Puppet On A Chain Part 16

'Why?'

'Because his high-principled sister -- who has erroneously believed for years that we have evidence leading to the proof of her brother's guilt as a murderer -- finally prevailed upon him to go to the police. So we had to remove them from the Amsterdam scene temporarily -- but not, of course, in such a way as to upset you. I'm afraid, Mr Sherman, that you must hold yourself partly to blame for the poor lad's death. And for that of his sister. And for that of your lovely a.s.sistant -- Maggie, I think her name was.' He broke off and retreated hastily, holding his pistol at arm's length. 'Do not throw yourself on my gun. I take it you did not enjoy the entertainment? Neither, I'm sure, did Maggie. And neither, I'm afraid, will your other friend Belinda, who must die this evening. Ah! That strikes deep, I see. You would like to kill me, Mr Sherman.' He was smiling still, but the flat staring eyes were the eyes of a madman. And neither, I'm afraid, will your other friend Belinda, who must die this evening. Ah! That strikes deep, I see. You would like to kill me, Mr Sherman.' He was smiling still, but the flat staring eyes were the eyes of a madman.

'Yes,' I said tonelessly, 'I'd like to kill you.'

'We have sent her a little note.' Goodbody was enjoying himself immensely. 'Code word "Birmingham", I believe . .. She is to meet you at the warehouse of our good friends Morgenstern and Muggenthaler, who will now be above suspicion for ever. Who but the insane would ever contemplate perpetrating two such hideous crimes on their own premises? So fitting, don't you think? Another puppet on a chain. Like all the thousands of other puppets throughout the world -- hooked and dancing to our tune.'

I said: 'You know, of course, that you are quite mad?'

'Tie him up,' Goodbody said harshly. His urbanity had cracked at last. The truth must have hurt him.

Jacques bound my wrists with the thick rubber-covered flex. He did the same for my ankles, pushed me to one side of the room and attached my wrists by another length of rubber cable to an eyebolt on the wall.

'Start the clocks!' Goodbody ordered. Obediently, Jacques set off around the room starting the pendulums to swing: significantly, he didn't bother about the smaller clocks.

'They all work and they all chime, some most loudly,' Goodbody said with satisfaction. He was back on balance again, urbane and unctuous as ever. Those earphones will amplify the sound about ten times. There is the amplifier there and the microphone there, both, as you can see, well beyond your reach. The earphones are unbreakable. In fifteen minutes you will be insane, in thirty minutes unconscious. The resulting coma lasts from eight to ten hours. You will wake up still insane. But you won't wake up. Already beginning to tick and chime quite loudly, aren't they?'

This is how George died, of course. And you will, watch it all happen. Through the top of that gla.s.s door, of course. Where it won't be so noisy.'

'Regrettably, not all. Jacques and I have some business matters to attend to. But we'll be back for the most interesting part, won't we, Jacques?'

'Yes, Mr Goodbody,' said Jacques, still industriously swinging pendulums. 'If I disappear -- '

'Ah, but you won't. I had intended to have you disappear last night in the harbour but that was crude, a panic measure lacking the hallmark of my professionalism. I have come up with a much better idea, haven't I, Jacques?'

'Yes, indeed, Mr Goodbody.' Jacques had now almost to shout to make himself heard.

The point is you're not going to disappear, Mr Sherman. Oh, dear me. no. You'll be found, instead, only a few minutes after you've drowned.' 'Drowned?'

'Precisely. Ah, you think, then the authorities will immediately suspect foul play. An autopsy. And the first thing they see are forearms riddled with injection punctures -- I have a system that can make two-hour-old punctures look two months old. They will proceed further and find you full of dope -- as you will be. Injected when you are unconscious about two hours before we push you, in your car, into a ca.n.a.l, then call the police. This they will not believe. Sherman, the intrepid Interpol narcotics investigator? Then they go through your luggage. Hypodermics, needles, heroin, in your pockets traces of cannabis. Sad, sad. Who would have thought it? Just another of those who hunted with the hounds and ran with the hare.'

'I'll say this much for you,' I said, 'you're a clever madman.'

