Puzzle for Puppets

by Patrick Quentin

  We reached Market. It was too early for the tidal wave of sailors, but the street was crowded enough. On the corner, a news vendor was standing by a lamp-post with a pile of papers on a wooden stool in front of him. I bought one.

  Iris said: “We’d better take a trolley. Oh, there’s one now.”

  She hurried towards a car which had just stopped at the corner. I went after her, tucking the paper under my arm.

  The car was only half full. We sat side by side near the driver with the sun slanting in from the window behind us. Two little girls with spindly knees were sitting opposite us quarrelling over an all-day sucker. There was a colored woman with a basket, and there was an old man with a pipe. The car had an intimate atmosphere, as if everyone knew everyone else and San Francisco was a small town.

  The car rattled forward. Iris was looking very fresh and beautiful. I took the paper from under my arm. It was an afternoon paper. I spread it open, looking at the front page.

  Above a column at the bottom of the page I read the headlines:

  TWO WOMEN SLAIN, NAVAL LIEUTENANT BEING SOUGHT

  Underneath, the column said more or less what we had expected it to say. Lina had been found by a milkman. Eulalia had been found by the doorman. The doorman had told his story about Lieutenant Duluth. The owner of the drugstore opposite Lina had told his story about Lieutenant Duluth. The roses were mentioned as a macaber touch. There was a little about Eulalia being a distinguished puppet maker. There was next to nothing about Lina’s private life. The final paragraph concluded with the ominous sentence:

  The police have inaugurated a city-wide search for Lieutenant Duluth and a woman believed to be his wife.

  As I finished the column, I was suddenly afraid. I don’t remember being really afraid before—not like that. I had been scared dozens of times in the Pacific when a Zero dived or when a torpedo came plunging toward us through the water. But everyone feels that way. This was different—the way a fox feels with a pack after him. It was bad while it lasted, but luckily it didn’t last long.

  We were going to Zelide. She would be able to tell the truth. Everything was going to be all right.

  Iris saw the column then. She leaned across me, staring at it. Her mouth set in a tight line. She looked up at me quickly and put her hand on my sleeve.

  “Well,” she said, “the hunt is up.”

  There didn’t seem to be much point in making any other comment.

  My wife started to gaze abstractedly out of the window. After a moment she pointed across Market Street.

  “Look, Peter, there’s Hatch and Bill’s office.”

  As the car lumbered on, I was just in time to see Williams and Dagget, Confidential Agents written in gold letters across a couple of upstairs windows in an office building. There was something about those words that helped to keep me steady. After all, we weren’t entirely on our own. Two, at least, of San Francisco’s well-established citizens were rooting for us.

  The little girls across from us were saying: “Tisn’t so. ’Tis, too.” The colored woman stared into space over her basket, and the sunlight streamed in on the old man’s pipe. Soon the trolley came to a stop.

  “Here’s where we get off,” said Iris.

  And we got off.

  The Lawrence Stadium reared on the other side of the street. It was one of those big random buildings that get put up in cities and then have to be used for something. As we started across the street toward it, I began to realize that since I had read the newspaper column everything had changed. Although I wasn’t frightened any longer, I was much more aware. It was as if danger had heightened the acuity of all my senses. I noticed a policeman in the crowd, a thing I would not normally have done, and in the same second I noticed that he had glanced at us and turned disinterestedly away. My ears broke down the generalized hum of the street into individual sounds and voices. Even my feet were alert, ready to sweep into action the instant my eyes or ears sent out a warning.

  We started through the throng up the stone steps toward the entrance to the Stadium.

  I said: “How d’you get backstage at a circus? I guess you just buy tickets and snoop around.”

  People were jostling each other in the vestibule. There were children everywhere—small children with dolls, children with wonder in their eyes, children clinging onto their mothers’ hands, children without mothers, noisy children, good children and babies, solemn, on their parents’ arms.

  From beyond the swinging doors, voices were calling: “Peanuts, hot roasted peanuts” and “Orangeade, cool, refreshing orangeade.” There was an indefinable circus smell of sawdust and animals and an indefinable rowdy excitement. It doesn’t matter where a circus is. It makes every place the same. We might have been in New York or Baltimore or Dubuque, Iowa. We were just at the circus.

