Puzzle for Puppets

by Patrick Quentin

  Fate, it seemed, was not through with me yet. Having delivered one straight left to the jaw, it had suddenly come up with this second, smashing punch.

  I stared at Iris and Hatch. “See what it means? If this Lina gets killed, we’ll have her death on our hands. We can’t carry this thing through any longer. We’ve got to go to the police.”

  Iris was hovering distractedly. Hatch seemed the only one to be taking this new development in his stride.

  “OK.,” he said. “So you throw in your hand and go to the cops. What happens? If this Lina’s in danger, she’s in danger right this minute—now. How long d’you suppose it’ll take you to explain all this crazy setup to the cops? First they’ll go to Eulalia’s and discover the body. Second they’ll talk to the doorman. Third, they’ll think you killed Eulalia. Fourth—” he shrugged. “The cops, they got to do things by the book. By the time they get around to Lina, these guys could have bumped her off a dozen times over.”

  “Hatch is right,” said Iris.

  Of course Hatch was right.

  “Somehow,” went on my wife, “we’ve got to get Lina ourselves.”

  “Lina,” I said. “Lina, U.S.A. She’s going to be a cinch to locate.”

  “At least we know she’s in San Francisco, Peter. Eulalia was going to have you take the letter to her. She must live here somewhere.”

  “I stand corrected,” I said. “Lina—San Francisco.”

  Hatch had risen. He knocked the hat forward over his eyes. He looked very dour and very efficient.

  “Pretty straightforward to me,” he said. “We want to locate this Lina. O.K. Who knows her name and where she lives? This guy with the beard. If he knows about the setup with Eulalia, then he knows the setup with Lina. What are we waiting for? Let’s get to the Green Kimono.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Iris. “The Beard.”

  I folded the letter back into my pocket. I grabbed up my hat. Iris and I got too excited. That was our trouble. Hatch’s stolidity was worth its weight in—roses.

  “Come on,” I said. “To the Green Kimono.”

  To the Green Kimono. It sounded like something from an old-time Chinese melodrama with booming gongs. Somewhere behind the Panzer division of anxieties that was plaguing me, a vestige of humor stirred. To think that I, a one-time figure in Broadway’s theater world, should be sweeping out of a hotel room with a corny exit line like that.

  To the Green Kimono.

  CHAPTER VII

  It was exactly eleven-fifteen when we turned down the dark alley off Columbus Avenue which led to the Green Kimono. We had had to walk, but it had not been far. The Beard, as restricted as we by transport problems, had been forced to pursue his champagne orgy in a limited area.

  Even in wartime, Chinatown managed to keep some of its mystery. The shadowy figures who slipped by us in the alley moved with supple grace which, in spite of their mundane Western clothes, marked them as a race apart. An occasional tinkle of Chinese chatter trailed out from behind closed shutters. Somewhere a phonograph was playing reedy, jangled music. Its rhythm, pulsing on the night air, dissolved reality into a dreamlike illusion of old Shanghai.

  Somehow there was glamour and I found myself reacting to it. The tawdriness, the acute personal danger seemed to fade from our predicament, giving way to a specious sense of adventure and romance.

  Iris’s arm was through mine. I squeezed it encouragingly and she returned the squeeze.

  A grimy green lantern glowed dimly in the darkness ahead. As we approached it, I could see that it hung over a heavy door protected by a sheet of metal from which stood out the bas-relief figure of a Chinese girl in a kimono.

  Hatch opened the door and a shaft of light cut into the darkness of the alley. The quiet throb of American jazz from a jukebox inside broke the spell.

  Nothing can be done about making a bar Oriental. This one, definitely Occidental, with carved mahogany and mirrors, stretched down one side of the room. A sprinkling of low divans and pallid Chinese murals did what they could to reinforce the desired atmosphere. At the rear, a curtained arch screened off an inner room, hinting at darker mysteries beyond.

  As we entered, I let my glance move along the handful of customers at the bar. Rather uneasily I saw that the Beard was not one of them. A couple of very young sailors were drinking Coca-Colas and trying to look wicked. A small Chinese man crouched over a beer. A blonde with an air of faded gentility sat sipping a highball with a woe-begone Chihuahua perched on a stool at her side. There was another man, a man in a dark-blue suit, who sat nearest to the door, with his massive back to us.

