Puzzle for Puppets

by Patrick Quentin

  I rushed out into the small vestibule with the manager and Hatch after me. The bony pay clerk was still sprawled in a chair behind his cage.

  I said: “Lieutenant Duluth. My valuables.”

  He blinked. With an unendurable slowness, he fumbled in the pigeonholes behind him. “Lieutenant Duluth,”. he murmured. “Duluth. Ah … here you are.”

  He passed a brown envelope through the slit in the grille.

  “Countersign,” he began chanting again. “Just—like—you—signed—when—you—come—in.”

  He took in my civilian suit then and made a grab for the envelope.

  “Lieutenant Duluth. You ain’t a lieutenant.”

  “It’s all right,” put in the manager quickly. “There’s been a little mistake.”

  I tore open the envelope. To my infinite relief, all my things were safely inside.

  Hatch, thumbs thrust inside the scarlet suspenders, was staring at the pay clerk with his particular air of seedy authority.

  “Listen,” he said, “someone’s stole this Lieutenant’s uniform. That means some guy came here in that suit”—he pointed at me—“and left some time ago in a naval lieutenant’s uniform. If you got an eye in your head, you should’ve noticed something like that.”

  The clerk stared at my brown suit and looked flustered. “I don’t reckon I … Wait. Maybe I do. Yeah. Just now, not fifteen minutes back, a naval lieutenant come out. He kind of had a handkerchief up to his face like he had a cold or something. He comes right by me and I calls after him: Hey, what about your valuables? Lieutenants, they always has their passes and things with ’em—all the servicemen, they always leave valuables with me. But this guy, this lieutenant, he just calls over his shoulder: I don’t have any valuables. Just what I got with me. And then he scrams out real fast.”

  Hatch said: “What did he look like?”

  “I couldn’t rightly tell you. As I said, he had a handkerchief up to his face like. I guess he was about the same build as the Lieutenant here and …”

  “Didn’t you notice anything about him? Not his voice? Not nothing?”

  “His voice.” The clerk resitated. “Yeah. Seems to me I did notice his voice. It was kind of soft and funny, like he had a lisp or something.”

  I was so pleased to get my wallet back that I wasn’t paying any of them much attention. I turned to the manager.

  “Listen, I haven’t time to waste making a fuss. You know my name. I’m registered up the street at the St. Anton. Call me if anything shows up. Otherwise, forget it.”

  The manager looked relieved. But Hatch’s gloomy gaze fixed my face.

  “Not so fast,” he said. “Eighty bucks is eighty bucks. I don’t like to see no one get screwed like that.”

  “Forget it.”

  Hatch chewed his gum reflectively and pulled me aside. “Listen, Lieutenant, I don’t normally bother myself with things like this. Chicken feed, it is to me. But right now—well, I come to this bath following up a case and I didn’t get the lead I expected. I got a free evening. Just on account of I thought you were a dope and I guess you’re not a dope, I’ll make a stab at getting that uniform back for you.”

  I stared at him. “What the hell …?”

  With a certain gloomy pride, he produced a formal printed card from his pocket and handed it to me.

  I read:

  “HATCH” WILLIAMS AND “BILL” DAGGET CONFIDENTIAL AGENTS

  “So!” I said. “A private detective. No wonder you’ve been so smart.”

  Hatch Williams lowered his lashes modestly. “With any luck I can narrow down the names in that register. There’s plenty of leads yet. I got my contacts. I got my methods. I’m not promising nothing, understand. But—well, is it a deal?”

  I looked at his mournful face with its black, embittered eyes. Hatch Williams, I felt, had more than a sporting chance of getting anything if he set his mind to it.

  “O.K.” I said. “And, as for the fee…”

  “There won’t be no fee.” Hatch forced his reluctant features into a shy grin. “I got a kid in the navy myself.”

  “But …”

  “There won’t be no fee. Just tell me where you’re located and I’ll keep in touch with you. You put it all out of your mind. Have a good time. Let me do the worrying from now on.”