  Something in me responded to the thrill of it as if I were still in knee-pants. I always felt that way at a circus. Even now, with the police after us and a murderer after Zelide, it was the same thrill.

  I bought ringside seats at the ticket office. I needn’t have bought such expensive ones. Heaven knows, our chances of actually seeing the circus were slim. But the circus mood was on me.

  We pushed with the others through the turnstiles. Children bumped against the back of our knees and shouted their desire for peanuts and candy. Everyone was gay and expectant. There were dozens of newspapers around, but they were mostly tucked under the arm. I realized that, unintentionally, we had picked the perfect place for anonymity. Everyone had his mind crowded with innocent things like clowns and acrobats and elephants. No one was wondering about murderers or Lieutenant Duluth with the police oh his heels.

  It was twenty minutes past two. In ten minutes the greatest show on earth would begin. Ahead of us was one of the doorways which led into the arena proper. White-coated peanut vendors were mingling with the throng. People were selling programs, too.

  I bought one. I raced through it, looking for Zelide’s act. To my relief I saw that the Bird Ballet climaxed the second half of the show. There was still time.

  Iris said: “What shall we do?”

  A stone staircase to our left led down to a basement. Nailed to the wall above it was a sign saying: SIDESHOWS.

  I guided my wife against the stream toward it. “They’ll have the animals and things down there. We can probably find a way backstage.”

  We had the stairs to ourselves. With the circus performance so soon to begin, everyone was pouring into the Arena. As we clattered downward, the screams of parrots and the din of animal voices rose from the basement below. We reached the basement.

  The first long room was lined with various booths, announcing the Wonders of the World, the fat lady, the tallest man, the snake woman, the mermaid. Beyond, through an open arch, I could see the animals.

  We started past the booths. Except for two small boys, we were the only patrons, and the Wonders of the World were snatching these moments for social relaxation. The tallest man lounged outside his booth, eating ham sandwiches and drinking beer with the tattooed lady. Strolling toward us, smoking cigarettes and talking intensely, were the fat lady and a tiny golden-haired midget.

  “That goddam snake woman,” the midget was saying. “Each time we draw a crowd she has to barge out of her booth and start wriggling her butt.”

  I went up to them. I asked: “Can you tell us where to find Madame Zelide, please?”

  The fat lady blew an indifferent smoke ring and shrugged. The midget tossed her golden ringlets and gave me an arch smile.

  “Zelide? Go back past the animals. Turn left by the elephants. There’s a passage leads to the dressing rooms. Ask when you get there.”

  They strolled on, resuming their own conversation. I heard the fat lady murmuring: “She’s slipping, my dear, that’s the trouble. Ain’t as snaky as she used to be, not by a half.”

  We hurried on. The tattooed lady, bored with the tallest man, turned to watch curiously as we passed. She was wearing swi
mming trunks and a bra to expose as much tattooing as possible. As she turned, she revealed her stomach. Blazing across it in red and blue, between an anchor and a bleeding heart was the legend: BUY WAR BONDS.

  Surely, no other artiste had risen to her country’s emergency with such selfless nobility.

  We passed the booth of the unethical snake lady and through an arch into the menagerie.

  Animals were dumped everywhere with complete disregard for the niceties of zoological cataloging. Flamboyant macaws were screaming and flapping in a cage next to a stall where llamas from South America mingled in aristocratic gloom with zebras from Africa. A moth-eaten heron and a decrepit vulture confronted each other in a wired-in cubicle. The Largest Alligator in the World lolled beside a shallow tank. They all looked as if they had had a tough night travelling.

  Iris pointed ahead. “There are the elephant pens.”

  We hurried under another arch to find ourselves completely surrounded with elephants. They were crowded into open stalls and stood there, shoulder to shoulder, huge and patient. Some of them sniffed with their trunks at the straw on the floor. Others merely stood. Their bored apathy reminded me of chorus girls waiting in the wings for the first production number.

