Puzzle for Puppets

by Patrick Quentin

  Iris looked around the room. Her gaze rested on the pitiful silver slipper.

  “It seems rather awful walking out on Eulalia.”

  “Eulalia’s dead,” I said grimly. “We’re alive. And, if I have anything to say about it, we’ll stay alive and kicking—kicking straight into the lisping teeth of her murderer.”

  I went around the room just to make sure there was nothing we had missed. The puppets stared at me from their painted, moron faces. Let them stare. They didn’t bother me any more.

  I took Iris out of the apartment into the little foyer and closed the door on Eulalia Crawford’s corpse. Iris’s face was still paper pale. I put my hand under her chin and kissed her.

  “Chin up, baby. And smile. Don’t let that doorman start suspecting things.”

  We went down to the first floor in the elevator. The doorman was back in his chair, reading the newspaper. As we passed him, arm in arm, trying to look casual, he rose.

  “Going so soon, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He took a half step towards us. “Miss Crawford send me down any message?”

  Iris’s arm in mine was quivering.

  “No,” I said.

  “Then I guess she won’t be needing anything more tonight.”

  “No,” I said, “Miss Crawford won’t be needing anything more tonight.”

  The door seemed miles away. But we made it. We hurried through it out into the street.

  CHAPTER VI

  I am a law-abiding man by nature. Even if I hadn’t been, two and a half years of navy discipline would have made me so. Although I had convinced myself we were justified in walking out on Eulalia, I felt almost as guilty as if I actually had murdered her. With every step we took away from that apartment building, I expected an accusatory shout from the darkness behind us.

  Iris looked as guilty as I felt. I would have given anything for a taxi, something to rush us to the hotel, to the Beard, and ultimately to police headquarters. But there weren’t any taxis. Arm in arm, trying to act like a naval lieutenant and his girl out for a stroll, we walked to the street corner and waited there for the cable car.

  That wait was most unpleasant. My mind filled it with images of Eulalia Crawford’s face as a knife stabbed once, twice, three times, into her breast—a knife gripped in the hand of a man wearing my uniform and calling himself Lieutenant Duluth.

  At last the cable car swooped down on us, clattering to a halt. I no longer thought of it as something quaint and picturesque and exciting. It was just a means of escape.

  This time, by tacit agreement, we avoided the conspicuous seats and sat in the small, boxed-in section. While we took our places, I had the absurd sensation that guilt must be scrawled on our faces for all the world to see. But our few fellow passengers were encouragingly uninterested in us. They went on reading their papers or staring into space without so much as casting us a casual glance.

  As the car rattled on, I began to feel more secure. Iris gave me a pale little smile. I grinned back reassuringly and squeezed her hand. Everything would be all right, I told myself. Once we found the Beard, we could go to the police and legalize ourselves again. We might even have a little peace and quiet together. That’s what I told myself.

  For a time I tried to make some sense of the hocus-pocus of roses, lisps, warnings, and puppets which lay behind Eulalia’s murder. Perhaps it was all part of some international espionage drama. Or perhaps it was the closing act of some complicated personal tragedy. If this had happened to me as a civilian. I’d have been like a bloodhound on the scent. Both Iris and I had worked on some pretty mysterious affairs back East and this would have been right up our alley. But now I was a naval officer, I couldn’t go around playing amateur sleuth. As we blundered up and down hills, I concentrated completely on our own predicament.

  Although the basic facts were only too clear, I hadn’t had an opportunity to figure out just how it had all come about. As I looked back, however, I saw exactly how the pieces fitted together.

  For some reason, the man with the lisp, who was planning to murder Eulalia, had been in the St. Anton lobby that afternoon when Iris and I had played out our little comedy with Mrs. Rose. He had glimpsed Iris going up in the elevator with me and the bellhop and, naturally enough, had mistaken her for Eulalia. Presumably, he thought he might have a chance to kill her there—a chill settled on my spine as I reflected what might have happened—but, either to make sure that Iris was Eulalia or for some other motive, he called up on the house telephone before doing anything. Over the phone he learned that he had been mistaken and that Iris wasn’t Eulalia Crawford.