He smiled, which probably meant he couldn't hear me above the increasing clamour of the clocks. He clamped the sorbo-rubber earphones to my head and secured them immovably in position with literally yards of Scotch tape. Momentarily the room became almost hushed -- the earphones were acting as temporary sound insulators. Goodbody crossed the room towards the amplifier, smiled at me again and pulled a switch.

I felt as if I had been subjected to some violent physical blow or a severe electrical shock. My whole body arched and twisted in convulsive jerks and I knew what little could be seen of my face under the plaster and Scotch tape must be convulsed in agony. For I was in agony, an agony a dozen times more piercing and unbearable than the best -- or the worst -- that Marcel had been able to inflict upon me. My ears, my entire head, were filled with this insanely shrieking banshee cacophony of sound. It sliced through my head like white-hot skewers, it seemed to be tearing my brain apart. I couldn't understand why my eardrums didn't shatter. I had always heard and believed that a loud enough explosion of sound, set off close enough to your ears, can deafen you immediately and for life: but it wasn't working in my case. As it obviously hadn't worked in George's case. In my torment I vaguely remembered Goodbody attributing George's death to his weakened physical condition.

I rolled from side to side, an instinctive animal reaction to escape from what is hurting you, but I couldn't roll far, Jacques had used a fairly short length of rubber cable to secure me to the eyebolt and I could roll no more than a couple of feet in either direction. At the end of one roll I managed to focus my eyes long enough to see Goodbody and Jacques, now both outside the room, peering at me with interest through the gla.s.s-topped door: after a few seconds Jacques raised his left wrist and tapped his watch. Goodbody nodded in reluctant agreement and both men hurried away. I supposed in my blinding sea of pain that they were in a hurry to come back to witness the grand finale.

Fifteen minutes before I was unconscious, Goodbody had said. I didn't believe a word of it, n.o.body could stand up to this for two or three minutes without being broken both mentally and physically. I twisted violently from side to side, tried to smash the earphones on the floor or to tear them free. But Goodbody had been right, the earphones were unbreakable and the Scotch tape had been so skilfully and tightly applied that my efforts to tear the phones free resulted only in reopening the wounds on my face.

The pendulums swung, the clocks ticked, the chimes rang out almost continuously. There was no relief, no let-up, not even the most momentary respite from this murderous a.s.sault on the nervous system that triggered off those uncontrollable epileptic convulsions. It was one continuous electric shock at just below the lethal level and I could now all too easily give credence to tales I had heard of patients undergoing electric shock therapy who had eventually ended up on the operating table for the repair of limbs fractured through involuntary muscular contraction.

I could feel my mind going, and for a brief period I tried to help the feeling along. Oblivion, anything for oblivion. I'd failed, I'd failed all along the line, everything I'd touched had turned to destruction and death. Maggie was dead, Duclos was dead, Astrid was dead and her brother George. Only Belinda was left and she was going to die that night. A grand slam.

And then I knew. I knew I couldn't let Belinda die. That was what saved me, I knew I could not let her d That was what saved me, I knew I could not let her die. Pride no longer concerned me, my failure no longer concerned me, the total victory of Goodbody and his evil a.s.sociates was of no concern to me. They could flood the world with their d.a.m.ned narcotics for all I cared. But I couldn't let Belinda d Pride no longer concerned me, my failure no longer concerned me, the total victory of Goodbody and his evil a.s.sociates was of no concern to me. They could flood the world with their d.a.m.ned narcotics for all I cared. But I couldn't let Belinda die.

Somehow I pushed myself up till my back was against the wall. Apart from the frequent convulsions, I was vibrating in every limb in my body, not just shaking like a man with the ague, that would have been easily tolerated but vibrating as a man would have been had he been tied to a giant pneumatic drill. I could no longer focus for more than a second or two, but I did my best to look fuzzily, desperately around to see if there was anything that offered any hope of salvation. There was nothing. Then, without warning, the sound in my head abruptly rose to a shattering crescendo -- it was probably a big clock near the microphones striking the hour -- and I fell sideways as if I'd been hit on the temple by a two-by-four. As my head struck the floor it also struck some projection low down on the skirting board.

