Puzzle for Puppets

by Patrick Quentin

  Apart from a scattering of soldiers and sailors asleep in the overstuffed chairs, the vestibule was empty. No one saw me, I was fairly sure, as I slipped in and up the stairs. I climbed to the sixth floor and hurried down the deserted corridors to Room 624. Dispiritedly, I saw that no light showed through the transom. I tried the door. It was locked. I tapped on it. But there was no answer.

  Neither Iris nor Hatch and Bill had come back yet.

  Although I had made such a hopeless mess of my own assignment, I had been pathetically sure that Iris would be successful with hers. Anxiety for my wife flooded through me now. What if the Beard, instead of being on our side, was on the side of the roses and had somehow managed to give Bill Dagget the slip and whisk Iris away? That thought had a double sting to it—the sting of losing our last possible ally and the even sharper sting of danger for Iris.

  I paced up and down the corridor until fear of awakening some of the other guests sent me in humiliating retreat into a communal men’s bathroom across the passage from Room 624. I had spent twenty jittery minutes there when I heard footsteps outside and the incalculably welcome sound of my wife’s voice. It was soft and coaxing and, oddly enough, she was crooning: “Come, Pussy. This way, Pussy. That’s a good Pussy.”

  I stepped out of the bathroom to be confronted with a sight worthy of a laudanum hallucination. My wife, tired and pale, was opening the door of Room 624. And the Beard was with her. He still progressed with the dignity of a Supreme Court justice, but, defying every normal law of locomotion, he was progressing on all fours. While Iris made a traffic-cop gesture, he proceeded into the room, one large hand padding forward and then the other, as his substantial rump followed soberly behind.

  Iris saw me and her face relaxed. “Peter, darling, thank God you’re here.”

  She grabbed my hand and, pulling me into the room after the Beard, closed the door behind us.

  She turned on the light. The Beard maneuvered into reverse and stared up at me. The solemn face with its majestic black outcrop of whiskers looked unutterably wrong weaving there six inches above the carpet.

  I gulped and said: “What’s this?”

  Iris shrugged wearily. “He’s been this way ever since we came out of the elevator. He thinks he’s a pussycat.”

  Pussycat … the cat! I remembered what Lina had said. “At least you’ve got him. That’s the important part. Where have you been?”

  “All over Chinatown from one dive to another. Champagne, champagne, champagne.” Iris wrung her hands. “Peter, what can we do with him?”

  “Haven’t you got anything out of him?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s hopeless. I don’t even know his name. He—he just says to call him Pussy!”

  “Pussy!” said the Beard gravely and started a laborious attempt to sit up on his haunches. Fantastically, although I had never seen a more drunken man, he had not lost one particle of his ambassadorial aplomb.

  “Where’s Dagget?” I said.

  “Oh, he followed along faithfully.” Iris gestured at the Beard. “Pussy never caught on. Bill’s in the lobby now. I think he’s going to wait down there for Hatch. Then they’ll both be up.” Her eyes changed their expression. “Lina isn’t here. That—that means you couldn’t find her?”

  I hated doing this to her after all she’d been through.

  “Lina,” I said, “is dead.”

  “Dead!” Iris gasped. “You mean you found her dead like—like Eulalia?”

  “She was alive when I got there. They killed her right under my nose.”

  Iris’s face was without hope. “And the—the roses?”

  “Of course, the roses. Only this time they were white. White roses.”

  “Peter!”

  The Beard, who had been squatting beside us, suddenly sat down with a thud on the floor.

  “We’d better get him on the bed out of the way,” I snapped. “I can’t stand beards all over the carpet.”

  Between us, we managed to haul and push him on to the crimson bedspread. He seemed to like it. He nestled back against the pillows with a sigh and closed his eyes.

  Iris turned to me, taking both my hands. “Now, darling, tell me everything. Don’t worry. I can’t feel worse than I do.”

  I told her the whole miserable saga of Wawona Avenue, bringing in Mrs. Rose’s picture and everything. My wife listened intently. When I was through, she said: “So there are two murderers.”

  “At least two. Probably a dozen or a score or a gross.”

  She put her arms around me.

  “You mustn’t feel bad, Peter. You did all you could.”

