Puzzle for Puppets Read online

  Puzzle for Puppets

  A Peter Duluth Mystery

  Patrick Quentin

  CHAPTER I

  Sailors, thousands of them, crawled up and down Market Street like a plague of blue locusts. Doubtless they brought color and racy vigor and all the other things sailors are supposed to bring to a scene. But I hadn’t come to San Francisco to see sailors. After three rough-and-tumble months at a naval training camp up the Coast, I had absorbed enough maritime color and vigor to hold me indefinitely. The sailors, jostling against Iris and me as we beat our way forward, were just another of the things like overcrowded hotels and non-existent taxis that were conspiring against our week-end.

  I looked through bobbing white caps for a taxi which I knew wouldn’t be there. My wife, stubbornly obedient to the regulation that naval officers should keep their right hand free, had insisted upon carrying her own suitcase. She shifted it from one hand to the other. It bumped against mine. I jerked mine away, almost eviscerating a machinist’s mate, second class.

  In a chin-up voice, my wife said: “I could always call Eulalia.”

  “Eulalia who?” I said.

  “Eulalia Crawford.”

  “Who’s Eulalia Crawford?” I patiently disentangled my wife from a young ensign. The ensign didn’t seem to want to be disentangled.

  “Eulalia Crawford’s a cousin. I haven’t seen her since we were kids. But she lives in San Francisco. Maybe she has a spare bedroom.”

  “I’ll be damned,” I said, “if we’ll spend any of our precious thirty-six hours in the spare bedroom of your sordid spinster cousin.”

  My wife was nettled. “Eulalia isn’t a sordid spinster. She’s dazzling and beautiful and disreputable. She has lovers and things.”

  “Spinster or strumpet,” I said, “no, Eulalia.”

  “Such language from a lieutenant junior grade,” murmured Iris, and then said: “Oops” as she ran into headlong collision with a marine sergeant.

  I was a man of one simple idea. I hadn’t been alone with my wife for three months. I wanted to be alone with her. Even though seventeen hotels had turned us down by telephone at the station, I believed that, war or no war, a husband still had the right to a room with his wife. A miracle had made Iris’s birthday coincide with my first liberty since my temporary transference from sea duty to the training camp. Another miracle had made it possible for my wife to snatch the week-end from the picture in which Hollywood was grooming her for stardom. If miracles had any functional value, a third one would have to come along and make it possible for us to reap the benefits of the first two.

  “If only we’d had time to wire ahead for reservations,” sighed Iris. She came to a halt, put down her suitcase, and stared at me forlornly. “Darling, we can’t just wander in a void. You got a medal for being resourceful somewhere off Truk. Be resourceful.”

  The stream of sailors swarmed by on either side of us. Iris was so beautiful in something slim and black with a silver-fox cape that it hurt to look at her. I had only kissed her once since our individual trains had dumped us almost simultaneously into the madhouse of the railroad station. Everything in me was yelling out for privacy where I could start to kiss her in earnest. We had reached the mouth of Stockton Street. I took her arm and guided her out of Market Street’s sailors into an almost equally dense mass of harassed shoppers.

  “We’re just a block from the St. Francis and the St. Anton,” I said. “We’ll try them.”

  “But they’ve already said they’re full.”

  “That was over the phone. We’ll experiment with personal charm.”

  Iris slipped her free hand into mine, thereby breaking her pet regulation about the right hands of naval officers. “Whose personal charm? Yours or mine?”

  “Yours,” I said. “And if they don’t respond to it, I’ll try a blunt instrument.”

  As we started to climb Stockton, I sneezed. I had felt a cold coming on in the train. That was another cross I had to bear. Iris said: “Bless you.” Half way up the block we passed a sign proclaiming a Turkish bath. With wild hopefulness, my wife said: “You don’t suppose Turkish baths rent rooms to mixed couples—I mean, if you explain you’re married?”

  “It’s extremely unlikely,” I said and sneezed again.

  I was still sniffling when we dragged ourselves into Union Square.