  But that wasn’t all he learned. In an attempt to be polite to what she thought was a friend of Eulalia’s, Iris had played straight into his hand. She had told him she was Iris Duluth, Eulalia’s cousin; she had told him we had too little time in Frisco to visit Eulalia. She had even told him I was going down the street to the Turkish bath.

  Obviously, the murderer knew that Eulalia had been warned of danger and had shut herself up in her apartment. He knew he had no chance of getting into that closely guarded fortress—as himself. But, thanks to Iris, he realized Eulalia might well let the doorman admit her own cousin-in-law, Peter Duluth.

  A little quick thinking was all he needed. He’d seen me with Iris. He knew what I looked like. It was easy for him to get to the Turkish bath ahead of me and, later, to switch his key with mine and walk off with my uniform. If he’d dared, he would probably have taken my identification papers too.

  Since Iris had told him we weren’t planning to get in touch with Eulalia, there was no risk of our barging into the picture at the wrong moment. All he had to do was to carry through his brash impersonation of me. He did, and it worked. Once he was in Eulalia’s apartment, she was at his mercy.

  I saw then that our involvement might have ended there if it hadn’t been for Iris’s telephone call from the St. Anton. That had given him the golden opportunity of elaborating what had. started merely as a trick to gain access to Eulalia’s apartment into an ingenious plan for throwing the guilt on me.

  It had all been as simple as that. Two innocent little telephone calls had brought me as near to arrest for murder as any blameless citizen was ever likely to be.

  At last the cable car dumped us at Stockton Street. We could have waited for another car to take us the four blocks to the hotel, but we decided to walk. We had hardly spoken since we left Eulalia’s. Even now, as we hurried through the gay crowds on the sidewalk, we maintained the same uneasy silence.

  That afternoon, I had been envying the San Franciscans for looking as if they were all at the peak of some personal adventure. Now I could only hope for their sakes that their adventures didn’t match up to ours.

  We reached the St. Anton and pushed through the swing doors. The familiar, animated lobby with its chandeliers and red plush curtains seemed quite unreal, a memory from some almost forgotten past when our only worry had been whether or not we could get a room.

  Anxiously we surveyed the motley throng for a glimpse of Hatch.

  Iris said: “Peter, it’ll be awful if Hatch let the Beard go.”

  A truer word was never spoken. We moved through the milling servicemen and civilians. There was no sign of Hatch. I went to the desk to see if a message had been left for us. It hadn’t.

  “He’s probably in the dining room,” I said. “After all, if the Beard’s still here, that’s where he’d be.”

  We sped down the corridor to the dining room. The strains of a rumba filtered towards us. It seemed impossible that the same orchestra could still be playing the same rumbas for the same people. We started through the tables. A headwaiter came up.

  “A table, sir?”

  “No. We’re just looking for someone.”

  We weaved our way down one side of the dance floor and up the other. Neither Hatch nor the Beard was there.

  We moved out again into the corridor.

  “We s
hould have expected it,” Iris said gloomily. “Hatch is a professional detective. He’s got his own work to do. Why should he waste an evening watching an old drunk with a beard just because a dizzy female asked him to?” She gave a peaked smile. “Well, darling, we’ve lost the Beard. We’ll never find him again.”

  I thought of Hatch’s sardonic face. Somehow I felt he was too loyal and too cagey to have walked out on us. I took Iris’s arm.

  “If I know Hatch,” I said, “he’s in the bar.”

  And he was.

  To my immense relief, I saw his massive, blue-check torso perched on a stool amid a flurry of sailors and marines.

  He saw our entrance and, elbowing through the servicemen, came towards us, drink in hand.

  “Well,” he drawled, “how’d you make out with Eulalia?”

  Iris gripped his arm. “Hatch, where’s the Beard?”

  He turned on her a pair of black, quizzical eyes. “Oh, he’s left.”

  “Left!”

  “Yeah. The redhead gave him the air. Left about a half-hour ago. Feeling no pain.”

