say you don’t really want the place searched?’

  ‘I want it searched all right rather, I want to give the appearance of a search. What I really want are the invoices giving a list of all the suppliers of souvenir items to the warehouse.’

  ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ van Gelder said. He sounded grave.

  ‘You hope,’ I said. ‘How do you think I feel?’

  Neither of them said how they thought I felt, and as it seemed that the line of conversation was taking an unprofitable turn we all kept quiet until we arrived at our destination. We drew up outside the warehouse behind a nondescript grey van and got out and as we did a man in a dark suit climbed down from the front of the grey van and approached us. His civilian suit didn’t do much for him as disguise went: I could have picked him out as a cop at fifty yards.

  He said to de Graaf: ‘We’re ready, sir.’

  ‘Bring your men.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The policeman pointed upwards. ‘What do you make of that sir?’

  We followed the direction of his arm. There was a wind blowing gustily that morning, nothing much but enough to give a slow if rather erratic pendulum swing to a gaily coloured object suspended from the hoisting beam at the top of the warehouse: it swung through an arc of about four feet and was, in its setting, one of the most gruesome things I had ever encountered.

  Unmistakably, it was a puppet, and a very large puppet at that, well over three feet tall and dressed, inevitably, in the usual immaculate and beautifully tailored traditional Dutch costume, the long striped skirt billowing coquettishly in the wind. Normally, wires or ropes are used to pass through the pulleys of hoisting beams but in this instance someone had elected to use a chain instead: the puppet was secured to the chain by what could be seen, even at that elevation, to be a wicked-looking hook, a hook that was fractionally too small for the neck it passed round, so small that it had obviously had to be forced into position for the neck had been crushed at one side so that the head leaned over at a grotesque angle, almost touching the right shoulder. It was, after all, no more than a mutilated doll: but the effect was horrifying to the point of obscenity. And obviously I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

  ‘What a macabre sight.’ De Graaf sounded shocked and he looked it too. ‘What in the name of God is that for? What – what’s the point of it, what’s the purpose behind it? What kind of sick mind could perpetrate an – an obscenity like that?’

  Van Gelder shook his head. ‘Sick minds are everywhere and Amsterdam has its fair share. A jilted sweetheart, a hated mother-in-law—’

  ‘Yes, yes, those are legion. But this this is abnormality to the point of insanity. To express your feelings in this terrible way.’ He looked at me oddly, as if he were having second thoughts about the purposelessness of this visit. ‘Major Sherman, doesn’t it strike you as very strange—’

  ‘It strikes me the way it strikes you. The character responsible has a cast-iron claim to the first vacancy in a psycho
tic ward. But that isn’t why I came here.’

  ‘Of course not, of course not.’ De Graaf had a last long look at the dangling puppet, as if he could hardly force himself to look away, then gestured abruptly with his head and led the way up the steps towards the warehouse. A porter of sorts took us to the second floor and then to the office in the corner which, unlike the last time I had seen it, now had its time-locked door hospitably open.

  The office, in sharp contrast to the warehouse itself, was spacious and uncluttered and modem and comfortable, beautifully carpeted and draped in different shades of lime and equipped with very expensive up-to-the-minute Scandinavian furniture more appropriate to a luxurious lounge than to a dock-side office. Two men seated in deep armchairs behind separate large and leather-covered desks rose courteously to their feet and ushered de Graaf, van Gelder and myself into other and equally restful armchairs while they themselves remained standing. I was glad they did, for this way I could have a better look at them and they were both, in their way, very similar, well worth looking at. But I didn’t wait more than a few seconds to luxuriate in the warmth of their beaming reception.

  I said to de Graaf: ‘I have forgotten something very important. It is imperative I make a call on a friend immediately.’ It was, too: I don’t often get this chilled and leaden feeling in the stomach but when I do I’m anxious to take remedial action with the least delay.

  De Graaf looked his surprise. ‘A matter so important, it could have slipped your mind?’