  Hatch led us to the broad back and tapped it on the shoulder. The man swung round irascibly and then, seeing Hatch, broke into a slow smile.

  Hatch gestured to him with some pride. “Meet my partner. This is Dagget. Bill Dagget. Bill to you.”

  Iris and I shook hands with the second half of Williams and Dagget, Confidential Agents. Bill Dagget looked like a handsome, sulky ox. He was younger than Hatch; his dark eyes were large and placid, and his broad mouth, working over a piece of gum, had the stubborn patience of a cow chewing the cud. There was nothing gentle about his stolidity, however. He was, I felt, an ox that could very quickly change into a rampant bull when roused. I approved of his muscles. They were as solid as Hatch’s common sense.

  Bill Dagget seemed to be a man of few words and fewer curiosities. Although his partner had dumped him there to watch the Beard, he was taking it all merely as something that came in a day’s work. He jerked his head towards the curtain that screened off the inner room.

  “The guy with the beard,” he said in deep, telegraphic monosyllables. “In there. Been there all the time. I’ve kept here out of the way. Didn’t want him to know I’m tailing him.”

  Iris took a step towards the curtain, but Hatch threw out a hand to restrain her. He glanced swiftly around at the straggle of other customers. None of them, not even the Chihuahua, was paying us any attention.

  “Listen.” His voice was low and conspiratorial, as if he were giving signals to a football team. “We don’t want to fuss him with me. He’s seen you two before. You’ve got a better chance to handle this alone. I’ll stay out here with Bill and give him the setup. O.K.?”

  I nodded.

  Hatch’s hand was still on Iris’s arm. “And for Pete’s sake, be careful. Don’t scare him. Drunks can be sly as women. Try and get the whole story. But whatever else you don’t do—get this Lina’s address. That’s the big thing right now.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Hatch released Iris’s arm then. Feigning a complete indifference to us, he slumped on to the stool next to Bill Dagget and called out to the Chinese barman to bring him a bourbon with water chaser.

  The jukebox had groaned and clattered into a jive version of “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie.” Trying not to look conspiratorial, Iris and I started down the bar towards the curtain. As we passed the Chihuahua, it stretched its scraggly little neck out, almost toppling off the stool, to lick Iris’s hand. Its blonde mistress hiccuped over her drink and, pulling a pink handkerchief from her purse, brought it genteelly to her lips. The Chinese man was lost in some profound reverie of his own. One of the two very young sailors glanced at Iris and looked as if he wondered whether he dared to whistle his appreciation. Then he saw my uniform. He didn’t dare.

  We reached the curtain. I pushed it aside. I had half expected a den of unmentionable vice. Instead we were confronted by a tepid little room divided into booths where a few couples, Chinese and Occidental, sat at tables covered in five-and-dime-store chintz spreads. The atmosphere of tame respectability was heightened by thin vases of artificial flowers which stood on the tables. This room, presumably, was provided for those who preferred to drink in private. You either picked the bar and semi-Chinese atmosphere or privacy and no Chinese atmosphere.

  A less colorful locale for our crucial meeting with the Beard would have been hard to find. Why he came here I couldn’
t imagine, unless he liked the brand of champagne they served.

  The room was dimly lit, and cigarette smoke further blurred the picture. We glanced around the booths. In an extreme rear corner, we saw the Beard.

  We started towards him. Luckily, he was alone. The blonde with whom Hatch had last seen him, apparently, like the redhead before her, decided that free champagne was not sufficient compensation for his satyrish attentions. He was sitting up very straight with his back to the wall. One empty and one half-empty champagne bottle stood by the artificial flowers on the table in front of him. By that time, he must have been ninety-nine per cent pure champagne, but he looked sober as a judge. He was even more magnificent than my memories of him. Words could not do justice to the beard. It sprouted with the crispness of a fat head of lettuce. Even the red carnation in his buttonhole looked as fresh as ever.

  As we weaved through the tables towards him, I felt a tingle of excitement. The Beard had become an almost legendary figure. We didn’t know his name. We didn’t know where he came from or where he was going. We hadn’t the slightest idea how he figured in the mad pattern.