  Iris and I exchanged a wild glance. Iris said: “You mean you let him go, Hatch? You let him walk out of here and didn’t do anything to …”

  “Hey, not so fast, lady.” Hatch winked at me. “Didn’t I promise to keep an eye on him? O.K. So I followed him.”

  I was getting familiar with Hatch’s exasperating weakness for creating suspense. There was no way of hurrying him. While Iris fidgeted, I said: “Where is he now?”

  “Up at the Green Kimono. That’s a dive in Chinatown. He’s got him a blonde now. Pouring champagne into her. Quite a guy, he is.”

  Iris spun round to me. “Peter, he may be leaving any minute. Come on. Quick.”

  “What’s the hurry?” Hatch patted her shoulder paternally. “Think I’d quit? I said I’d be here when you come back. O.K. So I called my partner Dagget from the Green Kimono. Dagget’s up there keeping an eye on your Beard. Dagget’s a dependable guy, bulldog style. Not flighty like me.” He grinned. “That Beard’s not going to shake Dagget off. No, sir.”

  Iris’s face relaxed into a radiant smile. For a moment I thought she was going to kiss him again.

  Hatch had been so intent upon impressing us with his own efficiency that I don’t think he’d looked at us until then. Now, as he glanced from one to the other of us, his eyes came suddenly alert.

  “Hey,” he said. “What’s the trouble? This Eulalia hasn’t put you on to anything, has she?”

  Until then, I hadn’t decided exactly what to do about Hatch. It was risky taking anyone into our confidence right then, but, knowing as much as he did, it would be difficult to stall him off. Besides, Hatch could be very useful to us, at least as a witness of the uniform theft, at most as an outright ally. There was something about that sour face of his. He didn’t look the type that would recoil in horror from a couple of reluctant lawbreakers. I took the plunge.

  I said: “We’re in one hell of a spot, Hatch. And we need your help.” I glanced around the thronged, noisy bar. “Since Dagget’s covering the Beard, we’ve got time to explain. Come on up to the room. We’ll tell you.”

  Still staring at us, Hatch tilted the hat a little farther back on his grizzled head.

  “O.K. You’re the boss.”

  He drained his drink and, edging between a couple of marines, put the empty glass down on the bar.

  “Let’s go.”

  The gingerbread elevator took us upstairs. I let Hatch and Iris into Room 624 and turned on a light. The crimson spread still gleamed invitingly on the huge bed. Around the mirror, the gilt cupids still stuck out their erotic behinds. They made me painfully conscious of our change in status. This room was to have been our love nest.

  What was it now?

  Hatch didn’t take off the hat. He sat down on a corner of the Madame Récamier couch and watched us.

  “O.K. Let’s hear it.”

  I told him then. told him the whole works. As he listened, he sat up straighter and straighter on the Récamier couch until I expected him to topple forward like one of Eulalia’s puppets. When I’d finished, he gave a low whistle.

  “Geez,” he said. “So you walked out on a body.”

  “What else could we have done?” asked Iris passionately. “If we hadn’t, Peter would have been arrested by now and we’d never have found the Beard.”

  “Now, now, lady.” Hatch held up his hand. “I ain’t criticizing. I figure you did the smartest thing. Needed some sharp thinking too.” A sudden, unexpected smile spread across his face. “Geez, a murder.”

  Iris snapped: “You needn’t be so pleased about it.”

  “I ain’t pleased.” Hatch looked indignant and then confidential. “You see. it’s just that—well, me and Dagget’s been doing O.K. I’ve no complaints. More work than we can handle. But it’s always been smalltime work, see? We’ve always needed something big, something like a murder to put us on the map. Now it’s come. And don’t you worry. From now on you’ve got Williams and Dagget back of you solid.”

  It was irritating to have him gloat over our misfortunes with such professional relish, but I was glad that I’d told him. There were worse things than having two private detectives rooting for you when you’re working outside the law.

  Hatch seemed to take it for granted that he was officially in charge from now on. He had disposed of the cigar in our absence. He took out a cigarette and lit it ponderously.