  Mrs. Rose. Hatch Williams. San Francisco went in for a fine type of civilian. I patted his shoulder and said: “That’s darn decent of you, Hatch.” I told him my room number at the St. Anton and, eager to get back to Iris, hurried out into the street.

  I was half way up Stockton, feeling foolish and guilty in my disreputable brown suit, when something the pay clerk had said came rushing back to me.

  The clerk had said that the imposter who had run off with my uniform had spoken in a voice that was kind of soft and funny, like he had a lisp. A vivid memory rose of Iris as she sat on the bed, telling me about the unknown man who had called her from the hotel lobby. There was something about his voice. He had a horrid little lisp.

  As those two reflections came together in my mind, I had the sensation of something vaguely sinister lying just beyond my grasp.

  Then common sense reasserted itself with the reflection that thousands of men in San Francisco must lisp.

  “Nonsense,” I said to myself.

  That was the second time in so many hours that I had said: Nonsense.

  CHAPTER III

  Back at the St. Anton, I tapped on the door of room 624 and called: “Honey, it’s me.”

  The door opened. My wife had turned back to the rococo French vanity and was doing something exotic in the mirror. Consequently, she didn’t see my entrance.

  Iris is given to looking more beautiful than anyone else, but that night she was looking more beautiful than herself. She had changed into a full-skirted black evening gown which covered very little territory above the hips. Her back and bosom gleamed smooth as ivory. She was wearing absolutely no ornament—nothing but the cream-thick gardenia, attached to a black velvet ribbon which circled her throat.

  “Thanks for the lovely gardenia, darling. It’s just what this dress needed.” She shifted the angle of the flower the fraction of an inch. “Well, lost your cold?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She turned then. Her eyes batted in astonishment at the monstrous civilian suit.

  “Good grief!” she exclaimed. “Is the war over?”

  I looked hangdog. I said: “The cold wasn’t the only thing I lost at the Turkish bath.”

  I told her everything then—everything, that is, except the coincidental lisp of the uniform thief. With her erratic passion for mystery, that lisp, tied to the lisping telephone call, would have been more than enough to send her into a frenzy of speculation. And I wasn’t going to spend our week-end speculating. I was still a man of one idea.

  Luckily, from the way I told it, the story merely seemed funny to Iris. She laughed rudely at the picture of me upbraiding the manager in my outraged nakedness. Then a shadow of worry passed across her face.

  “Darling, you won’t get into trouble, will you? There isn’t any Naval Regulation, page 42, paragraph 17b, with frightful penalties for losing uniforms? With your promotion and …”

  “So far as I know, I’m safe from court-martial. Anyhow, we’ve got Hatch on the job. My own private private detective.”

  My wife shook a drop of perfume on to her finger and rubbed it pensively behind her ear.

  “Men get all the breaks,” she sighed. “If I’d gone to a Turkish bath, I’d never have met anything as exciting as a naked private detective—never in a million years.”

  “You’ll probably meet Hatch. He said he’d get in touch with me later.”

  “I can just picture him,” said Iris dreamily. “A lovely squawking check suit and one of those mouths you talk out of the corner of and a cigar.”

  “I can’t vouch for the cigar. Otherwise, that’s Hatch.”

  Iris sighed. I couldn’t go on looking at all t
hat beauty without doing something about it. I slid her into my arms, kissing her below the gardenia.

  “You’re gorgeous, baby. You’re something any private detective would be proud to meet in a Turkish bath.”

  “You mean that? You’re not just trying to make me feel better?”

  “Idiot.”

  “The dress, Peter. I bought it especially for your leave.” I felt along her shoulders with my lips. She gave a little contented gasp. Then she drew herself away.

  “Darling, that suit! It’s like being kissed by the man who reads the gas meter.” She crinkled her nose. “You might have picked a better-dressed thief. Get out of it into your uniform. I hung it up in the closet.”

  I was only too glad to part company with that suit. I yanked it off and the shirt and shoes after it. I tossed them all down on the floor and took a shower to wash away all memories of it. When I came back, Iris had picked up the jacket and was going through the pockets rather furtively.

  “What’s the idea?” I said.

  “Oh, I was just looking to see whether there was anything in it. Anything to give a clue.”