  The St. Francis Hotel and the St. Anton Hotel stared at each other across the formal flower beds of the park like two rival and opulently upholstered dowagers at a garden party. We tried the St. Francis first. It would have none of Iris’s charm or my blunt instrument. Traipsing across the little park, we pushed through the swing doors and stepped into the haughty vestibule of the St. Anton.

  Although it tried to look as if it had given banquets for Mr. Sutro and the Big Four before the fire, the St. Anton had been built after the First World War. Its atmosphere, however, was studiedly Old San Francisco—gilt, red plush with pompoms, great mirrors, and chandeliers. The rush of war-time custom had somewhat frazzled its dignity. The fat chairs that had been designed for the comfortable buttocks of peacetime matrons were now occupied by service mothers with squalling infants or lean women in slacks, hot from the shipyards. The inevitable sailors, lavishly augmented by army and marine officers, lounged around the potted palms, adding a rowdy, canteen note.

  We weaved through baggage and the general chaos towards the room clerk’s desk. A knot of room seekers was congregated there. Since the battle was obviously to the strong, I elbowed Iris into a strategic position. Two thin-necked clerks with pince-nez were trying to cope with the situation. One of them had been corralled by a woman on Iris’s left, a sordid blonde in red with a hat like a feather duster, and with a lion-taming eye, who had a swarthy Greek civilian in tow. She was gabbling at her clerk with gestures and a foreign accent and bursts of throaty laughter which possibly constituted her conception of charm.

  I didn’t listen to her. The second clerk, like a straw in the wind, fluttered by. I called an ominous “Hey,” and Iris with superb timing threw a ravishing smile which caught him in mid-flight.

  As he hesitated in front of us, she said: “Please, my husband and I want a room. It’s terribly …”

  “Sorry, madam.”

  “We’ll take anything.” While I glowered, Iris put out her hand, laying it on his sleeve. “We’re just here for the week-end. I haven’t seen my husband for six months. I’ve come such a long way I…”

  Another peal of lusty laughter soared from the blonde with the feather-duster hat. She must have been having success. I loathed her for it.

  “I’m very sorry, madam.” The clerk tried unsuccessfully to draw his sleeve from Iris’s grasp.

  “But you must understand.” Her story was getting more pitiful and apocryphal by the minute. “My husband’s going overseas any day. This is the last chance we’ll have to be together. We’re only just married. We’ve tried every hotel in town. Anything will do. A single room. A room with no bath, a bath with no room …”

  Behind the pince-nez, the clerk’s eyes softened slightly. For a mad moment I thought Iris had got away with it. Then in a this-hurts-me-more-than-you voice, he murmured: “I’m truly sorry, madam. I’d be only too glad to help you. But…”

  Dimly I was conscious that the blonde with the hat had turned and was staring at Iris.

  “Listen,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said the clerk.

  The blonde tapped Iris on the sleeve. The cluster of feathers wobbled on the massive blonde curls.

  “You want a room, yes?” she said.

  Both Iris and I spun around on her.

  “Yes, yes,” said Iris.

  “Yes,” I said and sneezed.

  The blond
e beamed at the Greek and then beamed at us. She put both her hands on Iris’s arms.

  “You poor cheeldren. I hear what you say. You part from each other and you are in love. Just thees minute I come to give up my room. You shall have it.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Iris faltered: “You mean …?”

  The blonde turned majestically to her clerk. “Thees lovely child and her sailor husband … you give them my room.”

  The clerk looked flustered. “But, Mrs. Rose, the room is yours, yes. However, now that you intend to give it up, there is a long waiting list of people who …”

  The blonde’s eyes flashed. “Unless these two have it, I do not give up my room. I keep it.”

  The Greek burst into an agitated foreign monologue. The blonde paid him no mind and continued to stare at the clerk. So did Iris and I.

  The clerk hesitated for a long moment and then said pettishly: “In that case, Mrs. Rose, rather than have the room vacant, I’ll let your—er—friends have it.”

  “That is good.” Mrs. Rose’s boisterous laugh boomed again.

  I grinned at her. I could have taken her, feathers and all, to my bosom. Iris said: “Thank you, Mrs. Rose. Thank you more than we can say.”