  ‘I have other things on my mind. This just came into it.’ Which was the truth.

  ‘A phone call, perhaps—’

  ‘No, no. Must be personal.’

  ‘You couldn’t tell me the nature—’

  ‘Colonel de Graaf!’ He nodded in quick understanding, appreciating the fact that I wouldn’t be likely to divulge State secrets in the presence of the proprietors of a warehouse about which I obviously held serious reservations. ‘If I could borrow your car and driver—’

  ‘Certainly,’ he said unenthusiastically.

  ‘And if you could wait till I come back before—’

  ‘You ask a great deal, Mr Sherman.’

  ‘I know. But I’ll only be minutes.’

  I was only minutes. I had the driver stop at the first café we came to, went inside and used their public telephone. I heard the dialling tone and could feel my shoulders sag with relief as the receiver at the other end, after relay through an hotel desk, was picked up almost immediately. I said: ‘Maggie?’

  ‘Good morning, Major Sherman.’ Always polite and punctilious was Maggie and I was never more glad to hear her so.

  ‘I’m glad I caught you. I was afraid that you and Belinda might already have left she hasn’t left, has she?’ I was much more afraid of several other things but this wasn’t the time to tell her.

  ‘She’s still here,’ Maggie said placidly.

  ‘I want you both to leave your hotel at once. When I say at once, I mean within ten minutes. Five, if possible.’

  ‘Leave? You mean—’

  ‘I mean pack up, check out and don’t ever go near it again. Go to another hotel. Any hotel … No, you blithering idiot, not mine. A suitable hotel. Take as many taxis as you like, make sure you’re not followed. Telephone the number to the office of Colonel de Graaf in the Marnixstraat. Reverse the number.’

  ‘Reverse it?’ Maggie sounded shocked. ‘You mean you don’t trust the police either?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by “either” but I don’t trust anyone, period. Once you’ve booked in, go look for Astrid Lemay. She’ll be home — you have the address — or in the Balinova. Tell her she’s to come to stay at your hotel till I tell her it’s safe to move.’

  ‘But her brother—’

  ‘George can stay where he is. He’s in no danger.’ I couldn’t remember later whether that statement was the sixth or seventh major mistake I’d made in Amsterdam. ‘She is. If she objects, tell her you’re going, on my authority, to the police about George.’

  ‘But why should we go to the police—’

  ‘No reason. But she’s not to know that. She’s so terrified that at the very mention of the word “police”—’

  ‘That’s downright cruel,’ Maggie interrupted severely.

  ‘Fiddlesticks!’ I shouted and banged the phone back on its rest.

  One minute later I was back in the warehouse and this time I had leisure to have a longer and closer look at the two proprietors. Both of them were almost caricatures of the foreigner’s conception of the typical Amsterdamer. They were both very big, very fat, rubicund and heavily jowled men who, in the first brief introduction I had had to them, had had their faces deeply creased in lines of good-will and joviality, an expression that was now conspicuously lacking in both. Evidently, de Graaf had become impatient even with my very brief absence and had started the proceedings without me. I didn’t reproach him and, in return, he had the tact not to enquire how things had gone with me. Both Muggenthaler and Morgenstern were still standing in almost the identical positions in which I’d left them, gazing at each other in consternation and dismay and complete lack of understanding. Muggenthaler, who was holding a paper in his hand, let it fall to his side with a gesture of total disbelief.

  ‘A search warrant.’ The overtones of pathos and heart-break and tragedy would have moved a statue to tears; had he been half his size he’d have been a natural for Hamlet.

  ‘A search warrant for Morgenstern and Muggenthaler! For a hundred and fifty years our two families have been respected, no, honoured tradesmen in the city of Amsterdam. And now this!’ He groped behind him and sank into a chair in what appeared to be some kind of stupor, the paper falling from his hand. ‘A search warrant!’

