Puzzle for Puppets

by Patrick Quentin

  From the distant arena I could just hear the strains of the brass band blaring out “Yankee Doodle.” That remote, rollicking music made the immediate silence even deeper.

  I reached page eighty-four. It was the first page of a new essay, entitled: “Murder Among the Roses,” by Emmanuel Catt.

  Beneath the title was a brief paragraph giving the burden of the article to come. With Iris hovering at my elbow, I read:

  A study of a little-known but fascinating murder case in which the Rose brothers, two circus aerialists, caused the death of their partner, Gino Forelli, during a public performance of their trapeze act, and were finally brought to justice by the courageous efforts of three women and an elephant.

  “Gino Forelli!” exclaimed Iris. “They were all aerialists, and Ludwig and Bruno Rose murdered Gino Forelli.”

  “And Eulalia and Lina and Zelide and Edwina somehow brought them to justice for it.” I stared at those short sentences which managed to pack such a wallop for us. “That’s what we’ve been playing around with, honey. The man with the lisp and the other man who wore my uniform are the Rose brothers. They’re out of prison and gunning for the ladies who sent them up the river.”

  “Darling, this is too wonderful for words. We’re going to know the whole truth. We don’t even need the Beard or anyone. We can just take this book to the police and then … Come on, let’s read it. Quick.”

  We both took a plunge into the first page of Mr. Emmanuel Catt’s essay. It was quite a page, I’m sure, full of leisurely charm and psychology and mellow references to intimacy with the late Mr. Alexander Woollcott. It was just the thing for a quiet evening at home with a pipe and a fire and a spaniel. But it was exasperatingly short on facts.

  As we struggled on, waiting for Mr. Catt to come to the point, I was dimly conscious that another sound had mingled with the distant strains of “Yankee Doodle.” At first it was merely an indistinguishable blur of human voices. Then I caught snatches of laughter and singing.

  The literary Beard, still evading facts as if they were the black death, was describing a scintillating dinner party in Philadelphia. Suddenly Iris put her hand on my arm and said: “Listen, Peter.”

  The noise outside was much louder. It was obvious now that a group of people were coming down the corridor toward us. The laughter echoed uproariously. The singing drowned out the band. It was a raucous rendition of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.”

  Iris’s face was radiant. “The ‘Wedding March,’ darling. The ‘Wedding March.’ Zelide.”

  She ran to the dressing-room door and pulled it open. I followed her, tucking Mr. Catt’s book under my arm. As my wife and I hurried into the corridor, we were just in time to see a procession of people sweep around the corner into full view.

  It was as motley a congregation of people as I had ever seen. All crowded together, I made out the tallest man in the world, the fat woman, a couple of flaxen-haired midgets, the tattooed lady, the snake lady, a plump, important ringmaster in top hat and tails, youths in green tumbler uniforms, and a bevy of young blond aerialists in feathery tights and capes—doubtless the “Birds” of Madame Zelide’s world-famous Bird Ballet. Gambolling around them like a group of excited poodles was a garish fringe of clowns.

  Everyone was in a state of jubilation, dancing and slapping each other on the back. The fat lady carried a bottle of wine. Most of the aerialists were brandishing bottles, too. And all of them, with various degrees of musical success, were bellowing out the “Wedding March.”

  While they swarmed toward us, I saw that the gala parade was focused around two central characters. One of them was a swarthy Greek gentleman with a huge gardenia in his buttonhole. The other was a woman whose arm was looped through his—a solid blonde with an exotic mauve creation perched on her massive curls.

  As I saw them, I could have joined in the joyous chorus myself from sheer relief.

  There, on the arm of her grinning groom, was Madame Zelide Rose Annapoppaulos.

  This was the end. Everything was going to be all right now.

  Zelide had miraculously survived her wedding night.