My focusing powers were now entirely gone, but I could vaguely distinguish objects not less than a few inches away and this one was no more than three. It says much for my now almost completely incapacitated mind that it took me several seconds to realize what it was, but when I did I forced myself into a sitting position again. The object was an electrical wall-socket.

My hands were bound behind my back and it took me for ever to locate and take hold of the two free ends of the electrical cable that held me prisoner. I touched their ends with my fingertips: the wire core was exposed in both cases. Desperately, I tried to force the ends into the sockets -- it never occurred to me that it might have been a shuttered plug, although it would have been unlikely in so old a house as this -- but my hands shook so much that I couldn't locate them. I could feel consciousness slipping away. I could feel the d.a.m.ned plug, I could feel the sockets with my fingertips, but I couldn't match the ends of the wire with the holes. I couldn't see any more, I had hardly any feeling left in my fingers, the pain was beyond human tolerance and I think I was screaming soundlessly in my agony when suddenly there was a brilliant bluish-white flash and I fell sideways to the floor.

How long I lay there unconscious I could not later tell: it must have been at least a matter of minutes. The first thing 1 was aware of was the incredible glorious silence, not a total silence, for I could still hear the chiming of clocks, but a m.u.f.fled chiming only for I had blown the right power fuse and the earphones were again acting as insulators. I sat up till I was in a half-reclining position. I could feel blood trickling down my chin and was to find later that I'd bitten through my lower lip: my face was bathed in sweat, my entire body felt as if it had been on the rack. I didn't mind any of it, I was conscious of only one thing: the utter blissfulness of silence. Those lads in the Noise Abatement Society knew what they were about.

The effects of this savage punishment pa.s.sed off more swiftly than I would have expected, but far from completely: that pain in my head and eardrums and the overall soreness of my body would be with me for quite a long time to come -- that I knew. But the effects weren't wearing off quite as quickly as I thought, because it took me over a minute to realize that if Goodbody and Jacques came back that moment and found me sitting against the wall with what was unquestionably an idiotic expression of bliss on my face, they wouldn't be indulging in any half measures next time round. I glanced quickly up at the gla.s.s-topped door but there were no raised eyebrows in sight yet.

I stretched out on the floor again and resumed my rolling to and fro. I was hardly more than ten seconds too soon, for on my third or fourth roll towards the door I saw Goodbody and Jacques thrust their heads into view. I stepped up my performance, rolled about more violently than ever, arched my body and flung myself so convulsively to and fro that I was suffering almost as much as I had been when I was undergoing the real thing. Every time I rolled towards the door I let them see my contorted face, my eyes either staring wide or screwed tightly shut in agony and I think that my sweat-sheened face and the blood welling from my lip and from one or two of the reopened gashes that Marcel had given must have added up to a fairly convincing spectacle. Goodbody and Jacques were both smiling broadly, although Jacques's expression came nowhere near Goodbody's benign saintliness.

I gave one particularly impressive leap that carried my entire body clear of the ground and as I near as a toucher dislocated my shoulder as I landed I decided that enough was enough -- I doubt if even Goodbody really knew the par for the course -- and allowed my stragglings and writhings to become feebler and feebler until eventually, after one last convulsive jerk, I lay still.

Goodbody and Jacques entered. Goodbody strode across to switch off the amplifier, smiled beautifully and switched it on again: he had forgotten that his intention was not only to render me unconscious but insane. Jacques, however, said something to him, and Goodbody nodded reluctantly and switched off the amplifier again -- perhaps Jacques, activated not by compa.s.sion but the thought that it might make it difficult for them if I were to die before they injected the drugs, had pointed this out -- while Jacques went around stopping the pendulums of the biggest clocks. Then both came across to examine me. Jacques kicked me experimentally in the ribs but I'd been through too much to react to that.

'Now, now, my dear fellow -- ' I could faintly hear Goodbody's reproachful voice -- 'I approve your sentiments but no marks, no marks. The police wouldn't like it.'

'But look at his face,' Jacques protested.

'That's so,' Goodbody agreed amicably. 'Anyway, cut his wrists free -- wouldn't do to have gouge marks showing on them when the fire brigade fish him out of the ca.n.a.l: and remove those earphones and hide them.' Jacques did both in the s.p.a.ce of ten seconds: when he removed the earphones it felt as if my face was coming with it: Jacques had a very cavalier att.i.tude towards Scotch tape.

