Алистер Маклин - Puppet on a Chain

‘Well, I never!’ I said admiringly. ‘I’ll bet neither of you two would have thought of that.’

‘Come, Belinda,’ Maggie said. ‘This is no place for us.’

They rose and left. As Belinda passed she gave a twitch of her eyebrows which looked suspiciously like a wink, smiled sweetly, said, ‘I rather like you like that,’ and left me pondering suspiciously as to the meaning of her remark. I followed their progress to the exit to see if anyone followed them, and followed they were, first of all by a very fat, very heavily built character with enormous jowls and an air of benevolence, but this was hardly of any significance as he was immediately followed by several dozen others. The highlight of the evening was over, great moments like those came but seldom and the summits were to be rarely scaled again – except three times a night, seven nights a week – and they were off to greener pastures where hooch could be purchased at a quarter of the price.

The club was half-empty now, the pall of smoke thinning and the visibility correspondingly improving. I looked around but in this momentary lull in the proceedings saw nothing of interest. Waiters circulated. I ordered a Scotch and was given a drink that rigorous chemical analysis might have found to contain a trace element of whisky. An old man mopped the tiny dance floor with the deliberate and stylized movements of a priest performing sacred rites. The band, mercifully silent, enthusiastically quaffed beer presented them by some tone-deaf customer. And then I saw the person I’d come to see, only it looked as if I wouldn’t be seeing her for very long.

Astrid Lemay was standing in an inner doorway at the back end of a room, pulling a wrap around her shoulders while another girl whispered in her ear; from their tense expressions and hurried movements it appeared to be a message of some urgency. Astrid nodded several times, then almost ran across the tiny dance floor and passed through the front entrance. Somewhat more leisurely, I followed her.

I closed up on her and was only a few feet behind as she turned into the Rembrandtplein. She stopped. I stopped, looked at what she was looking at and listened to what she was listening to.

The barrel-organ was parked in the street outside a roofed-in, overhead-heated but windowless sidewalk café. Even at that time of night the café was almost full and the suffering customers had about them the look of people about to pay someone large sums of money to move elsewhere. This organ appeared to be a replica of the one outside the Rembrandt, with the same garish colour scheme, multi-coloured canopy and identically dressed puppets dancing at the end of their elasticized strings, although this machine was clearly inferior, mechanically and musically, to the Rembrandt one. This machine, too, was manned by an ancient, but this one sported a foot-long flowing grey beard that had neither been washed nor combed since he’d stopped shaving and who wore a stetson hat and a British Army great-coat which fitted snugly around his ankles. Amidst the clankings, groanings and wheezings emitted by the organ I thought I detected an excerpt from La Bohème , although heaven knew that Puccini never made the dying Mimi suffer the way she would have suffered had she been in the Rembrandtplein that night.

The ancient had a close and apparently attentive audience of one. I recognized him as being one of the group I had seen by the organ outside the Rembrandt. His clothes were threadbare but neatly kept, his lanky black hair tumbled down to his painfully thin shoulders, the blades of which protruded through his jacket like sticks. Even at that distance of about twenty feet I could see that his degree of emaciation was advanced. I could see only part of one side of the face, but that little showed a cadaverously sunken cheek with skin the colour of old parchment.

He was leaning on the end of the barrel-organ, but not from any love of Mimi. He was leaning on the barrel-organ because if he hadn’t leaned on something he would surely have fallen down. He was obviously a very sick young man indeed with total collapse only one unpremeditated move away. Occasionally his whole body was convulsed by uncontrollable spasms of shaking: less frequently he made harsh sobbing or guttural noises in his throat. Clearly the old man in the great-coat did not regard him as being very good for business for he kept hovering around him indecisively, making reproachful clucking noises and ineffectual movements of his arms, very much like a rather demented hen. He also kept glancing over his shoulder and apprehensively round the square as if he were afraid of something or someone.

Astrid walked quickly towards the barrel-organ with myself close behind. She smiled apologetically at the bearded ancient, put her arm around the young man and pulled him away from the organ. Momentarily he tried to straighten up and I could see that he was a pretty tall youngster, at least six inches taller than the girl: his height served only to accentuate his skeleton frame. His eyes were staring and glazed and his face the face of a man dying from starvation, his cheeks so incredibly hollowed that one would have sworn that he could have no teeth. Astrid tried to half lead, half carry him away, but though his emaciation had reached a degree where he could scarcely be any heavier than the girl, if at all, his uncontrollable lurching made her stagger across the pavement.

I approached them without a word, put my arm round him – it was like putting my arm round a skeleton – and took his weight off Astrid. She looked at me and the brown eyes were sick with anxiety and fear. I don’t suppose my sepia complexion gave her much confidence either.

‘Please!’ Her voice was beseeching. ‘Please leave me. I can manage.’

‘You can’t. He’s a very sick boy, Miss Lemay.’

She stared at me. ‘Mr Sherman!’

‘I’m not sure if I like that,’ I said reflectively. ‘An hour or two ago you’d never seen me, never even knew my name. But now that I’ve gone all sun-tanned and attractive – Oops!’

George, whose rubbery legs had suddenly turned to jelly, had almost slipped from my grip. I could see that the two of us weren’t going to get very far waltzing like this along the Rembrandtplein, so I stooped down to hoist him over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift. She caught my arm in panic.

‘No! Don’t do that! Don’t do that!’

‘Why ever not?’ I said reasonably. ‘It’s easier this way.’

‘No, no! If the police see you they will take him away.’

I straightened, put my arm around him again and tried to maintain him as near to the vertical as was possible. ‘The hunter and the hunted,’ I said. ‘You and van Gelder both.’

‘Please?’

‘And of course, brother George is–’

‘How do you know his name?’ she whispered.

‘It’s my business to know things,’ I said loftily. ‘As I was saying, brother George is under the further disadvantage of not being exactly unknown to the police. Having an ex-convict for a brother can be a distinct disadvantage.’

She made no reply. I doubt if I’ve ever seen anyone who looked so completely miserable and defeated.

‘Where does he live?’ I asked.

‘With me, of course.’ The question seemed to surprise her. ‘It’s not far.’

It wasn’t either, not more than fifty yards down a sidestreet – if so narrow and gloomy a lane could be called a street – past the Balinova. The stairs up to Astrid’s flat were the narrowest and most twisted I had ever come across, and with George slung over my shoulder I had difficulty in negotiating them. Astrid unlocked the door to her flat, which proved to be hardly larger than a rabbit-hutch, consisting, as far as I could see, of a tiny sitting-room with an equally tiny bedroom leading off it. I went through to the bedroom, laid George on the narrow bed, straightened and mopped my brow.