  “Oh, no. It ees nothing. My child, I see you standing there and you are so, so like a lovely girl I used to know. And I say to myself, these two poor cheeldren they are in love.” Mrs. Rose’s broad, friendly face was dewy with sentiment. “I too am in love.” She drew forward the large, sheepish Greek. “Thees is Mr. Annapoppaulos. Tonight we get married. Thees is why I give up the room.”

  Mr. Annapoppaulos bowed. So did we.

  Mrs. Rose winked a ribald wink and dug Mr. Annapoppaulos in the ribs. “Tonight I get married. Tonight I need no bedroom of my own, yes?”

  Mr. Annapoppaulos looked even more sheepish. Bobbing the feather duster and blowing us a kiss, Mrs. Rose, that most admirable of women, turned from the desk, sweeping her bridegroom with her.

  Her gusty laugh rang out again as the two of them disappeared into the milling vestibule crowd.

  The clerk looked after them balefully and pushed a pad of registration slips toward us. “Sign here, please. The room is number 624.”

  I signed Lieutenant and Mrs. Peter Duluth with a flourish. The clerk summoned an ancient bellhop to take our suitcases.

  The third miracle had crashed through, after all. I was on the top of the world again.

  A gilt and gingerbread elevator took us and the ancient bellhop and dozens of other people up to the sixth floor. The bellhop tottered ahead with the suitcases and let us into Room 624 with a key. As he wheezed around, opening windows and things, Iris and I, hand in hand, surveyed the miracle.

  It was quite a room. Lushly Louis Quinze, it boasted as main attractions an enormous double bed with a crimson spread, a Madame Récamier couch, and a huge mirror friezed with gilt, naked cupids. It conjured up visions of girls’ garters and naughty nights in the nineties. An open door revealed glimpses of a modern tiled bathroom. I gave the bellhop fifty cents to get rid of him. He closed the door on us.

  “Darling,” Iris gazed around her in ecstasy. Throwing off her hat and the silver foxes, she came to me, tossing back her dark hair. “Darling, all this splendor—and a bathroom.”

  I took her in my arms. I kissed her. I kissed her again, letting my hands remember her. Touching her was like white bread after months in a Jap prison camp.

  Keeping my lips close to hers, I said: “Honey, I love Mrs. Rose.”

  “Darling, I love Mr. Annapoppaulos.” Her green eyes behind their smudgy lashes flickered. “Mrs. Rose said I reminded her of someone she knew. I wonder who it was.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “None. I just wondered. I … Oh, Peter, it’s so good to be with you again.”

  I picked her up in my arms and carried her to the regal bed. I laid her down on the crimson spread and dropped at her side. She lifted her hands to the lapels of my uniform.

  “Peter, let’s dress up tonight arid be frightfully glamrous and have dinner and dance. And then let’s come back here and never get out of bed, never till you have to leave.”

  I bent over her, running my hand down the curve of her cheek.

  “Why not skip dinner and dancing, baby?”

  My finger was on her lips. She kissed it and then pulled me down, hugging me.

  “Let’s skip everything,” she breathed.

  She rolled away, grinning up.

  “Such loose thoughts I have. Something about the room makes me shameless. I think it’s the cupids’ bare behinds.”

  She lay still for a moment, gazing up at me tenderly. “Your ears. The way they fit on to your head, so flat and smooth. When you’re away I dream of your ears.”

  I leaned over her. “When I’m away, I dream of your …”

  “Darling !” She grimaced. “Aren’t you going to say happy birthday?”

  I’d almost forgotten the birthday; there were so many other things to think about. I scrambled off the bed to my suitcase and took out my reserve uniform, the ultra-special tailor-made I kept for gala occasions. Flopping it down on a chair, I pulled out a brown paper bag and tossed my wife three pairs of stockings.

  “Happy birthday, baby.”

  Iris picked up one stocking. She stared at it. She made little cooing sounds.

  “Nylons! Peter, how—how on earth did you get them?”

  I kissed her ear. “By selling my body in the right places.”

  She threw her arms around my neck. “This is the nicest birthday of my life.”

  The scent of her perfume was compounded of all the things I’d missed. Iris wasn’t the only one the room made shameless, and with me it wasn’t the cupids’ behinds.