'As for him -- ' Goodbody nodded at George Lemay -- 'dispose of him. You know how. I'll send Marcel out to help you bring Sherman in.' There was silence for a few moments. I knew he was looking down at me, then Goodbody sighed. 'Ah, me. Ah, me. Life is but a walking shadow.'

With that, Goodbody took himself off. He was humming as he went, and as far as one can hum soulfully, Goodbody was giving as soulful a rendition of 'Abide with me' as ever I had heard. He had a sense of occasion, had the Reverend Goodbody.

Jacques went to a box in the corner of the room, produced half a dozen large pendulum weights and proceeded to thread a piece of rubber cable through their eyelids and attach the cable to George's waist: Jacques was leaving little doubt as to what he had in mind. He dragged George from the room out into the corridor and I could hear the sound of the dead man's feels rubbing along the floor as Jacques dragged him to the front of the castle. I rose, flexed my hands experimentally, and followed.

As I neared the doorway I could hear the sound of the Mercedes starting up and getting under way. I looked round the corner. Jacques, with George lying on the floor beside him, had the window open and was giving a sketchy salute: it could only have been to the departing Goodbody.

Jacques turned from the window to attend to George's last rites. Instead he stood there motionless, his face frozen in total shock. I was only five feet from him and I could tell even from his stunned lack of expression that he could tell from mine that he had reached the end of his murderous road. Frantically, he scrabbled for the gun under his arm, but for what may well have been the first and was certainly the last time in his life Jacques was too slow, for that moment of paralysed incredulity had been his undoing. I hit him just beneath the ribs as his gun came clear and when he doubled forward wrested the gun from his almost unresisting hand and struck him savagely with it across the temple. Jacques, unconscious on his feet, took one involuntary step back, the window-sill caught him behind the legs and he began to topple outwards and backwards in oddly slow motion. I just stood there and watched him go, and when I heard the splash and only then, I went to the window and looked out. The roiled waters of the moat were rippling against the bank and the castle walls and from the middle of the moat a stream of bubbles ascended. I looked to the left and could see Goodbody's Mercedes rounding the entrance arch to the castle. By this time, I thought, he should have been well into the fourth verse of 'Abide with me'.

I withdrew from the window and walked downstairs. I went out, leaving the door open behind me. I paused briefly on the steps over the moat and looked down, and as I did the bubbles from the bottom of the moat gradually became fewer and smaller and finally ceased altogether.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

I sat in the Opel, looked at my gun which I'd recovered from Jacques, and pondered. If there was one thing that I had discovered about that gun it was that people seemed to be able to take it from me whenever they felt so inclined. It was a chastening thought but one that carried with it the inescapable conclusion that what I needed was another gun, a second gun, so I brought up Astrid's handbag from under the seat and took out the little Lilliput I had given her. I lifted my left trouser-leg a few inches, thrust the little gun barrel downwards, inside my sock and the inside top of my shoe, pulled the sock up and the trouser-leg down. I was about to close the bag when I caught sight of the two pairs of handcuffs. I hesitated, for on the form to date the likelihood was that, if I took them with me, they'd end up on my own wrists, but as it seemed too late in the day now to stop taking the chances that I'd been taking all along ever since I'd arrived in Amsterdam, I put both pairs in my left-hand jacket pocket and the duplicate keys in my right.

When I arrived back in the old quarter of Amsterdam, having left my usual quota of fist-shaking and police-telephoning motorists behind me, the first shades of early darkness were beginning to fall. The rain had eased, but the wind was steadily gaining in strength, ruffling and eddying the waters of the ca.n.a.ls.

I turned into the street where the warehouse was. It was deserted, neither cars nor pedestrians in sight. That is to say, at street level it was deserted: on the third floor of Morgenstern and Muggenthaler's premises a burly s.h.i.+rt-sleeved character was leaning with his elbows on the sill of an open window, and from the way in which his head moved constantly from side to side it was apparent that the savouring of Amsterdam's chilly evening air was not his primary purpose for being there. I drove past the warehouse and made my way up to the vicinity of the Dam where I called de Graaf from the public phone-box.