  “We’ve already looked,” I said.

  Starting from scratch, I dressed in my own clothes. I was quite proud of my glamor uniform. In fact, when I was through, I felt I looked pretty smooth. Luckily I had new shoes and a new cap, too.

  While I dressed, Iris pottered around the discarded suit. I didn’t like the symptoms. I took her arm and drew her away from temptation.

  “Listen, baby,” I said. “Promise me something.”

  She looked innocent and remote. “Why, yes, darling.”

  “Don’t get a brilliant idea for catching uniform thieves.”

  Iris looked even more innocent. “But, of course. How absurd. Why on earth would I want to chase around after a uniform?”

  “Swear?”

  Her fingers went up caressing the insignia of my lapels. “Gee, but you’re sharp.” She twisted away and bent down, catching her skirt in both hands and lifting it to her hips.

  “Look, Lieutenant, nylons.”

  I said, staring: “Do you want any dinner?”

  “I’m simply starved.”

  “Then drop that skirt or we’ll never get out of here.”

  Meekly, my wife let the folds of black taffeta slide down to the floor. She put her hand through my arm and we started towards the door.

  On the threshold she paused, throwing a glance over her bare shoulder at the gilt frieze around the mirror.

  “Don’t worry,” she murmured to the cupids. “We’ll be back.”

  We had cocktails at a table by the dance floor in the dining room of the hotel. If possible, the St. Anton dining room with its Jacobean panelling and its huge crystal chandeliers was even more Old San Francisco than the vestibule. It made a gesture to the twentieth century, however, in the form of a rumba orchestra. It was a good one, too. Iris and I danced between cocktails and, every now and then, during a meal consisting of all the most wicked and expensive things we could order. Quite a lot of other people were there, eating and dancing, but I didn’t notice any of them, except maybe to feel sorry for them for not having Iris. We had brandy with our coffee. Then we were back dancing again.

  “Happy birthday?” I asked, veering Iris past a dowager who should never have been rumbaing in the first place.

  “Ecstatic,” she said. “Darling, we do a mean rumba, don’t we?”

  “Very mean.”

  ‘Twenty-six,” murmured Iris. She glanced at me suddenly. The scent of the gardenia seemed to come from her smudgy lashes. “Peter, do I look twenty-six?”

  “Twenty-seven, isn’t it?”

  “Beast.” Iris slid close against me and our rumba became intimate.

  It was then that I saw the Beard.

  I saw him over Iris’s shoulder. He was sitting alone at a table close to the dance floor, a massive, imperial gentleman dressed in elegant grey with a red carnation in his lapel. His Jovian dignity was enough in itself to attract attention, but his principal feature by far was a black curly beard which sprouted with magnificent vigor above the red carnation.

  At his side on the white tablecloth was an empty champagne bottle. He looked as if it hadn’t been the first champagne bottle that had been there that evening. He was gazing at it with high solemnity while weaving slightly in his chair. Iris and I had a friend in New York who was a sober and distinguished psychiatrist. This man might have been Dr. Lenz’s reprobate brother.

  We were only a couple of feet away from him when he looked up from the champagne bottle and saw us. At least it was Iris he saw. Naturally. Somewhere above the beard, his eyes lit up. The beard waggled in a roguish satyr smile. One heavy lid lowered at Iris in a ponderous wink.

  The maze of dancers forced us even closer to him. He was still peering at Iris. Suddenly the goatist leer left his face. Another expression took its place, a kind of astonishment, as if something about Iris had shocked him into momentary sobriety.

  “You …!” he said.

  The tone of his voice made us pause in front of him. I looked at him. Iris looked at him.

  Ready to be belligerent, I said: “Iris, do you know this unattractive gentleman?”

  Iris peered deep into the whiskers. “Not unless the beard’s false and it’s Mr. Finklestein.” She beamed at him. “Are you Mr. Finklestein of Magnificent Studios in disguise?”

