“Harry. Calm down.”
“But doesn’t she know that I’m a married man?”
“She’s just a kid, Harry. She only wanted to talk.”
He looked off, toward the window, and stared at it for a moment. Then he took a deep breath and slowly let it out in a kind of moaning sigh, long and low. He shook his head. “So it begins again,” he said.
“Again?” I said.
He looked at me sadly. “This has happened before, Phil. Many, many times. It is a terrible curse. Women of a certain… ah… animal nature, they inevitably find me irresistible. Perhaps my great physical strength attracts them. Or my virile demeanor. Perhaps it is merely the fact that Houdini is the most famous man alive.”
He shrugged sadly. “Who knows, Phil? Who can plumb the hearts of these women? Certainly I never encourage them, never give them reason to believe, even for a moment, that I would respond to their advances. You know that my darling wife is the light of my existence. She is my beacon in life’s storm-tossed sea, the only woman who has ever meant anything to me. Except, of course, for my dear departed mother. I would never betray Bess, Phil.”
He looked off again. “I suppose I must try to find it within me to forgive them, these women. They cannot help themselves, naturally.” He shook his head. “But I would never have believed that the daughter of an English lord…”
He looked back at me. “What shall we do about this, Phil? Shall we go to Lord Purleigh and ask him to keep a closer watch over this daughter of his?”
I smiled. “I don’t think so, Harry. Cecily won’t bother you again.”
He raised his dark eyebrows hopefully. “Really? What did you say to her?”
“All the stuff you just said. About Bess and all. The beacon in the storm-tossed sea. I explained everything. She understands.”
“Ah. Wonderful, Phil. A good thing that you are a man of the world, like myself.” He frowned suddenly. “But why on earth did she bring the handcuffs?”
“She wanted you to see them. They’re her grandfather’s. She thought you might be interested.”
“In an ancient pair of Mueller and Kohls?” Mildly indignant. “She didn’t know, Harry. She was only trying to be friendly. After she left, I was playing around with them and I accidentally locked myself up. Sorry I had to wake you up.”
He shook his head. “You did not actually awaken me. As you know, I have difficulty sleeping. I was merely resting.”
I nodded. “There’s one other thing you should know, though.”
He frowned. Worried, probably, about some other woman with an animal nature. “And what is that?”
“Looks like we had a ghost here last night.”
“A ghost?”
I told him about Miss Turner.
When I was finished, he asked me, “How did she seem to you, Phil? Miss Turner?”
“Like someone who’d just seen a ghost.”
“She was hysterical?”
“Not hysterical. Upset. Whatever she saw, she thought it was a ghost, and it scared her. But she seemed to be handling it fairly well.”
“Yes. From my brief meeting with her, I would say that she has a good head on her shoulders.”
And a good pair of shoulders under her head.
“As I may have told you, Phil, hauntings do not much interest me. If the accounts are true, ghosts seem to be completely unaware that they are actually dead. Which makes them, in my view, remarkably stupid creatures. What would be the point of communicating with them, even assuming that one could? But, you know, perhaps our Miss Turner is a sensitive. A natural medium. Unwittingly, without her own knowledge. I have heard of this, although never encountered it.” He nodded thoughtfully. “I shall speak with her.”
“Right.”
“Shall we go have breakfast?” he asked me.
I looked down at my bathrobe, looked back up at the Great Man. “I thought I’d get into some clothes first.”
“Excellent. I shall finish up this letter to Bess.”
Downstairs, another servant-one we hadn’t seen before- told us that breakfast was still available in the conservatory. We followed him along some more hallways.
The conservatory was a large sunny room. All around, lush ferns and squat palms spread lacy fans and plump shiny fronds. Bright saffron light streaming through the walls of glass warmed the smooth gray marble floor. Beyond the glass was a view as still and as perfectly composed as a landscape painting. Blue sky overhead, a few white puffs of cumulus hanging there. An expanse of green lawn sloping down to a broad formal garden neatly blocked with squares of red and yellow and purple.
Sitting in the middle of the room was a long table covered with white linen. On a sideboard to the right were five or six silver warming pans, all of them the size of washtubs. There were stacks of porcelain plates, teapots and coffeepots, cups and saucers.
Lord Bob was sitting at the end of the empty table, in another gray suit.
“Ah, Houdini, Beaumont,” said Lord Bob cheerfully. “Up at the crack of dawn, eh?” He chuckled. “You’ve missed the others, sorry to say. Gone into the village, all of’em. Shopping, seeing the sights. Both sights, presumably. The church and the pub.” He chuckled again. “Grab some grub, why don’t you. Isn’t that how you Americans say it? Marvelous language, American. Help yourself, we’re informal at breakfast. And coffee, tea, whatever. Probably need your coffee this morning, eh, Beaumont? Comforting damsels in distress all night long, eh?”
He was in too good a mood to be talking about his daughter. I smiled at him as I lifted the lid of a warming pan. “You heard about last night?” Inside the pan were glistening layers of chunky pork sausages. I picked up a fork and stabbed a few, levered them off the fork onto a plate.
“Everyone has,” said Lord Bob. “Talk of the town, eh?”
I said, “How is Miss Turner this morning?” I looked inside the next warming pan. A small beached school of stiffened fish stared up at me with scorched cloudy eyes. I returned the lid.
“Fine, fine,” said Lord Bob. “None the worse. Funny, though, wouldn’t you say? Never would’ve pegged her for the flighty type.”
The next dish held rashers of bacon. I took some. “Me neither.” Like me, the Great Man was piling food on his plate. He asked Lord Bob, “This ghost was your ancestor, Lord Purleigh?”
“Supposed to be.” His bristly white eyebrows dipped. Impatiently, he waved his teaspoon. “But too nice a day for that sort of thing, eh?”
Both the Great Man and I had filled our plates. We sat down next to each other and the Great Man turned to Lord Bob. “You have a lovely home, Lord Purleigh.”
“Bob,” he said. “Nice of you to say so. Can’t take all the credit, of course. Been here a lot longer than I have. Make a lovely golfing club, though, won’t it?”
“A golfing club?” said the Great Man.
“For the toiling masses. Idea of mine. Poor chaps don’t get enough fresh air, do they.”
“Ah,” said the Great Man. “Yes. Miss Cecily mentioned something about this, I believe.”
“Cecily did, did she?” He stroked his mustache. He nodded, faintly, sadly. “Doesn’t approve, Cecily. Neither does her mother. Upbringing, you know. But they’ll see the light. Know they will.” He leaned forward. “Think of it. A golfing club for the proletariat. Plenty of good fresh air, plenty of sound, healthy exercise. And we’ll have more, of course. Nursery school for the young ’uns. Free medical care for everyone. And research facilities with first-rate people, eh? Finding ways to improve the quality of life. Everyone’s life. And educational classes, as well, readings from Das Kapital. Not all those statistics, mind, but the gist of the thing. The meat. Read it, have you, Houdini?”
The Great Man blinked. “Not as yet, Lord Robert.”
“I’ll give you a copy. Got hundreds of ’em. It’ll change your life. Changed mine, for a fact. Would’ve started