  There was one elephant who was obviously the star, for it had a stall of its own. As we came up to it, Iris gave a little exclamation. Attached to the stall was a notice which read:

  EDWINA, THE OLDEST ELEPHANT IN CAPTIVITY

  “Edwina, the elephant.”

  We paused in front of the animal which had figured so mysteriously in our lives. She was vastly regal with her tree-trunk legs, her wrinkled face, and her small, watchful eyes. Around her neck had been tied an immense pink ribbon. It did nothing to impair her dignity.

  “If we understood the Beard properly,” breathed Iris. “Edwina’s in danger too. Why on earth should an elephant be in danger?”

  I looked Edwina in the eye. “The red rose, Edwina, and the white rose.”

  Edwina lifted her trunk in an s-bend, flicked her ears above the pink ribbon, and whistled.

  As I watched her, I was overcome with exasperation. Eulalia was dead. Lina was dead. The Beard was drunk. Zelide was missing. Now, when at last we had found one of the chief actors in the drama who was both alive and sober, it had to be an elephant.

  “The white rose, Edwina,” said Iris coaxingly. “And the red rose.”

  From the distant arena a crash of cymbals blared.

  The circus had begun.

  The effect of that cymbal crash on the elephants was instantaneous. Edwina whistled again and flapped her ribbon. Her cohorts, shaking off their lethargy, broke into bustling animation. Some of them started to weave their great heads rhythmically, others lumbered into clumsy dance, steps, others looped their trunks around their neighbors’ tails. The trouper in them was asserting itself.

  They were ready for their public.

  I pulled Iris away from Edwina. “Come on, baby, we’ve got to get to Zelide.”

  There was a passage leading to the left, as the midget had said. We hurried down it and found ourselves approaching one of the vast entrances to the arena itself. Wild activity was under way as the opening parade started out for its triumphal procession into the red, white, and blue sawdust of the ring. Clowns and tumblers in gaudy costumes were racing and somersaulting past us. Behind them came an array of horses, stepping high and tossing proud manes. Huge balloon figures bobbed back and forth, mingling with men on stilts and men wearing bizarre papier-mâché animal heads. Beyond us, in the ring, the brass band was pounding out a march, while applause thundered back from the packed tiers of spectators. A dog, dressed in an apron, moved gingerly past me on its hind legs, carrying a coffee cup and saucer in its mouth.

  We weaved through the bedlam. I grabbed a tumbler. “Where’s Zelide’s room?”

  He pointed backward. “Down the corridor, first to the left, then to the right—the third room.”

  Fighting against the parade, we pressed down the passage, turned to the left into a deserted corridor with doors on each side, turned right again, and paused before the third room.

  I knocked on the closed door. There was no sound from inside. I knocked again.

  Iris said agitatedly: “Oh, Peter, you don’t think …?”

  “She’s still probably being Mr. Annapoppaulos’ bride,” I said. “After all, her act doesn’t come on for a long time yet.”

  I pushed the door open and together we stepped into Madame Zelide’s dressing room.

  It was a makeshift affair. A portable dressing table and mirror stood against the wall. Around it, dozens of beaming photographs of Mrs. Zelide Rose herself spoke for her hearty narcissism. A closet, with its curtains half drawn, revealed a display of pink, lavender, and yellow tights bedizened with spangles and dyed feathers. There was a stale smell of disuse and make-up.

  I noticed all the details mechanically. The thing that riveted my attention was a vase on a corner table in which was arranged a large bunch of blood-red roses.

  “Roses for Zelide too,” exclaimed Iris.

  We hurried to the flowers. The box in which they had come was lying next to them on the table. Attached to the stem of one of the blooms was a florist’s card. Written on it in a neat, pedantic hand were the words:

  Remember Gino Forelli. This is to warn you.

  Emmanuel Catt.

  CHAPTER XII

  Iris and I looked at each other.

  “Emmanuel Catt,” exclaimed Iris. “The cat. Pussy.” And then: “Gino Forelli. Who’s Gino Forelli?”