  And yet my own future and the very life of the shadowy Lina rested precariously in the palm of his hand.

  Remembering his goatish propensities, I whispered to Iris: “You do the talking, baby. He likes girls. I’ll keep in the background.”

  My wife, looking beautiful and intense, nodded.

  We reached the Beard’s booth. Iris was not an actress for nothing. Arranging her face in a scintillating smile, she leaned into the booth, caught the Beard’s eyes, and said: “Hello.”

  Slowly, little by little, he moved his noble head. Slowly, as he peered at her, his face lit up in a leer worthy of Priapus himself.

  “Buriful girl,” he said.

  Iris slipped into the booth, sitting down across from him. The champagne bottles and a spindly spray of artificial narcissi made a barricade between them. I hovered at my wife’s side.

  Iris leaned into the narcissi. “You remember me, don’t you? We met at the St. Anton this evening. You mistook me for Eulalia Crawford.”

  Behind the curtain, the jukebox was giving like mad to “Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie.” While I watched the Beard, suspense was like a fox at my vitals. He clutched at the stem of his champagne glass and loomed towards Iris. The smile had got into the beard and stretched it.

  “Y’re not Eulalia Cr’wford,” he muttered. “Much more buriful th’n Eulalia. Younger. Much more buriful.” His ponderous hand unclasped from the glass and, weaving past the narcissi, fell—flop—on my wife’s. “Buriful girl.”

  Such superb drunkenness seemed to nonplus even Iris.

  “You must remember me,” she said lamely. “You told me about the white rose and the red rose.”

  The Beard’s hand left Iris’s. He giggled. Then, suddenly, he brandished his arm at a Chinese waiter who was slipping by. “Drink!” he said. “Drink for the buriful girl. Champagne.”

  As the waiter glided away, the Beard’s aimless gaze settled for the first time on me. He half rose.

  “Who’sh tha’?”

  Iris said: “Oh, he—he’s just with me.”

  The beard came closer and closer. It was almost in my mouth. Above it, his eyes, screwed up around the corners in a fury of concentration, examined my face. “Nasty man,” he said. “Nasty man. Go away. Go away.” The beard bobbed up and then down. “Boo-oo!”

  That was startling, to say the least. Iris was looking wild-eyed now. She said: “You’ve got to understand. Please. This is terribly important for us. It’s—it’s life or death. The elephant never forgets. You mustn’t forget Page eighty-four. You’ve got to help us.”

  “Nasty man. Buriful girl.” The Beard sank back into his chair. He looked at me sideways with the coy craftiness of a little boy. “Nasty man. Go away. Won’t have you here. My booth.”

  Iris gave a sickly smile. She glanced up at me and breathed: “It’s no use, darling. He just doesn’t like you. But he likes me. Maybe, if you go away, I can get something out of him.”

  Even as she spoke, the Beard’s large hand trundled forward and closed again affectionately over hers. He liked her, all right

  “Go back to Hatch and Bill,” she whispered. “Wait for me at the bar. I’ll try to get him to talk.”

  I didn’t like the idea of leaving my wife alone with that horrible old man, but in a public place she was relatively safe from being ravished. I darted the Beard one long, dirty look and started back towards the curtain.

  “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie” had come to an end. As I stepped through the curtain into the bar, the jukebox broke into a polka, its thumping German rhythm doing awful things to the Chinese atmosphere. Hatch and Bill were still sitting at the end of the bar. I joined them.

  Bill Dagget, his massive buttocks bulging over his stool, turned on me a blank, uninterested stare.

  Hatch said: “I told Bill the setup. He’s in with us.”

  Dagget nodded sulkily. “Yeah.”

  Alert as a hound-dog, Hatch asked: “Well, Lieutenant, what’s the payoff?”

  “He won’t talk with me around, the old goat. Iris is trying to handle him alone.”

  “She’ll work it.” Hatch patted my shoulder approvingly. “Treat him easy. That’s the ticket.”

  He beckoned the Chinese barman over and bought me a bourbon and water. The three of us sat there in silence while the jukebox clog-danced its way through the polka.