  He either ignored or was unable to grasp this remark. He tried to get up, sank back, and then did get up. He leaned across the table towards us. A large finger, hovering precariously over the empty champagne bottle, pointed at Iris. Very slowly, he said: “Are you mad being out toni’ of all ni’s—with your picture ri’ there in the Chronicle? I warned you on page eighty-four. Warned you, l’il fool.”

  That was an odd thing for a complete stranger—even a completely drunk stranger—to say. He was obviously up to the gills in champagne and a right-thinking and clean-living husband should have rumbaed his wife away then. But I didn’t. There was something about him. I think it was the Ancient Mariner quality of the burgeoning black bead and the hypnotic stare.

  He swayed slightly. The beard bobbed in a defined little hiccup. With immense effort, he managed: “The white rose! The red rose!” He paused. “The roses mean—blood.”

  The music went: Pomtipomtipompompom. The dancers writhed by us. No one seemed to be paying any attention. The Beard was still staring at Iris. She stared back, her eyes fascinated.

  Tentatively, she said: “The white rose and the red rose mean blood. I’m sure that’s terribly nice for them. Go on.”

  “The whi’ rose.” The Beard clutched for his empty champagne glass and lifted it to his lips. I don’t think he realized it was empty. “The whi’ rose and the red rose—out. They’re out. You know they’re out. Warned you.”

  He dropped the glass and raised one of his large hands. The gesture practically toppled him forward into the champagne bottle. Pointing his ambassadorial finger again, he said: “Life or death for you, li’l lady. Musht realize that. Life or death.” He weaved. “You’ve forgotten. The elephant hasn’t forgotten. Never—th’elephant.”

  Riddles are awfully entertaining. The Sphinx got a long way on a couple of them. But I was beginning to realize just what effect this maudlin old man was going to have on my wife in her current mood. A mysterious telephone call and a stolen uniform were nothing to this. I tried to rumba Iris away, but I was too late. Agog, she broke away from me and crossed to the Beard.

  “The red rose and the white rose mean blood,” she said. “And the elephant never forgets. Whose elephant?” The Beard looked vague. “Life or death.”

  “Life or death for me?” asked Iris. “Or life or death for the elephant?”

  The Beard looked vaguer. “Life or death,” he muttered. “Mushn’t die, young lady. Too buriful to die.”

  Slowly, like a hillside settling down after an earth tremor, he sank back into his chair. His eyes went far away and sa
d. He hiccuped again, daintily.

  “Tell me.” Iris’s voice was pleading now. “What is it? What are you trying to tell me?”

  The Beard tittuped up and down. One eye, opening craftily like a basilisk’s, stared at her with a look of complete non-recognition. He had obviously forgotten us.

  I seized my opportunity. Grabbing Iris, I pushed her out on to the dance floor and steered her away from the Beard through a marine lieutenant and a blonde and an army major and a brunette.

  For a moment she let me lead her without objecting. I held her close, trying to remember that it was her birthday and we were having a wonderful time. But somehow that filthy old man with the beard had tarnished the magic.

  Suddenly Iris said: “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “What?”

  “You’re thinking that I know that man.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course I don’t. What, on earth would I be doing with a beard like that in my past? He must have mistaken me for someone else.” Iris’s green eyes were aglow now with an unholy light. “Peter! The red rose and the white rose mean blood. I warned you on page eighty-four. The elephant hasn’t forgotten. Life or death. Isn’t it wonderful? It’s the sort of movie I’d love to play in. Darling, let’s go back and get some more.”

  “No,” I said.

  “But, Peter, darling, please…”

  I held her closer. “No beard, no roses.” The scent of her gardenia was wonderful. “Tonight you belong to me. Remember? Besides, it was all a lot of drunken gibberish.”

  Iris shook her head at that. “He was tight, darling. Of course he was. He was stinking. But it wasn’t just the champagne. You could tell that. It all meant something. I’m sure of it. Life or death.”

  “Stop saying life or death,” I said pettishly.

  “I certainly shan’t stop if I don’t want to,” said my wife.

  I tried another approach. “There you go again,” I said. “You’re always the same. Just as soon as any man makes a pass at you …”

  “A pass! Who made a pass at me, I’d like to know?”

  “That old goat.”

  “A pass, indeed!”