  The procession was almost upon us now. The voice of the ringmaster boomed above the cacophony. “Ah, Madame Zelide, you scared us. You are not at your hotel. You do not come for the performance. No one knows where you are. Something terrible has happened to Madame, we say. And now it is this—this happy event. A bride. Madame Zelide Rose no longer.” He kissed his own plump forefinger. “From now on, Mrs. Zelide Annapoppaulos.” He bowed at the bridgeroom. “The bride of a ringmaster in his day of a great distinction.”

  “Madame Annapoppaulos,” chorused the crowd in happy unison.

  “Yes,” announced Madame Zelide coyly. “Yesterday we meet by chance in San Francisco, my old friend and I—and in a minute it ees love which springs up again and we fly to Nevada to be married.” Her laughter burst refreshingly. “But the circus steel come first. I say to Dmitrios, my career she always come first. I say to Dmitrios, even in the marriage bed, that I must be here for the Bird Ballet. I do not desert my dear friends.”

  “Madame Zelide is here for the Bird Ballet,” chanted the blond aerialists in well-trained reverence.

  I grinned at Iris. Iris grinned at me. They had flown to Nevada to be married. Unwittingly they had eluded the Roses, and now they were back.

  The wedding procession surged past us like a tidal wave, sweeping Zelide and Mr. Annapoppaulos into the dressing room. We joined the tag end of the procession. In a few seconds, the whole party was safely inside except for a couple of clowns who stood in the door with their backs to us.

  I prodded one and said: “Let us get by, please. We’ve got to see Madame Zelide.”

  Inside the room I could hear Zelide’s gusty laughter and the popping of corks. The two clowns turned. One was dressed in a costume of blue and white diamonds. The other was in red and white diamonds. They stood, blocking the doorway. Above the chalked white faces and the bulbous red false noses, they stared at us intently.

  I said: “Let us get by, will you? We have to see Madame Zelide at once.”

  The eyes of the white and red clown flickered. Suddenly he swung round and shut the door of the dressing room so that we were barricaded from the people inside. We and the clowns were the only people in the corridor then.

  I said: “Don’t you understand English? We want to get into that room.”

  Very slowly, the white and red clown put his hand into the floppy pocket of his costume. Very slowly he brought it out again. Iris gave a gasp because his fingers were closed around a shining revolver.

  “Lieutenant and Mithuth Duluth,” he lisped. “How very thilly of you to come here.”

  The blue and white clown laughed. The revolver was aimed directly at my wife.

  “One peep out of either of you,” continued the clown with a lisp, “and Mithuth Duluth getth it in the belly.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  Fate seemed to have a diabolic weakness for the turnabout device. One moment everything was going fine. The next moment everything was awful. This moment was awful. I put my arm around Iris. The clowns stared. The revolver gleamed. I could still hear Zelide’s lusty laugh booming in the dressing room beyond the closed door.

  What was the use of hearing her laughter when the Red Rose and the White Rose made an insuperable barrier between us?

  Because that is how it was. There was no question that those two unattractive clowns were Ludwig and Bruno Rose.

  I looked at the two strangers who had given me the worst twenty-four hours of my life. The loose clowns’ costumes concealed their figures. Conical clowns’ caps covered their hair. The false noses, the chalked cheeks, the grotesque lipstick mouths deprived their faces of any individuality. They were just clowns’ faces.

  All I could see was their eyes. I didn’t trust those bright fanatical eyes any more than I trusted the revolver.

  The red clown slipped the hand that held the gun into his capacious pocket
. The bulge showed that it still had Iris covered. He jerked his head to the left.

  “Get moving,” he said. “Down the pathage. Get moving.”

  I could have yelled and people would have poured out from Zelide’s wedding celebration. But before they reached us, my wife would be dead. I felt I knew enough now about Ludwig and Bruno Rose to be sure of that.

  I still kept my arm around Iris. Trying to sound casual and succeeding merely in sounding asinine, I said: “Baby, the kind gentlemen want us to go with them.”

  “How sweet of them,” said Iris.

  “Make it thnappy,” lisped the red clown.