  As the minutes ticked by, I felt more and more tense. Hatch’s philosophic remark about drunks had been justified. The Beard was as sly as a mongoose. I was sure he knew everything that we needed so desperately to know. I was also sure that it was some clouded cunning born of the champagne rather than actual sogginess that had kept him from telling us. What if Iris didn’t succeed? Every hour that delayed my going to the police would make my future that much darker. I’d already kissed my promotion goodbye. Now even gloomier visions scudded through my mind—visions of permanent disgrace and court-martial.

  But that wasn’t the worst part. Lina was the worst part. I had become obsessed with my own responsibility for Lina’s safety.

  A woman was in mortal danger. Because I had failed to go to the police, I had made that danger even graver. I was never going to have an easy moment if somehow I didn’t get to Lina and save her from this lunatic menace of roses and crocuses.

  For what seemed like hours, we sat there. In actual fact, the clock above the bar showed me it was only a matter of minutes. Even so, the hands now pointed to eleven-fifty. In ten minutes the wartime curfew would bundle us all out of the place. And once we left the Green Kimono, it would be a lot tougher for us to keep contact with the Beard.

  And then, just as the barman started dipping the lights to signal the curfew, Iris came hurrying through the curtains towards us. My wife looked dazed but faintly triumphant.

  As she joined us, we all spun round on her, even the phlegmatic Bill Dagget.

  “Well?” I asked.

  Iris made a little grimace. “He’s crazy about me. Buriful girl. He knows another dive where they serve champagne after hours. He wants me to go with him. What a man!” She paused. “But I’ve got Lina.”

  I felt my pulses racing. “You’ve got Lina?”

  “Yes, I know her name, where she lives. Nothing more than that. But at least I know that.” Iris was breathless. “He’s canny, Peter, terribly canny. He knows something frightfully important, but he also knows he’s drunk and he’s not letting himself admit a thing. I tricked him into telling about Lina just because he thinks it’s funny. The address makes a sort of jingle. He chanted it as if it were a nursery rhyme and giggled into his beard.”

  “What is it?”

  My wife chanted: ‘Lina Oliver Wendell Holmes Brown, three-eight-six-two, Wa-wo-na.”

  “Lina Oliver Wendell Holmes Brown,” I exclaimed. “That can’t be a real name. It’s a gag.”

  Iris shook her head emphatica
lly. “I’m sure it’s right. I could tell by the way he caught himself up after he’d said it as if it had slipped out without his meaning it to.”

  “Wawona,” put in Hatch sharply. “That’s Wawona Avenue, way off, down by the zoo.”

  There was a phone booth behind me. I jotted down the address, hurried to the booth and leafed it open at the Browns. There was no Oliver Wendell Holmes Brown listed.

  As I rejoined the others, the barman blinked the lights again. Iris and I looked at each other bleakly. It was then that Hatch showed his real qualities of leadership. He got up, tilting the hat on the back of his head.

  “O.K.,” he said. “All of you. Out of here.”

  “But the Beard …” began Iris.

  “Out of here.”

  Hatch started for the door, with Dagget trundling obediently after him. Iris glanced back at the curtain and then with a shrug slipped her hand into mine. We followed the two men into the darkness of the alley.

  Hatch grouped us all around him in a huddle.

  “We got to figure quickly.” The words came firm and low. “We know what we got to do. First there’s Lina. Someone’s got to get to Lina right away.”

  “That’s me,” I said.

  “Yeah. You’re the best bet for Lina. O.K. Then Mrs. Duluth, she’s in well with the Beard. He wants her to go on to this other dive. We can’t afford to lose him. When he’s sober, we can get the whole story from him. O.K., from now on, Mrs. Duluth sticks with the Beard.”

  “But…” I expostulated.

  “Don’t worry.” Hatch gave a faint chuckle. “We’re not throwing her to the wolf. Bill here goes along with ’em. Not so the Beard knows. Just tailing ’em. O.K., Bill?”

  Bill Daggett shrugged his massive shoulders. “O.K.”

  Hatch had taken Iris’s arm. “Listen, honey. Give him the works. You’ve got one job to do and you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to get this guy with the beard back to your room in the St. Anton before he passes out.” He chuckled again. “And don’t worry about your virtue. Bill here’ll take care of that. All right?”