Алистер Маклин - Puppet on a Chain

The next floor was given over entirely to the most astonishing collection of puppets imaginable. Altogether, their number must have run into thousands. They ranged in size from tiny miniatures to models even bigger than the one Trudi had been carrying: all, without exception, were exquisitely modelled, all beautifully dressed in a variety of traditional Dutch costumes. The bigger puppets were either free-standing or supported by a metal stay: the smaller ones dangled by strings from overhead rails. The beam of my torch finally focused on a group of dolls all dressed in the same particular costume.

Belinda had forgotten about the importance of minding my back: she’d resumed her arm-clutching again.

‘It’s – it’s so eerie. They’re so alive, so watchful.’ She looked at the dolls spot-lit by the beam of my torch. ‘Something special about those?’

‘There’s no need to whisper. They may be looking at you but I assure you they can’t hear you. Those puppets there. Nothing special really, just that they come from the island of Huyler out in the Zuider Zee. Van Gelder’s housekeeper, a charming old beldam who’s lost her broomstick, dresses like that.’

‘Like that?’

‘It’s hard to imagine,’ I admitted. ‘And Trudi has a big puppet dressed in exactly the same way.’

‘The sick girl?’

‘The sick girl.’

‘There’s something terribly sick about this place.’ She let go of my arm and got back to the business of minding my back again. Seconds later I heard the sound of her sharply indrawn breath and turned round. She had her back to me, not more than four feet away, and as I watched she started to walk slowly and silently backwards, her eyes evidently lined up on something caught in the beam of her torch, her free hand reaching out gropingly behind her. I took it and she came close to me, still not turning her head.

She spoke in an urgent whisper.

‘There’s somebody there. Somebody watching.’

I glanced briefly along the beam of her torch but could see nothing, but then hers wasn’t a very powerful torch compared to the one I carried. I looked away, squeezed her hand to attract her attention, and when she turned round I looked questioningly at her.

‘There is someone there.’ Still the same insistent whisper, the green eyes wide. ‘I saw them. I saw them.’

‘Them?’

‘Eyes. I saw them!’

I never doubted her. Imaginative girl she might be, but she’d been trained and highly trained not to be imaginative in the matter of observation. I brought up my own torch, not as carefully as I might have done, for the beam struck her eyes in passing, momentarily blinding her and as she raised a reflex hand to her eyes I settled the beam on the area she just indicated. I couldn’t see any eyes, but what I did see was two adjacent puppets swinging so gently that their motion was almost imperceptible. Almost, but not quite – and there wasn’t a draught, a breath of air, stirring in that fourth floor of the warehouse.

I squeezed her hand again and smiled at her. ‘Now, Belinda–’

‘Don’t you “now Belinda” me!’ Whether this was meant to be a hiss or a whisper with a tremor in it I couldn’t be sure. ‘I saw them. Horrible staring eyes. I swear I saw them. I swear it.’

‘Yes, yes, of course, Belinda–’

She moved to face me, frustration in the intent eyes as if she suspected me of sounding as if I were trying to humour her, which I was. I said, ‘I believe you, Belinda. Of course I believe you.’ I hadn’t changed my tone.

‘Then why don’t you do something about it?’

‘Just what I’m going to do. I’m going to get the hell out of here.’ I made a last unhurried inspection with my torch, as if nothing had happened, then turned and took her arm in a protective fashion. ‘Nothing for us here and we’ve both been too long in here. A drink, I think, for what’s left of our nerves.’

She stared at me, her face reflecting a changing pattern of anger and frustration and incredulity and, I suspected, more than a little relief. But the anger was dominant now: most people become angry when they feel they are being disbelieved and humoured at the same time.

‘But I tell you–’

‘Ah ah!’ I touched my lips with my forefinger. ‘You don’t tell me anything. The boss, remember, always knows best–’

She was too young to go all puce and apoplectic, but the precipitating emotions were there all the same. She glared at me, apparently decided that there were no words to meet the situation, and started off down the stairs, outrage in every stiff line of her back. I followed and my back wasn’t quite normal either, it had a curious tingling feeling to it that didn’t go away until I had the front door to the warehouse safely locked behind me.

We walked quickly up the street, keeping about three feet apart: it was Belinda who maintained the distance, her attitude clearly proclaiming that the hand-holding and the arm-clutching were over for the night and more likely for keeps. I cleared my throat.

‘He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.’

She was so seething with anger that she didn’t get it.

‘Please don’t talk to me,’ she snapped so I didn’t, not, at least, till I came to the first tavern in the sailors’ quarter, an unsalubrious dive rejoicing in the name of ‘The Cat o’ Nine Tails’. The British Navy must have stopped by here once. I took Belinda’s arm and guided her inside. She wasn’t keen, but she didn’t fight about it.

It was a smoky airless drinking den and that was about all you could say about it. Several sailors, resentful of this intrusion by a couple of trippers of what they probably rightly regarded as their own personal property, scowled at me when I came in, but I was in a much better scowling mood than they were and after the first disparaging reception they left us strictly alone. I led Belinda to a small table, a genuine antique wooden table whose original surface hadn’t been touched by soap or water since time immemorial.

‘I’m having Scotch,’ I said. ‘You?’

‘Scotch,’ she said huffily.

‘But you don’t drink Scotch.’

‘I do tonight.’

She was half right. She knocked back half of her glass of neat Scotch in a defiant swig and then started spluttering, coughing and choking so violently that I saw I could have been wrong about her developing symptoms of apoplexy. I patted her helpfully on the back.

‘Take your hand away,’ she wheezed.

I took my hand away.

‘I don’t think I can work with you any more, Major Sherman,’ she said after she’d got her larynx in working order again.

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘I can’t work with people who don’t trust me, who don’t believe me. You not only treat us like puppets, you treat us like children.’

‘I don’t regard you as a child,’ I said pacifically. I didn’t either.

‘ “I believe you, Belinda,” ’ she mimicked bitterly. ‘ “Of course I believe you, Belinda”. You don’t believe Belinda at all.’

‘I do believe Belinda,’ I said. ‘I do believe I care for Belinda after all. That’s why I took Belinda out of there.’

She stared at me. ‘You believe – then why–’

‘There was someone there, hidden behind that rack of puppets. I saw two of the puppets sway slightly. Someone was behind the rack, watching, waiting to see, I’m certain, what, if anything, we found out. He’d no murderous intent or he’d have shot us in the back when we were going down the stairs. But if I’d reacted as you wanted me to, then I’d have been forced to go look for him and he’d have gunned me down from his place of concealment before I’d even set eyes on him. And then he’d have gunned you down, for he couldn’t have any witnesses, and you’re really far too young to die yet. Or maybe I could have played hide-and-seek with him and stood an even chance of getting him – if you weren’t there. But you were, you haven’t a gun, you’ve no experience at all in the nasty kind of games we play and you were as good as a hostage to him. So I took Belinda out of there. There now, wasn’t that a nice speech?’