  For one long moment she relaxed in my arms and then drew away. Rather breathlessly she said: “Darling, let’s be conversational for a while. How’s the training camp? Nice and peaceful after the Pacific?”

  “Nice and dull. And sweaty.” I hesitated. “Some news, though. Just before I came away, the Commander told me that if I’m a good boy and don’t get into trouble, I’ll be a lieutenant s. g. soon.”

  Iris smiled proudly. “Marvellous. What this family needs is more gold braid.”

  I wished she hadn’t mentioned the camp. This wasn’t the moment to let her know that, if the promotion went through, it would almost certainly send me to sea again. One of the toughest things in the world is explaining to a wife just how you can love her with every part of you and still be raring to get back into battle.

  To veer the subject away, I asked: “How’s Hollywood?”

  In the old days before I joined the navy, I’d produced plays on Broadway for a living and Iris had been making herself quite a career as a dramatic actress. When I was transferred to the Pacific, however, she had dropped everything in the East and taken up a small-time movie contract to be near me. It was an act of great renunciation because she loved the theater and hated Hollywood.

  Iris crinkled her nose. “Darling, don’t let’s talk about Hollywood. I’m still working on the first picture. I’m the other woman. I saw some rushes last week. I photograph like Hedy Lamarr’s idiot sister.”

  She gathered up the stockings, stroking them, got off the bed, and went towards the pseudo-French highboy. I started after her and then had a fit of sneezing.

  Iris turned. “You are getting a cold.”

  “Looks that way.”

  Her face puckered. “Darling, you can’t have a cold, not on my beautiful birthday.” She glanced at her watch and looked executive. “There’s only one thing to do with colds.”

  “What’s that?” I asked doubtfully.

  “A Turkish bath. It’s only five. I’m going to spend hours making myself glamorous, anyway. You’ve got heaps of time. Why don’t you run down to the Turkish bath we passed on the street?”

  She put her hands on my arms. “Have a steam bath, darling. Let a rubber pound the daylights out of you. You�
�ll feel wonderful. Then we can go to town.”

  I resented the idea of a Turkish bath. Any time spent away from Iris was a dead loss. But my wife had a point. I had no right to submit her to a snivelling mate.

  “O.K.,” I said grudgingly. “That is—if you can trust me alone in a Turkish bath.”

  It was then that the phone rang. My wife scrambled on to the bed and, reaching across the crimson spread, picked up the receiver.

  “For God’s sake,” I said, “don’t make any dates.”

  Iris nodded. “Hello,” she said into the mouthpiece. And then: “What room do you want? … Yes, this is Room 624. But I’m Iris Duluth, Mrs. Peter Duluth … Oh, maybe you want Mrs. Rose. This was her room. She’s just checked out … What? … Eulalia who? … Eulalia Crawford?”

  She tensed visibly.

  “Oh, no, I’m not Eulalia Crawford. But I am her cousin. Yes, I’m told I look very like her …Yes, that was my husband, Lieutenant Duluth … No, I wrote Eulalia from Hollywood, but we’re in town such a short time we won’t have time to see her … I’d love to ask you up but … well, I’m—I’m in the middle of unpacking and my husband’s just going down the street to a Turkish bath … Oh, no, don’t be silly … Thank you. Good-bye.”

  She put down the receiver. A frown rippled her forehead.

  “That’s funny,” she said.

  “What on earth was it?”

  “A man—downstairs in the lobby. He’d seen us come up with the bellhop. He thought I was Eulalia Crawford.”

  “That dreary cousin again.”

  “She’s not dreary,” and Iris. “I’ve already told you she’s disreputable and glamorous. And I’Ve heard she looks very much like me. Several years older, of course. But…” My wife was looking at me with what I call her Mary Roberts Rinehart look. “It was so odd. Even if he had thought I was Eulalia, why did he call? He said he was a friend of hers, but…”

  My wife’s insatiable curiosity constantly starts her skittering off after imaginary mysteries. To discourage her, I said: “He probably thought he’d caught Eulalia sneaking upstairs for a little nookey with a random naval lieutenant. You said she went in for lovers and things. Maybe he was a rival lover, checking up.”