  “I did fine,” I said gloomily. “Lina’s dead. I’m compromised worse with the police. And that’s not all. There are other people in danger too, not just Eulalia and Lina.”

  We both stared at the Beard.

  “He’s our only hope now,” said Iris.

  Ponderous lids still covered his eyes. He lay luxuriously back against the crimson spread, his arms limp at his sides, his mouth half open.

  “To hell with kid gloves,” said Iris suddenly.

  She leaned over, grabbed his shoulders, and started to shake him with an exasperation which must have been building up ever since they left the Green Kimono together.

  His eyes popped open.

  “You’ve got to listen.” Iris was still shaking him passionately. “Lina’s dead. Eulalia’s dead. The red rose and the white rose. Someone’s murdered Eulalia Crawford and Lina Oliver Wendell Holmes Brown.”

  The Beard looked intelligent. His eyes cleared. His whiskers took upon themselves all the gravity in the world. He opened his mouth.

  Iris let her hands drop from his shoulders. We leaned over him tensely.

  “Yes, yes,” breathed Iris. “Say it.”

  He pushed his face even closer to purs. His mouth opened even wider.

  “Miaow,” he said.

  He giggled then—a girlish giggle.

  Iris stamped her foot. “You’ve got to help us. Eulalia and Lina are murdered.”

  “Eulalia,” repeated the Beard. “Lina.”

  “Go on. Eulalia. Lina.”

  “Eulalia, Lina—Zelide, Edwina,” he said. “Eulalia, Lina—Zelide and Edwina.”

  “Yes, yes,” exclaimed Iris. “Go on. Is there danger for Zelide and Edwina, too?”

  “Eulalia, Lina—Zelide, Edwina.”

  Iris glanced at me triumphantly. “Who is Zelide, Pussy?” she said. “Who—is—Zelide?”

  The Beard stared. “Zelide? A bird.”

  “A bird,” moaned Iris. “Edwina, then. Who is Edwina?”

  “ ’N’elephant,” said the Beard promptly.

  He shut his eyes again. He sighed. He gave a voluptuous yawn. He stretched both his arms and then with a grant of contentment rolled over on to bis side, curled up his legs, and started to snore.

  I grabbed bis shoulders and started to shake him again.

  “Pussy,” I said. “Pussy. Mr. Pussy. Cat. Mr. Cat.”

  It was like trying to shake sense into a sack of flour. The snores from the bed swelled in undisturbed crescendo. The Beard’s capacity for sleep seemed as Gargantuan as his capacity for champagne.

  The drunken oracle had obviously said his last say until morning.

  “Zelide and Edwina,” repeated Iris.

  “A bird and an elephant,” I snarled.

  “There must be danger for Zelide and Edwina, Peter. Whenever he says anything, it always turn out to be true.”

  “Damn Zelide and Edwina.” I didn’t care any more. I just didn’t care. It wasn’t as if the mystery ever got nearer to being solved. The red rose, the white rose, the crocus, the cat, the bird, the elephant It was just a succession of doors, one door leading to another door leading to another door leading in an endless chain to the madhouse. “Damn the bird and the elephant and the rose and the crocus. Let them all kill each other. Let a howling mob string me up on the nearest lamp-post as a mass murderer. I’m through.”r />
  Iris, in a voice that tried to be encouraging, said: “Darling, we can’t give up now. We can’t”

  “I can,” I said. I was suddenly remembering all the things that I’d wanted to happen that evening, all the exciting intimate, peaceable things that a husband on leave with his wife deserves.

  My indignation which had been simmering so long seethed over when I looked down at the Beard snoring his head off on the bed—our bed. That was the ultimate insult

  “And beyond all others,” I said, “damn this evil bearded old man.”

  I grabbed the sleeping Beard by the shoulders and dragged him off the bed. I looked around, and, half carrying, half pushing him, staggered with him to the bathroom. I lifted him full off the ground and tilted him into the tub.

  He came to rest on his back and, with a slow, sleep-drunk stirring, folded his big arms over his stomach. He looked like a corpse laid out on a marble slab.

  But he seemed to approve of the bathtub. The snores continued their symphonic rhapsody. Some satyrish dream twitched the beard in a shameless smile.