  We started to move to the left, away from the arena itself deeper into the network of corridors. The passage which should have had some kind of traffic was empty. The two clowns fell in behind us. The red clown’s revolver was pressed against Iris’s back.

  “If we path anyone and you bat an eye even, Mithuth Duluth getth it,” he said.

  I knew something about judo. If I had been alone, I would have gambled on grappling for the gun, but I did not dare risk it with Iris there. I still had Emmanuel Catt’s book under my arm. It was probable that the Rose brothers knew it by sight. If they did, they would suppose that we had read it and gone even further than we had toward ferreting out the truth. Until now, we had merely been harmless puppets for them to maneuver. But now knowledge, or at least the appearance of it, had made us dangerous to them, and they weren’t the type to think twice about adding a couple of extra murders to their schedule.

  Even so, I had a feeling they weren’t going to shoot us. Zelide was their primary objective. They weren’t likely to jeopardize their plan against her by killing us first unless it could be done discreetly, without the betraying sound of a revolver shot.

  The faint thud of the brass band playing in the arena was growing even fainter as we moved toward the end of the corridor.

  “Left here,” said the red clown. “Turn to the left.”

  Iris was pale, but her arm, against mine, was steady. I said: “What are you going to do with us?”

  “You’ll find out thoon enough,” said the red clown. “Turn left.”

  We turned into the new passage, with the two clowns after us. It was narrower than the one we had left. Its walls were bleak and unpainted. It came to a dead end in front of us at a single steel door. There was complete silence now. We had reached the most deserted part of the Stadium. The Roses obviously knew their way about. Perhaps, in their days as aerialists, they had played here.

  I wasn’t liking it at all.

  We reached the steel door at the end of the passage. There was a key hanging on a hook next to an electric-light switch. The blue clown stepped forward, took down the key, and swung the heavy door outward. Inside, stone steps stretched down into the darkness of a cellar.

  “Turn around,” said the red clown.

  Iris and I turned around. We stared straight into the revolver. Above it, the red clown’s eyes were gimlet sharp.

  “Back down the thtairth,” he said.

  If he was going to shoot, we would be helpless from him backing down the stairs. Now or never was the moment to grapple for the gun. I glanced at my wife. I winced at the thought of what would happen if I grappled and failed.

  As if reading my thoughts, the red clown said: “Move over in front of your huthband, Mithuth Duluth.”

  Iris stepped in front of me. She made a screen between me and the red clown. That put an end to any attempt to struggle for the gun.

  The blue clown was hovering silently at the other’s side, still without speaking.

  The red clown said: “Back down the thtairth.”

  I gripped Iris’s elbows, and began to draw her backwards down the steps into the darkness below. The two clowns were framed by the open door—one figure in red and white diamonds, one in blue and white diamonds. Each downward step, giving a low angle view, made them loom larger and larger. The muzzle of the revolver gleamed evilly.

  If they stayed at the door, that meant they would not shoot, for the explosion from the gun would echo along the corridors. If they started down the steps after us, then they were going to try to kill us, and it would be a question of a battle to the death in the darkness.

  Under my moist hands, Iris’s elbows were trembling. That slow, backward journey seemed interminable.

  Suddenly the door above us swung shut and we were in total darkness. I heard the key turn in the lock and then the heavy tread of the Rose brothers’ footsteps hurrying away down the corridor above us.

  I relaxed my grip on Iris’s elbow. I didn’t feel much of anything except relief that she was unharmed. Crimes of Our Times was uncomfortable under my arm. I stuffed it into my pocket. Iris twisted around to face me. A nervous laugh came out of the darkness.

  “It’s really true about your past life racing through your mind. When I was sure he was going to shoot, I even remembered how I was locked up in my room when I was five because I called Aunt Susan a pig.”

  “Was she a pig?” I said.

  “Yes.” My wife’s hand found mine. “Peter,” she said with sudden desperation, “isn’t it awful? We were so near to Zelide, and now …”

  “Exactly.”

  “Couldn’t we have done something? I felt so stupid being held up right in front of her dressing room.”