  I didn’t know, of course. I stared at the card. If Emmanuel Catt was the name of the Beard, and I was almost sure by now that it was, the roses had been sent to the three women by the Beard. Why? To remind them of Gino Forelli. Why did he want to remind them of Gino Forelli? Were Mr. Catt and his roses part of the murderous league which seemed to be banded together to exterminate Eulalia, Lina, and Zelide? Or was he some friendly outsider who knew of their danger and had chosen this altruistic, though eccentric, means of warning them? And why were the roses red for Eulalia, white for Lina, and now red again for Zelide?

  The red rose…the white rose…

  I glanced at the box that had contained the flowers. It had come from a San Francisco florist. It did not help.

  “I don’t think Zelide’s been here,” I said. “If she’d arranged the flowers herself, she’d have taken off the card and thrown the box away. Someone must have dumped the roses in water just to keep them alive until she showed up.”

  “Then that means she hasn’t got her warning,” said Iris tensely. “She won’t have been on her guard. All this time, she hasn’t known anything about the terrible danger she’s in.”

  Iris was right, of course. The papers that carried the deaths of Eulalia and Lina had made no mention of disaster to Zelide. Even so, I shied off thinking what might already have happened to Madame Zelide Rose Annapoppaulos’ wedding night.

  I turned to the mirror with its frieze of plump, smiling Zelides. If she was alive, she. would show up for the Bird Ballet I was sure of that. And, if she was coming, she would have to come soon.

  The sound of her gusty laughter outside in the passage would be the sweetest sound my ears could hear.

  Under the mirror on the dressing table, I noticed a brown paper package, balanced precariously between jars of cold cream. I crossed and picked it up. It was addressed to Mrs. Z. Rose, Lawrence Stadium, San Francisco. There was a plastering of stamps and the message: Urgent, Rush, Special Delivery. There was also a return address on the left-hand top corner. That address was: Emmanuel Catt, c/o Continental Studios, Hollywood, Cal.

  “Open it,” urged Iris.

  Regardless of postal regulations, I tore off the brown paper. As the object emerged from its wrappings, Iris said:

  “Oh, it’s only a book.”

  I let the paper drop on the floor and looked at the book. It was called: Crimes of Our Times, edited by John L. Weatherby.
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  That was not the first time I had seen that book. There had been a copy of it in Lina’s parlor. Lina’s copy had had no dust cover. This one did. Under the title was written: An Anthology of Real-Life Murder Studies by the World’s Foremost Criminologists. I turned the book over. Both Iris and I gave a grunt.

  The entire back of the dust cover was taken up by eight photographs. They were the portraits of the foremost criminologists who had contributed the various articles. Each author had his or her name typed under his or her photograph. But only one of those foremost criminologists interested us.

  Between the likenesses of Miss Janet Flanner and Mr. William Bolitho, there gazed up at us a face of monumental sobriety, a face decorated by a majestic burgeoning of black beard. And under this face was printed: Emmanuel Catt.

  “Then the Beard is the cat is Mr. Emmanuel Catt is America’s foremost drunken criminologist,” said Iris in unconscious Steinese. “That’s what he is—a criminologist.”

  I opened the book to the flyleaf. Written across it in the same pedantic hand which had written the message on the card was the startling inscription:

  Madam: I send you this to warn you that Ludwig and Bruno Rose are out of prison and in San Francisco. I do not have to convince you that they are out for blood … your blood, Lina’s blood, Eulalia’s blood, even Edwina’s blood. There is great danger. Be on your guard. Turn to page eighty-four. E. C.

  As I read that, I felt a tingle of excitement. At last we were teetering on the brink of the truth. The red rose and the white rose are out. The nursery jingle which had baffled us by its senselessness was senseless no longer. The red rose and the white rose were two men called Ludwig and Bruno Rose—and they were out of prison.

  Iris was saying: “Page eighty-four at last! Peter, this is it. Turn to page eighty-four.”

  I turned the pages feverishly. I passed the study of the Hall-Mills case which I had glanced at the night before. I paid it no attention. I was holding everything for page eighty-four. In a second now we might learn the facts for which we had been hungering ever since our first fatal interview with Emmanuel Catt.