Alistair MacLean - Puppet on a Chain

I looked behind me. Belinda was sitting on the floor again, her face in her hands: she was making doubly certain that she couldn't see what was going to happen, I looked towards the cable again, and this time I had no difficulty at all in seeing van Gelder clearly, for the moon had come from behind the cloud.

He was about half-way down now, beginning to sway from side to side as the high wind caught at him, increasing the arc of his pendulum with the passing of every moment. I reached for a wheel and turned it to the left.

The cable started to ascend, van Gelder ascending with it: astonishment must have momentarily frozen him to the cable. Then he clearly realized what was happening and he started sliding downwards at a much accelerated speed, at least three times that at which the cable was ascending.

I could see the giant hook at the end of the cable now, not forty feet below van Gelder. I centred the wheel again and again van Gelder clung motionless to the cable. I knew I had to do what I had to do but I wanted it over and done as quickly as was humanly possible. I turned the wheel to the right, the cable started to descend at full speed, then abruptly centred the wheel again. I could feel the shuddering jerk as the cable brought up to an abrupt standstill. Van Gelder's grip broke and in that moment I closed my eyes. I opened them, expecting to find an empty cable and van Gelder vanished from sight, but he was still there, no longer clinging to the cable: he was lying, face down, impaled on the giant hook, swaying to and fro in ponderous arcs, fifty feet above the houses of Amsterdam. I turned away, crossed to where Belinda sat, knelt and took her hands from her face. She looked up at me, I had expected to find revulsion in her face, but there was none, only sadness and weariness and that little-girl-lost expression on her face again.

'It's all over?' she whispered.

'It's all over.'

'And Maggie's dead.' I said nothing. 'Why should Maggie be dead and not me?'

'I don't know, Belinda.*

'Maggie was good at her job, wasn't she?*

'Maggie was good.'

'And me?' I said nothing. 'You don't have to tell me,' she said dully. 'I should have pushed van Gelder down the stairs in the warehouse, or crashed his van, or pushed him in the canal, or knocked him off the steps on the crane or — or — ' She said wonderingly: 'He didn't have his gun on me at any time.'

'He didn't have to, Belinda.'

'You knew?'

'Yes.'

'Category Grade 1, female operative,' she said bitterly. 'First job in narcotics — '

'Last job in narcotics.'

'I know.' She smiled wanly. 'I'm fired.'

'That's my girl,' I said approvingly. I pulled her to her feet. 'At least you know the regulations, or the one that concerns you anyway. She stared at me for a long moment, then the slow smile came for the first time that night. That's the one,' I said. 'Married women are not permitted to remain in the service.' She buried her face in my shoulders, which at least spared her the punishment of having to look at my sadly battered face.

I looked past the blonde head at the world beyond and below. The great hook with its grisly load was swaying wildly now and at the extremity of one of the swings both gun and puppet slipped from van Gelder's shoulders and fell away. They landed on the cobbles on the far side of the deserted canal street, the riot gun and the beautiful puppet from Huyler, over which the shadow, like the giant pendulum of a giant clock, of the cable, the hook and its burden, swung in ever-increasing arcs across the night skies of Amsterdam.