  “We could have done something, but we’d be too dead right now to remember what it was.”

  A musky odor floated up from the cellar below us. Now that the danger to Iris was past, I was getting jittery about Zelide.

  “We’ve got to get out of here quickly,” I said. “There’s no one to warn Zelide now. We even took Catt’s book from the dressing room. Any minute they’ll try and kill her.”

  “But they can’t kill her now—not with all those people in her room. And if I know anything about wedding celebrations, it’ll go right on till it’s time for the Bird Ballet.”

  A thought made my spine tingle. “The Bird Ballet. That’s it, of course.”

  “Why?”

  I gripped my wife’s arm in the darkness. “How did Gino Forelli die?”

  During an actual performance of the circus, it said. Peter, you can’t think…”

  “Sure. You’re right that they can’t get at her while she’s in the dressing room. But they’re clowns. Clowns can go anywhere in the ring while the other acts are in progress. They’re aerialists, too. We know that. They could climb up on the trapezes right in front of the audience and people would think it was just a gag. With the ringmaster suspecting nothing and Zelide suspecting nothing, they could cut through a rope—anything. Baby, if I know the Roses, that’s what they’re planning to do, to kill Zelide in the ring.”

  “Peter!”

  “What else can they do? They’ve got to kill her quickly. They’d have killed her last night if they could. Now that the police have found the other two bodies, it’s just a question of time before the truth about this old murder comes to light They’ve been working against time. That’s why they used me as a red herring to keep the police off the scent while they made their getaway. They’re probably all set for it right now. Once they’ve killed Zelide, they can slip away, duck their clowns’ costumes, and scram. That’s why they didn’t bother to kill us just now. They’re planning to be on their way to safety before we get out of here.”

  “Yes, Peter. But what are we going to do? Break down the door?”

  “We couldn’t break it down. No use banging either. We’re too far from anyone. We could scream ourselves blue in the face before people heard. There’s only one thing to do. We’ve got to find another way out of this damn cellar—and quickly.”

  I peered into the darkness. “There must be a light somewhere.”

  “Have you got any matches?”

  “A few.”

  “Try up by the door. There should be a switch there.”

  “There isn’t. It’s outside in the passage. I noticed it when they were locking us in.”
>
  I struck a match. Its feeble light illuminated the part of the cellar floor below us. It was strewn with old pipes, slats, broken poles, a moldering gym horse, all the useless junk that ends up in the cellar of a sports stadium. The cellar itself stretched indefinitely away into the darkness.

  Before the match went out, we hurried down the last of the stone steps. I lit another match. As it flickered, we started picking our way through the rubbish. The air was bad. The silence was absolute. There was a feeling of desolation, as if no human being had passed through for months. A rat bolted out from an old ice-hockey goal and scuttled across our track. Iris gave a little cry and the match went out.

  Match by match we wound our way deeper into the bowels of the cellar. The Lawrence Stadium went in for cellars in a big way. A couple of dozen Phantoms of the Opera could have lived in this one without intruding upon each other’s privacy. I had hoped to find some furnaces, for where there were furnaces there would also have to be some sort of exit. But we didn’t find them.

  There must have been a special section for the heating system. This vast area was nothing but a graveyard for abandoned sporting accessories.

  My supply of matches was growing dangerously low. Before the one I held burned out, I lit two cigarettes and gave one to Iris. A small army of empty crates was stacked against the wall. We sat down on one dispiritedly.

  The tip of Iris’s cigarette glowed in the darkness. “We’re going to be a sensation ten years from now,” she said. “The skeletons in the Stadium cellar.”

  “There must be another exit somewhere.”

  “But where? Maybe we ought to start a fire.”

  “And roast ourselves to death?”

  “Oh, darling, it’s so discouraging. We know Zelide’s going to be killed and we can’t save her. We’ve got the whole solution to the mystery in that essay and we can’t even read the darn thing. It’s enough to drive a girl nuts. It’s …”