'Where have you been?' de Graaf demanded. 'What have you been doing?'

'Nothing that would interest you.' It must have been the most unlikely statement I'd ever made. 'I'm ready to talk now?'

'Talk.'

'Not here. Not now. Not over the telephone. Can you and van Gelder come to Morgenstern and Muggenthaler's place now.'

'You'll talk there?'

'I promise you.'

'We are on our way,' de Graaf said grimly.

'One moment. Come in a plain van and park further along the street. They have a guard posted at one of the windows.'

'They?'

'That's what I'm going to talk to you about.'

'And the guard?'

'I'll distract him. I'll think up a diversion of some kind.'

'I see.' De Graaf paused and went on heavily: 'On your form to date I shudder to think what form the diversion will take.' He hung up.

I went into a local ironmongery store and bought a ball of twine and the biggest Stilson wrench they had on their shelves. Four minutes later I had the Opel parked less than a hundred yards from the warehouse, but not in the same street.

I made my way up the very narrow and extremely ill-lit service alley between the street in which the warehouse stood and the one running parallel to it. The first warehouse I came to on my left had a rickety wooden fire-escape that would have been the first thing to burn down in a fire but that was the first and last. I went at least fifty yards past the building I reckoned to be Morgenstern and Muggenthaler's, and nary another fire-escape did I come to: knotted sheets must have been at a premium in that part of Amsterdam.

I went back to the one and only fire-escape and made my way up to the roof. I took an instant dislike to this roof as I did to all the other roofs I had to cross to arrive at the one I wanted. All the ridgepoles ran at right angles to the street, the roofs themselves were steeply pitched and treacherously slippery from the rain and, to compound the difficulties, the architects of yesteryear, with what they had mistakenly regarded as the laudable intention of creating a diversity of skyline styles, had craftily arranged matters so that no two roofs were of precisely the same design or height. At first I proceeded cautiously, but caution got me nowhere and I soon developed the only practical method of getting from one ridgepole to the next -- running down one steeply pitched roof-side and letting the momentum carry me as far as possible up the other side before falling flat and scrabbling the last few feet up on hands and knees. At last I came to what I thought would be the roof I wanted, edged out to street level, leaned out over the gable and peered down.

I was right first time, which made a change for me. The s.h.i.+rt-sleeved sentry, almost twenty feet directly below .me, was still maintaining his vigil. I attached one end of the ball of twine securely to the hole in the handle of the Stilson, lay flat so that my arm and the cord would clear the hoisting beam and lowered the Stilson about fifteen feet before starting to swing it in a gentle pendulum arc which increased with every movement of my hand. I increased it as rapidly as possible, for only feet beneath me a bright light shone through the crack between the two loading doors in the top storey and I had no means of knowing how long those doors would remain unopened.

The Stilson, which must have weighed at least four pounds, was now swinging through an arc of almost 90 degrees. I lowered it three more feet and wondered how long it would be before the guard would become puzzled by the soft swish of sound that it must inevitably be making in its pa.s.sage through the air, but at that moment his attention was fortunately distracted. A blue van had just entered the street and its arrival helped me in two ways: the watcher leaned further out to investigate this machine and at the same time the sound of its engine covered any intimation of danger from the swinging Stilson above.

The van stopped thirty yards away and the engine died. The Stilson was at the outer limit of its swing. As it started to descend I let the cord slip another couple of feet through my fingers. The guard, aware suddenly but far too late that something was amiss, twisted his head round just in time to catch the full weight of the Stilson on the forehead. He collapsed as if a bridge had fallen on him and slowly toppled backwards out of sight.

The door of the van opened and de Graaf got out. He waved to me. I made two beckoning gestures with my right arm, checked to see that the small gun was still firmly anch.o.r.ed inside my sock and shoe, lowered myself till my stomach was resting on the hoisting beam, then transferred my position till I was suspended by hands. I took my gun from its shoulder-holster, held it in my teeth, swung back, just once, then forwards, my left foot reaching for the loading sill, and my right foot kicking the doors open as I reached out my hands to get purchase on the door jambs. I took the gun in my right hand.