  “You’re in a spot all right, a real spot, and I guess you’re right. Our best bet is to get hold of this guy with a beard. We’ve got to handle him with kid gloves, though. We can’t just kidnap him and rush him off to the cops. This is a free country. If he doesn’t feel like playing ball, if we get his back up and he denies knowing anything about Eulalia—well, that’ll be. too bad.” He looked at me gloomily. “As I figure you, you’re an impetuous guy. You’d just barge in and get things screwed up. We’ve got to watch out for you.”

  Maybe he had something there. It had been my plan to jump on that drunken old goat and grab him off to police headquarters by the beard. I saw now just how fatal that might have been.

  “Yeah,” Hatch was saying, “we got to figure out a plan. And first we got to figure where we are.” He looked at Iris. “You’re this Eulalia’s cousin. Seems to me you ought to know something about this roses and elephants racket.”

  Iris shook her head. “I hadn’t seen her since we were kids. All I know is that she was in some sort of scandal with an Italian. I don’t know what it was all about or where of when or anything.”

  “An Italian, eh?” Hatch pondered. “What is it again the guy with a beard said? The white rose …”

  “The white rose and the red rose mean blood,” put in Iris. “Then he said: ‘I warned you on page eighty-four.’”

  Hatch grimaced. “We’re not going to get any place with that stuff.” He glanced at me. “Show me that letter you snitched, Lieutenant. That was a risky thing you did—stealing material evidence. You could get into real trouble for that. But we got it, so O.K., let’s see if it can help us.”

  I’d almost forgotten that unfinished letter of Eulalia’s. As I pulled it out of my pocket, I remembered that there was still a paragraph we had not read.

  I sat down next to Hatch on the Récamier couch. Iris dropped at my side. Both of them craned over my elbows as I smoothed the letter out.

  Hatch read the inscription. “Lina,” he said. “Who’s Lina?”

  “Some friend of hers,” I said. “Eulalia was planning to send me around to her. I guess she figured this Lina could help her somehow.”

  We read through the first paragraph which Iris and I had already seen at Eulalia’s apartment—that paragraph with its undercurrent of hysterical terror and its ironical eagerness for “Lieutenant Duluth’s” arrival.

  We came to the second paragraph which, in the stress of the moment, Iris and I had not read.

  This is my one chance of getting in touch w
ith you in time. I only hope and pray that you’ve been warned too. If you haven’t been warned, for God’s sake take care. Stay in the house. Don’t let anyone in—anyone. There’s danger, Lina, terrible danger for all of us. The red rose and the white rose are out and the …

  At this point there were only three more words, but Eulalia’s pen had been shaking so violently that they were almost illegible. We all peered down, trying to decipher the crabbed scrawl.

  “The red rose and the white rose are out,” said Iris, “and the … the something is opening. Those are the last two words, Peter. Is opening.”

  I saw she was right. I struggled with the third word from the end. It began with a c.

  “Crocus!” Iris and I said the word simultaneously.

  All three of us stared at each other.

  “The red rose and the white rose are out and the crocus is opening,” said Iris.

  There it was again, that crazy fairy-tale gibberish which the Beard had used. Only now it was even crazier. The red rose—the white rose—the opening crocus … I thought of the blood-red roses scattered so bizarrely over Eulalia’s body. What could there be about those innocent flowers to inspire so much mortal terror in Eulalia Crawford?

  The red rose—the white rose—the opening crocus. It was something out of a florist’s nightmare.

  Iris’s voice broke sharply into my thoughts. “So Lina isn’t just a friend. The man or the gang or whatever it is that murdered Eulalia is going to murder Lina too. She’s in as much danger as Eulalia was.”

  Of course I saw that. And I felt an icy rush of panic. I’d walked out on Eulalia. That was all right. She was dead. Nothing could have helped her. But, in walking out on Eulalia, I’d walked out on Lina too. And not only that, I had walked out with the one piece of evidence to prove that Lina was in danger. In failing to report Eulalia’s murder to the police and losing them valuable time, I might unwittingly have signed this unknown Lina’s death warrant.