  ‘A search warrant,’ Morgenstern intoned. He, too, had found it necessary to seek an armchair. ‘A search warrant, Ernest. A black day for Morgenstern and Muggenthaler! My God! The shame of it! The ignominy of it! A search warrant!’

  Muggenthaler waved a despairingly listless hand. ‘Go on, search all you want.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know what we’re searching for?’ de Graaf asked politely.

  ‘Why should I want to know?’ Muggenthaler tried to raise himself to a momentary state of indignation, but he was too stricken. ‘In one hundred and fifty years—’

  ‘Now, now, gentlemen,’ de Graaf said soothingly, ‘don’t take it so hard. I appreciate the shock you must feel and in my own view we’re on a wild goose chase. But an official request has been made and we must go through the official motions. We have information that you have illicitly obtained diamonds—’

  ‘Diamonds!’ Muggenthaler stared in disbelief at his partner. ‘You hear that, Jan? Diamonds?’ He shook his head and said to de Graaf: ‘If you find some, give me a few, will you?’

  De Graaf was unaffected by the morose sarcasm. ‘And, much more important, diamond-cutting machinery.’

  ‘We’re crammed from floor to ceiling with diamond-cutting machinery,’ Morgenstern said heavily. ‘Look for yourselves.’

  ‘And the invoice books?’

  ‘Anything, anything,’ Muggenthaler said wearily.

  ‘Thank you for your co-operation.’ De Graaf nodded to van Gelder, who rose and left the room. De Graaf went on confidentially: ‘I apologize, in advance, for what is, I’m sure, a complete waste of time. Candidly, I’m more interested in that horrible thing dangling by a chain from your hoisting beam. A puppet.’

  ‘A what?’ Muggenthaler demanded.

  ‘A puppet. A big one.’

  ‘A puppet on a chain.’ Muggenthaler looked both flabbergasted and horrified, which is not an easy thing to achieve. ‘In front of our warehouse? Jan!’

  It wouldn’t quite be accurate to say that we raced up the stairs, for Morgenstern and Muggenthaler weren’t built along the right lines, but we made pretty good time for all that. On the third floor we found van Gelder and his men at work and at a word from de Graaf van Gelder joined u
s. I hoped his men didn’t wear themselves out looking, for I knew they’d never find anything. They’d never even come across the smell of cannabis which had hung so heavily on that floor the previous night, although I felt that the sickly-sweet smell of some powerful flower-based air-freshener that had taken its place could scarcely be described as an improvement. But it hardly seemed the time to mention it to anyone.

  The puppet, its back to us and the dark head resting on its right shoulder, was still swaying gently in the breeze. Muggenthaler, supported by Morgenstern and obviously feeling none too happy in his precarious position, reached out gingerly, caught the chain just above the hook and hauled it in sufficiently for him, not without considerable difficulty, to unhook the puppet from the chain. He held it in his arms and stared down at it for long moments, then shook his head and looked up at Morgenstern.

  ‘Jan, he who did this wicked thing, this sick, sick joke – he leaves our employment this very day.’

  ‘This very hour,’ Morgenstern corrected. His face twisted in repugnance, not at the puppet, but at what had been done to it. ‘And such a beautiful puppet!’

  Morgenstern was in no way exaggerating. It was indeed a beautiful puppet and not only or indeed primarily because of the wonderfully cut and fitted bodice and gown. Despite the fact that the neck had been broken and cruelly gouged by the hook, the face itself was arrestingly beautiful, a work of great artistic skill in which the colours of the dark hair, the brown eyes and the complexion blended so subtly and in which the delicate features had been so exquisitely shaped that it was hard to believe that this was the face of a puppet and not that of a human being with an existence and distinctive personality of her own. Nor was I the only person who felt that way.

  De Graaf took the puppet from Muggenthaler and gazed at it. ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured. ‘How beautiful. And how real, how living. This lives.’ He glanced at Muggenthaler. ‘Would you have any idea who made this puppet?’