  I slammed the bathroom door on him. It did something to deaden his snores. Wearily, Iris was hanging her silver-fox wrap on the back of a chair. The gardenia at her throat had gone brown around the edges. She tugged it off and threw it into the scrapbasket.

  “Peter,” she said, “if you ever grow a beard, I’ll kill you.”

  I went to her and took her in my arms. She looked up at me from dark, mournful eyes.

  “What are we going to do?” she breathed. “Peter, what are we going to do?”

  I kissed her. Knowing she was so near the breaking point made me tough and aggressive again. I was hopelessly involved in two murders. O.K. There was still enough kick in me to fight back.

  “We’ll get out of it somehow, honey,” I said. “If you think we’ll let a bunch of flowers and animals lick us, you’re crazy.”

  Puny as that challenge to fate was, it seemed to satisfy her. She grinned.

  “Yes,” she said. A faraway look came into her eyes. Softly she chanted: “May the rain splash and the winds blow, we’ll rout the bloody bastards. Ho!”

  I stared. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

  She shook her head. “Darling, it’s something I read in a book when I was a child. It used to fascinate me. Eulalia and I spent one whole summer reciting it in the hay barn out at Grandfather’s farm.” She gave a wry grimace. “Poor Eulalia, the bloody bastards got her, ho, didn’t they?”

  A tap sounded at the door and I heard Hatch’s voice in a husky: “Hey, Lieutenant.”

  I went to the door and opened it. Hatch came in, followed by the silent, patient bulk of Bill Dagget. In spite of the bad report I had to turn in, it was a great relief to see the boss. Hatch, for him, looked almost happy.

  “Well,” he said, “I spent a session at police headquarters. Not a word come in on Eulalia yet. That means we’re safe till morning at least.” He turned to Iris. “Bill here tells me you got the Beard. Good work, lady.” He glanced around the room. “Where is he?”

  Iris gestured to the bathroom. “Listen,” she said. “He’s passed out in the tub.”

  “Get any more dope out of him?”

  My wife shook her head. “Not until just now. Then he said two more names. Zelide, Edwina. Hatch, I think they’re in danger too.”

  “Two more, eh?” Hatch’s face was grave. He turned quickly to me. “Where’s Lina? Couldn’t you get her to come?”

  “No,” I said. “I couldn’t find a handy hearse.”

  I’d become used to telling that Lina Oliver Wendell Holmes Brown story now. I rolled it off to Hatch. Both he and Bill Dagget listened with expressions of stunned incredulity.

  When I was through, Hatch sat down on the edge of the bed and pushed the hat on to the back of his head. “

  Geez,” he said. “Geez, but this puts you in a spot.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m hardened to anything now. When they get me on to the hot seat, I won’t even bum.”

  Iris was watching Hatch with eagemesss, as if she had great faith in his ability to cope with hopeless situations. “Hatch, what do you think about Mrs. Rose being mixed up in this?”

  Hatch sat a moment in silence. Then he threw out his hands in a gesture denoting bafflement. “You got me there, lady.”

  “And Zelide and Edwina? How are we going to find out who they are? How can we try and save them?”

  “You got me there too.” Hatch leaned forward, propping his jaw on his fists. “Let’s face it,” he said. “I’ve been a flop. I came in on this with you. I did my best.

  I figured what we did was the thing to do. But now …” He shrugged. “Two more dames in danger. Lina dead. The Beard passed out. The Lieutenant here framed in another murder. Lady, I guess I better go back to the small time. I guess I’m just not up to murder.”

  He looked so forlorn that Iris went to him and put her hand on his arm. “Don’t feel bad about it, Hatch. You did everything you could.”

  “Yeah. And look where it’s got us.”

  Even the Napoleons of this world, it seemed, have their moments of uncertainty. Hatch’s was short-lived, however. His mouth forming into a grim line, he got up from the bed. He stood in his favorite football-coach stance, legs apart, hands on his lapels.

  “Listen,” he said, “so we’re in a spot. So we face up to it. This Zelide, this Edwina, maybe they are two other dames in danger or maybe they’re just something the old drunk cooked up. Whichever it is, we’re not going to be able to do anything about them. O.K. Forget them. Concentrate on us. We’ve got the Beard. In a couple of hours, when he’s slept off the champagne, he’ll be sober enough to talk. There’s four of us, me and Bill and you and the Lieutenant. O.K. We all stick together. We back each other up. We take the Beard down to headquarters. We tell everything. We still got a pretty good chance to get the Lieutenant out of serious trouble.” He looked around. “How about that?”

