Алистер Маклин - Puppet on a Chain

I got out, locked the door, and crossed the pavement to the entrance of the night-club which had above it the flickering neon sign ‘Balinova’ and the outlined neon figures of two hula-hula dancers, although I failed to grasp the connection between Hawaii and Indonesia. Perhaps they were meant to be Balinese dancers, but if that were so they had the wrong kind of clothes on – or off. Two large windows were set one on either side of the entrance, and these were given up to an art exhibition of sorts which gave more than a delicate indication of the nature of the cultural delights and more esoteric scholarly pursuits that were to be found within. The occasional young lady depicted as wearing ear-rings and bangles and nothing else seemed almost indecently overdressed. Of even greater interest, however, was the coffee-coloured countenance that looked back at me from the reflection in the glass: if I hadn’t known who I was, I wouldn’t have recognized myself. I went inside.

The Balinova, in the best time-honoured tradition, was small, stuffy, smoky and full of some indescribable incense, the main ingredient of which seemed to be burnt rubber, which was probably designed to induce in the customers the right frame of mind for the maximum enjoyment of the entertainment being presented to them but which had, in fact, the effect of producing olfactory paralysis in the space of a few seconds. Even without the assistance of the drifting clouds of smoke the place was deliberately ill-lit, except for the garish spot-light on the stage which, as was again fairly standard, was no stage at all but merely a tiny circular dance floor in the centre of the room.

The audience was almost exclusively male, running the gamut of ages from goggle-eyed teenagers to sprightly and beady-eyed octogenarians whose visual acuity appeared to have remained undimmed with the passing of the years. Almost all of them were well-dressed, for the better-class Amsterdam night-clubs those which still manage to cater devotedly to the refined palates of the jaded connoisseurs of certain of the plastic arts – are not for those who are on relief. They are, in a word, not cheap and the Balinova was very, very expensive, one of the extremely few clip joints in the city. There were a few women present, but only a few. To my complete lack of surprise, Maggie and Belinda were seated at a table near the door, with some sickly-coloured drinks before them. Both of them wore aloof expressions, although Maggie’s was unquestionably the more aloof of the two.

My disguise, at the moment, seemed completely superfluous. Nobody looked at me as I entered and it was quite clear that nobody even wanted to look at me, which was understandable, perhaps, in the circumstances, as the audience were almost splitting their pebble glasses in their eagerness to miss none of the aesthetic nuances or symbolic significances of the original and thought-compelling ballet performance taking place before their enraptured eyes, in which a shapely young harridan in a bubble-bath, to the accompaniment of the discordant thumpings and asthmatic wheezings of an excruciating band that would not otherwise have been tolerated in a boiler factory, endeavoured to stretch out for a bath-towel that had been craftily placed about a yard beyond her reach. The air was electric with tension as the audience tried to figure out the very limited number of alternatives that were open to the unfortunate girl. I sat down at the table beside Belinda and gave her what, in the light of my new complexion, must have been a pretty dazzling smile. Belinda moved a rapid six inches away from me, lifting her nose a couple of inches higher in the air.

‘Hoity-toity,’ I said. Both girls turned to stare at me and I nodded towards the stage. ‘Why doesn’t one of you go and help her?’

There was a long pause, then Maggie said with great restraint: ‘What on earth has happened to you?’

‘I am in disguise. Keep your voice down.’

‘But – but I phoned the hotel only two or three minutes ago,’ Belinda said.

‘And don’t whisper either. Colonel de Graaf put me on to this place. She came straight back here?’

They nodded.

‘And hasn’t gone out again?’

‘Not by the front door,’ Maggie said.

‘You tried to memorize the faces of the nuns as they came out? As I told you to?’

‘We tried,’ Maggie said.

‘Notice anything odd, peculiar, out of the ordinary about any of them?’

‘No, nothing. Except,’ Belinda added brightly, ‘that they seem to have very good-looking nuns in Amsterdam.’

‘So Maggie has already told me. And that’s all?’

They looked at each other, hesitating, then Maggie said: ‘There was something funny. We seemed to see a lot more people going into that church than came out.’

‘There were a lot more people in that church than came out,’ Belinda said. ‘I was there, you know.’

‘I know,’ I said patiently. ‘What do you mean by “a lot”?’

‘Well,’ Belinda said defensively, ‘a good few.’

‘Ha! So now we’re down to a good few. You both checked, of course, that the church was empty?’

It was Maggie’s turn to be defensive. ‘You told us to follow Astrid Lemay. We couldn’t wait.’

‘Has it occurred to you that some may have remained behind for private devotions? Or that maybe you’re not very good counters?’

Belinda’s mouth tightened angrily but Maggie put a hand on hers.

‘That’s not fair, Major Sherman.’ And this was Maggie talking. ‘We may make mistakes, but that’s not fair.’ When Maggie talked like that, I listened.

‘I’m sorry, Maggie. I’m sorry, Belinda. When cowards like me get worried they take it out on people who can’t hit back.’ They both at once gave me that sweetly sympathetic smile that would normally have had me climbing the walls, but which I found curiously affecting at that moment, maybe that brown stain had done something to my nervous system. ‘God only knows I make more mistakes than you do.’ I did, and I was making one of my biggest then: I should have listened more closely to what the girls were saying.

‘And now?’ Maggie asked.

‘Yes, what do we do now?’ Belinda said.

I was clearly forgiven. ‘Circulate around the night-clubs hereabouts. Heaven knows there’s no shortage of them. See if you can recognize anyone there – performer, staff, maybe even a member of the audience – who looks like anyone you saw in the church tonight.’

Belinda stared at me in disbelief. ‘Nuns in a night-club?’

‘Why not? Bishops go to garden parties, don’t they?’

‘It’s not the same thing–’

‘Entertainment is entertainment the world over,’ I said pontifically. ‘Especially check for those who are wearing long-sleeved dresses or those fancy elbow-length gloves.’

‘Why those?’ Belinda asked.

‘Use your head. See – if you do find anyone if you can find out where they live. Be back in your hotel by one o’clock. I’ll see you there.’

‘And what are you going to do?’ Maggie asked.

I looked leisurely around the club. ‘I’ve got a lot of research to do here yet.’

‘I’ll bet you have,’ Belinda said.

Maggie opened her mouth to speak but Belinda was saved the inevitable lecture by the reverential ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ and gasps of unstinted admiration, freely given, that suddenly echoed round the club. The audience were almost out of their seats. The distressed artiste had resolved her dreadful dilemma by the simple but ingenious and highly effective expedient of tipping the tin bath over and using it, tortoise-shell fashion, to conceal her maidenly blushes as she covered the negligible distance towards the salvation of the towel. She stood up, swathed in her towel, Venus arising from the depths, and bowed with regal graciousness towards the audience, Madame Melba taking her final farewell of Covent Garden. The ecstatic audience whistled and called for more, none more so than the octogenarians, but in vain: her repertoire exhausted, she shook her head prettily and minced off the stage, trailing clouds of soap-bubbles behind her.