There were four of them there, Belinda, Goodbody and the two partners. Belinda, white-faced, struggling, but making no sound, was already clad in a flowing Huyler costume and embroidered bodice, her arms held by the rubicund, jovially good-natured Morgenstern and Muggenthaler whose beaming avuncular smiles now began to congeal in almost grotesque slow motion: Goodbody, who had had his back to me and had been adjusting Belinda's wimpled headgear to his aesthetic satisfaction, turned round very slowly. His mouth fell slowly open, his eyes widened and the blood drained from his face until it was almost the colour of his snowy hair.

I took two steps into the loft and reached an arm for Belinda. She stared at me for unbelieving seconds, then shook off the nerveless hands of Morgenstern and Muggenthaler and came running to me. Her heart was racing like a captive bird's but she seemed otherwise not much the worse for what could only have been the most ghastly experience.

I looked at the three men and smiled as much as I could without hurting my face too much. I said: 'Now, you know what death looks like.'

They knew all right. Their faces frozen, they stretched their hands upwards as far as they could. I kept them like that, not speaking, until de Graaf and van Gelder came pounding up the stairs and into the loft. During that time nothing happened. I will swear none of them as much as blinked. Belinda had begun to shake uncontrollably from the reaction, but she managed to smile wanly at me and I knew she would be all right: Paris Interpol hadn't just picked her out of a hat.

De Graaf and van Gelder, both with guns in their hands, looked at the tableau. De Graaf said: 'What in G.o.d's name do you think you are about, Sherman? Why are those three men -- '

'Suppose I explain?' I interrupted reasonably. 'It will require some explanation,' van Gelder said heavily. Three well-known and respected citizens of Amsterdam -- ' 'Please don't make me laugh,' I said. 'It hurts my face.' That too,' de Graaf said. 'How on earth -- ' 'I cut myself shaving.' That was Astrid's line, really, but I wasn't at my inventive best. 'Can I tell it?' De Graaf sighed and nodded. 'In my way?' He nodded again.

I said to Belinda: 'You know Maggie's dead?' 'I know she's dead.' Her voice was a shaking whisper, she wasn't as recovered as I'd thought. 'He's just told me. He told me and he smiled.'

'It's his Christian compa.s.sion s.h.i.+ning through. He can't help it. Well,' I said to the policeman, 'take a good look gentlemen. At Goodbody. The most s.a.d.i.s.tically psychopathic killer I've ever met -- or heard of, for that matter. The man who hung Astrid Lemay on a hook. The man who had Maggie pitchforked to death in a hayfield in Huyler. The man -- '

'You said pitchforked?' De Graaf asked. You could see his mind couldn't accept it.

'Later. The man who drove George Lemay so mad that he killed him. The man who tried to kill me the same way; the man who tried to kill me three times today. The man who puts bottles of gin in the hands of dying junkies. The man who drops people into ca.n.a.ls with lead piping wrapped round their waists after G.o.d knows what suffering and tortures. Apart from being the man who brings degradation and dementia and death to thousands of crazed human beings throughout the world. By his own admission, the master puppeteer who dangles a thousand hooked puppets from the end of his chains and makes them all dance to his tune. The dance of death.'

'It's not possible,' van Gelder said. He seemed dazed. 'It can't be. Dr Goodbody? The pastor of -- -'

'His name is Ignatius Catanelli and he's on our files. An ex-member of an Eastern Seaboard cosa nostra. But even the Mafia couldn't stomach him. By their lights they never kill wantonly, only for sound business reasons. But Catanelli killed because he's in love with death. When he was a little boy he probably pulled the wings off flies. But when he grew up, flies weren't enough for him. He had to leave the States, for the Mafia offered only one alternative.'

'This -- this is fantastic.' Fantastic or not the colour still wasn't back in Goodbody's cheeks, 'This is outrageous. This is -- '

'Be quiet,' I said. 'We have your prints and cephalic index. I must say that he has, in the American idiom, a sweet set-up going for him here. Incoming coasters drop heroin in a sealed and weighted container at a certain off-sh.o.r.e buoy. This is dragged up by barge and taken to Huyler, where it finds its way to a cottage factory there. This cottage factory makes puppets, which are then transferred to the warehouse here. What more natural -- except that the very occasional and specially marked puppet contains heroin.'