  Just how far out of serious trouble it would get me I wasn’t prepared to say. But there was nothing else to do. Having failed in our maximum objective, we would have to fall back on a less ambitious plan. As for Zelide and Edwina—since I seemed incapable of saving damsels in distress, I could at least abandon my habit of hanging around and watching them get stabbed.

  “O.K.,” I said. “I guess that’s the best bet.”

  Hatch glanced at his watch. “Four-fifteen” he murmured. “With any luck, neither body’ll be discovered before nine at the earliest and the Beard needs a couple of hours to sleep it off. O.K. Bill and I have a shake-down around the corner. We’re all going to want some rest. You two get into that bed and get some shut-eye. Bill and I’ll be back here by eight. We’ll wake the Beard up. Then we go to the cops.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  Hatch patted my arm. He gave me a grudging grin of appreciation. “At least you can take it, Lieutenant,” he said.

  With a gloomy nod to Iris, he went out into the passage. Bill Dagget went after him.

  I shut the door on them and turned back to Iris. Snores still soared from the bathroom.

  “At least there’s something to be said for this birthday,” I remarked. “We’re never going to forget it.”

  “Nor will anyone else,” sighed Iris. “It’ll go ringing down the centuries.”

  I was so tired that even the modest prospect of four hours’ sleep was immeasurably pleasant. Iris yawned and started to slip out of her black evening gown. I peeled off the jacket of my ill-starred civilian suit and threw it on the floor. I stepped out of the pants, inwardly cursing the red rose and the white rose and the crocus for electing to commit their murders in my uniform. I threw the pants on the floor too. Then, just because the navy had trained me that way, I picked the suit up again and took it to the closet.

  I pulled open the door. I raised my hand for a hanger. I blinked. I blinked again. Then the whole world seemed to come tumbling down around my ears.

&nb
sp; My fancy uniform was hanging where I had left it when I changed into the civilian suit. But it wasn’t hanging alone. Next to it, dangling neatly from the crossbar, was another naval lieutenant’s uniform.

  My hand as unsteady as a brandy drunk’s, I pulled that second uniform out of the closet. I grabbed for the pants and examined the left leg.

  Just about six inches from the bottom, I saw the familiar small triangular tear.

  It was mad. It was quite impossible. But there it was.

  Like a most unwelcome chicken, my stolen uniform had come home to roost.

  CHAPTER X

  Iris glanced at me standing there with the uniform in my hand. She joined me, looked in the closet, and saw the other uniform hanging inside.

  “It can’t be,” she exclaimed.

  “It is,” I said. “A guy knows his own uniform.”

  “But it’s just not possible.”

  I held up the pants, showing her the tear. On a hunch I examined the right sleeve of the jacket. A dark stain, still not completely dry, smeared the cuff. That clinched it

  “There’s even blood on the sleeve,” I said.

  Iris peered at the stain. She was still having trouble speaking. I didn’t blame her. “But, Peter, you saw Lina’s murderer wearing it.”

  “He had a car. There was plenty of time for him to go home, wherever that is, change and bring the uniform up here before I got back on the trolley.”

  “But—but how could he get in here?”

  I had figured that out too. “There was a key to the room in the pocket. I’d forgotten about it. We had two keys to begin with. I took one to the Turkish bath. I didn’t bother to check it with my valuables. It was in the uniform when the man with a lisp stole it.”

  I started to search the pockets of the uniform. The key was not there.

  Iris said: “Then they’ve got a key to our room. They can come in whenever they want to.”

  I crossed to the door. There was a knob that worked a safety catch. I turned it. At least I could prevent our being murdered in our sleep.

  I watched my wife soberly. The roses and crocuses weren’t satisfied with pinning their murder on me. They were brazen enough to come and go in our room as if they owned us body and soul. Our every move seemed to be supervised by these mysterious murderers. They could jerk us at will like puppets—like those great, sprawling puppets which Eulalia had fashioned and worked so expertly.