“Ah, Phil, wonderful!” He stepped over to the bed, clapped me on the shoulder. “ Wonderful!” When I was sitting down, his eyes were level with my own. They were shimmering with pleasure.
He was easy to please. All you had to do was give him whatever he wanted.
“Okay, Harry,” I said. “Okay. Go on downstairs. I’ll be right there.”
“Certainly, Phil,” he beamed.
When he left, I opened my traveling bag and lifted the false bottom. I removed the small automatic Colt and one of the spare magazines. I replaced the bottom, closed the bag, dropped the magazine into the left pocket of my coat.
I hefted the Colt. It wasn’t much of a gun and it didn’t really have much heft. But that was why I’d brought it along-if anyone found it, it would seem like the sort of gun that might be carried by the sort of person I was supposed to be.
I pulled back the Colt’s slide and released it. The slide jumped forward, chambering a cartridge. I flicked on the safety and slipped the pistol into the coat’s right pocket.
The Manor House sat broad and monumental in the center of six or seven acres of mowed lawn, a solitary square mountain in the center of a rolling green prairie. There were some trees scattered around, alone or in clusters, and a garden or two, and some fountains. But most of it was open space. If I could stick a couple of men in each of the two towers, no one would be able to approach the building during the day without being seen. I didn’t have a couple of men to stick in the towers.
The Great Man and I walked along a gravel path that ran around the perimeter. We kept the trees to our left. Even in the sunshine, the woods were dark. Tall shaggy pines crowded the ragged maples and oaks. Black plumes of fern drooped in the dense gray shadows. An entire army could hide itself in there, and some dancing girls, and all their relatives.
Walking beside me, the Great Man was drinking in the legendary beauty. He strolled with his head held high and his eyes wide open beneath the brim of his fedora. His arms were behind his back, left hand clutching right hand.
He took a deep breath and he hummed for a moment with pleasure. “Smell that air, Phil,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“It is a magnificent place, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“And a magnificent day.”
It was. The air was warm and clear and it smelled of new beginnings, fresh starts. Birds chattered and chittered in the trees. The blue of the sky and the green of the grass were as bright and slick as fresh paint. I resented it. I had things on my mind and all that brightness and beauty were distractions.
I said, “Yeah.”
“You know,” he said, “being here, amidst this loveliness, this serenity, makes me think that perhaps I should begin to consider my retirement from the stage.”
“Yeah?”
“Have I not produced enough astonishments for mankind to marvel at? Have I not sufficiently baffled the most sophisticated audiences in the most cosmopolitan cities of the world?”
“Probably.”
He sighed. He shook his head. “You cannot imagine how fatigued I sometimes become, Phil. How weary. Always creating some new way to enthrall and astound them. Always devising some new and even more impossible escape. Sometimes I actually wish that I could…” His voice trailed off. He sighed again, shook his head again.
I smiled. “Escape from it all?”
He turned to me and nodded. “Exactly, yes. Exactly. Perhaps the time has come for me to live as other men do. Perhaps, finally, the time has come for me to think only of myself. And of Bess, too, naturally. Perhaps it’s time for the two of us to find a haven of our own, a place where we can-” He stopped walking. “Look there, Phil!”
I stopped and I looked. A squirrel bounded across the lawn, a ripple of red fur atop the grass.
I said, “It’s a squirrel, Harry.”
He grinned, excited. “But it is an English squirrel, Phil. My first English squirrel.”
“You’ve been in England before.”
“Yes, but I was trapped in London then. I’ve never seen the countryside, never seen the wildlife.”
“It’s a squirrel, Harry.”
“Think of it, Phil. Ancestors of that squirrel may have witnessed the signing of the Magna Carta.”
“Maybe even signed it themselves.”
He looked at me and frowned. “You have no romance in you, Phil.”
“Probably not,” I said.
We kept following the gravel walkway around that immense sunswept lawn. To our right, a hundred yards away, beyond some clumps of trees, the rear of Maplewhite rose up like a castle.
I kept telling myself that it was safe out here. That there was no one around who represented a threat. Not yet.
We were about halfway around the walkway when I saw someone coming toward us. On horseback, about a quarter of a mile away, at the far curve of the gravel path.
The Great Man had stopped drinking in the legendary beauty. He was telling me about the time he had jumped from the Belle Isle Bridge into the Detroit River. It had been in December, he said, and the river had been frozen, and he had jumped into a hole in the ice wearing handcuffs. The current had been stronger than he expected and it had carried him away beneath the ice, seven inches thick, and he had survived by breathing the thin layer of air just beneath the ice’s surface. Not much of this was true but I didn’t bother to point that out.
Then he said, “Someone is coming, Phil.”
“Yeah,” I said. “A woman.”
She was dressed in black. The big black horse beneath her moved in a lazy walk as they came toward us along the gravel path.
“Not Miss Fitzwilliam?” the Great Man said.
“Looks like Miss Turner.”
Chapter Nine
In a few minutes, when she was closer, I could see that it was Miss Turner. She wore a small black bowler hat, a white blouse, a black bow tie, a black jacket, a pair of black riding breeches, and black leather riding boots. It seemed to me like a lot of clothes for such a warm day. But English people don’t pay much attention to the weather. If they did, they wouldn’t live in England.
Miss Turner’s blue eyes were squinting a bit as she approached us. I realized she wasn’t wearing her glasses.
She sat stiffly upright but she looked like someone who knew what she was doing. She knew how to put on the brakes, and the horse stopped a few yards from us and moved its head up and down. Her long legs straight against her stirrups, she leaned forward and stroked its strong sleek neck. The horse moved his head up and down some more. He liked that. I didn’t blame him.
“Mr. Houdini,” she said. “Mr. Beaumont. How are you this morning?” A few strands of her brown hair had freed themselves and draped down against her slender neck. Her face was bright and shining and once again she looked younger than she was.
“Quite well, Miss Turner,” said the Great Man, taking off his hat. “And you?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” she said, and suddenly she smiled. It was a big, fine, delighted smile. It went very well with her eyes. “It’s really a marvelous day, isn’t it?”
“Magnificent,” agreed the Great Man.
I removed my hat and I said, “You’re feeling better?”
She blushed, looked down, looked back up. “I’m glad of a chance to apologize for last night. I made a