Goodbody said: 'Preposterous, preposterous. You can't prove any of this.'

'As I intend to kill you in a minute or two I don't have to prove anything. Ah yes, he had his organization, had friend Catanelli. He had everybody from barrel-organ players to strip-tease dancers working for him -- a combination of blackmail, money, addiction and the final threat of death made them all keep the silence of the grave.'

'Working for him?' De Graaf was still a league behind me. 'In what way?'

'Pus.h.i.+ng and forwarding. Some of the heroin -- a relatively small amount -- was left here in puppets: some went to the shops, some to the puppet van in the Vondel Park -- and other vans, for all I know. Goodbody's girls went to the shops and purchased those puppets -- which were secretly marked -- in perfectly legitimate stores and had them sent to minor heroin suppliers, or addicts, abroad. The ones in the Vondel Park were ^old cheap to the barrel-organ men -- they were the connections for the down-and-outs who were in so advanced a condition that they couldn't be allowed to appear in respectable places -- if, that is to say, you call sleazy dives like the Balinova a respectable place.'

'Then how in G.o.d's name did we never catch on to any of this?' de Graaf demanded.

'Ill tell you in a moment. Still about the distribution. An even larger proportion of the stuff went from here in crates of Bibles -- the ones which our saintly friend here so kindly distributed gratis all over Amsterdam. Some of the Bibles had hollow centres. The sweet young things that Goodbody here, in the ineffable goodness of his Christian heart, was trying to rehabilitate and save from a fate worse than death, would turn up at his services with Bibles clutched in their sweet little hands -- some of them, G.o.d help us, fetchingly dressed as nuns -- -then go away with different Bibles clutched in their sweet little hands and then peddle the d.a.m.ned stuff in the nightclubs. The rest of the stuff -- the bulk of the stuff -- went to the Kasteel Linden. Or have I missed something, Goodbody?'

From the expression on his face, it was pretty evident that I hadn't missed out much of importance, but he didn't answer me. I lifted my gun slightly and said: 'Now, I think, Goodbody.'

'No one's taking the law into his own hands here!' de Graaf said sharply.

'You can see he's trying to escape,' I said reasonably. Goodbody was standing motionless: he couldn't possibly have reached his fingers up another millimetre.

Then, for the second time that day, a voice behind me said: 'Drop that gun, Mr Sherman.'

I turned slowly and dropped my gun. Anybody could take my gun from me. This time it was Trudi, emerging from shadows and only five feet away with a Luger held remarkably steadily in her right hand.

'Trudi!' De Graaf stared at the young happily-smiling blonde girl in shocked incomprehension. 'What in G.o.d's name -- ' He broke off his words and cried out in pain instead as the barrel of van Gelder's gun smashed down on his wrist. De Graaf's gun clattered to the floor and as he turned to look at the man who had struck him de Graaf's eyes held only stupefaction. Goodbody, Morgenstern and Muggenthaler lowered their hands, the last two producing guns of their own from under their pockets: so vastly voluminous was the yardage of cloth required to cover their enormous frames that they, unlike myself, did not require the ingenuity of specialized tailors to conceal the outline of their weapons.

Goodbody produced a handkerchief, mopped a brow which stood in urgent need of mopping, and said querulously to Trudi: 'You took your time about coming forward, didn't you?'

'Oh, I enjoyed it!' She giggled, a happy and carefree sound that would have chilled the blood of a frozen flounder. 'I enjoyed every moment of it!'

'A touching pair, aren't they?' I said to van Gelder. 'Herself and her saintly pal here. This quality of trusting childlike innocence -- '

'Shut up,' van Gelder said coldly. He approached, ran his hand over me for weapons, found none. 'Sit on the floor.

Keep your hands where I can see them. You, too, de Graaf.'

We did as we were told. I sat cross-legged, my forearms on my thighs, my dangling hands close to my ankles. De Graaf stared at me, his face a mirror for his absolute lack of understanding.