He stood back. I moved to one side, to permit the Great Man his entrance. He stepped in grandly, sweeping off his hat with a flourish, and I followed him. We set down our bags. To the right of the butler was another servant. This one was also dressed in black, but not as magnificently. He glided smoothly forward, as though he were wearing roller skates, and he began to help the Great Man with his coat. The Great Man smiled pleasantly. He liked having people help him with his coat.
The butler said, “Lord and Lady Purleigh are in the drawing room, with their other guests. Would you like to join them now, or would you prefer to go to your rooms first?”
“Go to the rooms, I think,” said the Great Man. “Don’t you agree, Phil?”
I shrugged.
The servant glided toward me, but I had already taken off my hat and coat. If this was a disappointment, he didn’t show it. He just nodded and took them, his features as blank and expressionless as the butler’s. But he was shorter, and younger and much thinner, with black hair and a pale, pinched face.
“Very good,” said the butler. “You’ll be staying in the east wing. Briggs will take you there.”
Briggs had hung up the coats and hats. Now he lifted both our bags and said, “Please follow me, gentlemen.”
We had been standing before a hall big enough to land an airplane. An electric chandelier hung from the center of the beamed ceiling, but the ceiling was so high and the walls so far apart that the room’s upper corners were cobwebbed with darkness. Below the chandelier a long wooden table ran for twenty-five or thirty feet. The walls of the room were made of pale brown stone and they were draped with murky oil paintings of dead people wearing old costumes. Embroidered curtains hung at the sides of the narrow mullioned windows. The pale gray marble floor was covered with broad dark Oriental carpets, seven or eight of them.
Ahead of us, Briggs glided across the marble floor toward another wide, open doorway. I noticed that the far wall of the hall, off to my left, held no paintings. It held weapons: lances, pikes, broadswords, cutlasses, rapiers, wheel-lock muskets, flintlock rifles, an enormous blunderbuss, some shotguns, a Sharps buffalo gun, a scoped Winchester Model 1873, a selection of handguns. Most of the handguns, like most of the long arms, were black powder antiques. But there was a Peacemaker Colt, a long-barreled artillery officer’s Luger Parabellum, a Colt Army 1911 automatic, and what looked like a Smith amp; Wesson. 38 caliber revolver. If the Apaches attacked tonight, we would be ready.
I don’t know what the Great Man noticed. Maybe everything. He was glancing around, calmly appraising, like someone who was mulling over the idea of adding all this to his private collection.
We followed Briggs up some stone stairs and through a wide doorway, then down a wide hallway with parquet wooden floors. More dead people hung from the walls. We climbed up a wide, worn, wooden stairway and we went down some more hallways. The place was a maze.
Carpets flowed along the wooden floors. Cabinets and chests and tables clung to the stone walls. Perched on these were vases and bowls and lacquer boxes, statuettes of porcelain and ivory and alabaster. I’ve been in museums that owned less bric-a-brac. Maybe most museums did.
We came to another corridor. On our way down it, we passed ornate wooden doors, left and right. Each door had a small card thumbtacked to it. On the cards, names had been written in a flowing cursive script. Mrs Vanessa Corneille, said one. Sir David Merridale, said another. Mrs Marjorie Allardyce and Miss Jane Turner, said the card on the door opposite. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, said the card on the last door to the left. On the door opposite, the card said, Mr Harry Houdini and Mr Phil Beaumont.
The corridor ended up ahead, about thirty feet. In the stone wall was another door, unmarked. Probably it led to a stairway.
Briggs set down the Great Man’s bag, opened the door, and gestured for us to enter. As usual, I followed the Great Man. Briggs picked up the Great Man’s bag and followed me.
Chapter Two
It was a big room, tall stone walls and a beamed ceiling. The wooden floors were spread with carpets. To the left was another door, opened, and beside this, a small writing desk and a chair. Directly ahead, against the wall, was an antique cupboard and an antique dresser that held a ceramic basin and a ceramic pitcher. To the right was a huge four-poster bed covered with white satin. White satin curtains were drawn back to each of the posts. Large night tables stood on either side of the bed.
Briggs set the Great Man’s bag down on the nearest of these. “The bathroom is through here, gentlemen.” Carrying my battered bag, he moved through the open door. Inside, he opened a door on the left, to show us the bathroom. A sink, a towel rack hung with heavy white towels, a huge tub squatting on big brass lion’s paws. Paws from the same lion, probably, whose head was trapped in the front door.
Briggs opened a door on the right to show us the toilet. It was a fine toilet.
The second room was beyond, and smaller than the first. But it was as comfortable as the other, with a second writing desk and chair, a second cupboard and a second four-poster bed. The bedspread here was also white satin.
“Your room, Mr. Beaumont,” said Briggs. He placed my bag on the nightstand. “Will there be anything else, gentlemen?” “No,” said the Great Man. “Thank you, Briggs.”
Briggs nodded, his face still expressionless. “When you’re ready, please ring the bellpull beside the bed. Someone will come for you.”
The Great Man nodded. “Yes, certainly, thank you.”
Briggs glided off.
The Great Man looked around, smiling. “Not bad, eh, Phil? This is a very pleasant room, don’t you think?”
“Well, Harry,” I said, “I’m glad you like it. Because this is the room you’ll be taking.”
He frowned.
“I’ll take the outer room,” I said.
He looked at me for a moment and then he said, “But Phil! Surely you don’t believe that anything will happen here? With people present, with all those servants?”
“Something happened at the Ardmore. With all those house dicks and all those cops.”
“But that was a hotel! And the newspapers had announced that I was there. No one knows that I am staying at Maplewhite.”
“Maybe that’s true,” I said. “Maybe it’s not.”
“But Phil-”
“Harry. You remember when you made me take that oath? About not giving away your secrets? You promised me something too, remember? And you promised Bess.”
He stared at me. Finally he nodded. He drew himself fully upright. This usually meant that an announcement was coming. “Houdini always keeps his promises,” he announced.
“I know that,” I said. “So we’ll switch rooms.”
He nodded and he compressed his lips. He had made a promise and he would keep it, but no one had said he couldn’t sulk.
He looked around the room with a sour expression on his face. I took my suitcase into the main room, exchanged it for the Great Man’s bag, carried his bag back into the other room. The Great Man was sitting on the bed with his shoulders slumped, staring at the floor. He didn’t say anything when I put the suitcase down.
“Harry,” I said.
He looked up.
“It’s for your own good,” I told him.
He nodded glumly.
“Let me know when you’re finished washing up,” I said. “We shouldn’t waste too much time. They’re all waiting for you.”
He frowned for a moment, considering this. Then he smiled. “Yes. Yes, of course. You are right, Phil.”
