“Right,” said Lord Bob to Carson in the same bluff tones. “Off you go, then.”
“Very good, milord.” His glance flickered down at the old man in the bed. He blinked and then turned and walked away. His body was still rigid, his movements stiff.
Lord Bob turned to Doyle. “You were saying, Doyle?”
“We keep the room sealed. And guarded.”
“Higgens can perform guard duty,” Lord Bob said. “Temporarily. We’ll be needing him downstairs. Eh, Higgens? I’ll send someone up to relieve you.”
Higgens nodded. “Very good, milord.”
Doyle said to Higgens, “No one to enter the room until the police arrive.”
“Very good, sir.”
“The police?” said Lord Bob.
“We must inform the police.”
Lord Bob frowned.
“If I may use the telephone,” said Doyle, “I can speak with a friend of mine at Scotland Yard. I feel certain that he’ll be helpful. And discreet.”
After a moment resisting the idea, Lord Bob finally surrendered. “Very well.”
Doyle turned to me. “Do you have anything to add, Mr. Beaumont?”
I said, “I’d like to take a look at that gun collection.”
Doyle nodded. He turned to Lord Bob. “Lord Purleigh, no doubt you wish to inform Lady Purleigh of this tragedy.”
Lord Bob lowered his bushy eyebrows, as though just now remembering that Lady Purleigh existed. “Yes. Yes, of course.” He shook his head slightly, looked away. “She’ll take it badly. Fond of the swine.” He glanced at the body on the bed. “Mustn’t tell the guests, though.”
“ Not tell them?” said Doyle.
Lord Bob turned to him. “Put a bit of damper on the weekend, wouldn’t it? They’d leave, wouldn’t they?”
“No doubt they would. But in the circumstances…”
Lord Bob shook his head. “Won’t have it. Came for a pleasant weekend, that’s what they’ll get. Not their fault the old swine died. Alice will agree with me. Sure of it.”
“And how will you explain the presence of the police?”
“Don’t see that I need to. Trot ’em in, trot ’em out. Stop ’em tracking muck about, of course. And no one the wiser, eh?” Doyle looked doubtful, but he said, “As you wish.”
I said, “You are going to tell them about Chin Soo.”
He looked at me, blinked. Irritation flickered briefly across his face. “Yes, yes.”
“Houdini?” said Doyle.
The Great Man was bent at the waist, peering at the big copper key that lay on the floor, just inside the door. He looked over at Doyle.
“Have you anything to add?”
The Great Man looked at him for a moment. He pursed his lips. Finally he said, “No. Houdini has nothing to add.”
“Very well, then,” said Doyle. “I propose that we all meet again in the Great Hall.” He slipped a watch from his vest pocket, glanced down at it, looked up. “In, shall we say, half an hour. Is that acceptable?”
It was.
We left Hlggens in the anteroom, guarding the door to the bedroom. The rest of us trooped downstairs. When we got there, Lord Bob and Doyle went off together. Houdini tagged along with me. Probably because I was the only person he could complain to.
“You know, of course,” he said, “that I could have removed that ridiculous bar.” We were pacing through the corridors, toward the Great Hall. “In an instant. Less than an instant.”
“I know that, Harry.”
The Great Man couldn’t take yes for an answer. “There you were,” he said, “all of you, running around like schoolchildren. Throwing furniture. Breaking doors. It was absurd. All I required was a simple wire clothes hanger.”
I nodded.
He shook his head and sighed. “I am very surprised at Lord Purleigh, I confess. I would never have expected such behavior from an English lord.”
“It was his father trapped in there.”
“Yes, of course, but I could have opened the door more swiftly. And with less damage, too, of course.”
“He needed to do something besides stand around and wait. You saw him, Harry. He was going nuts.”
The Great Man frowned. He turned to me. “This is why you suggested using the bench?”
“Yeah.”
He pursed his lips again. He nodded. “Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, you did well, Phil. I was so concerned with defeating the door and aiding the unfortunate Earl that for a brief moment I forgot myself.” He nodded again. “You did well, Phil.
“Thanks, Harry.”
We had come to the Great Hall. Even at the entrance, fifty feet from the gun collection, I could see that the Smith amp; Wesson was missing.
Chapter Seventeen
“You forgot to mention, Harry,” I said, “that Sir Arthur is crazy.”
The Great Man frowned. “Sir Arthur? Not at all. He has, I think, been reacting to all this with great intelligence.”
The two of us were in the Great Hall, at the end of the long table, near the gun collection. We were sitting on uncomfortable wooden chairs with tall straight backs, waiting for Doyle and Lord Bob.
“I don’t mean that,” I told the Great Man. “I had a talk with him this afternoon. He thinks you pull off your tricks by demate-rializing.”
“Ah. Yes.” He nodded sadly. “I have tried to persuade him otherwise, of course, but he refuses to believe me. Spiritualism has become with him an idee fixe. A fixed idea, that is, in French.”
“Thanks.”
He remembered something. “Incidentally, Phil, you must never mention fairies.”
“Fairies,” I said.
“Yes. You must never mention them to Sir Arthur. He believes that fairies exist, you see. He has some photographs, two young girls playing with a tribe of fairies in an English garden. They are an obvious hoax-the girls are clearly holding cardboard cutouts-but Sir Arthur believes them to be genuine. He has actually written a book about them. If you mention fairies, he will begin to explain the photographs, as he did in the library this afternoon, after you left. Much as I like and respect Sir Arthur, I have already heard as much about fairies as I care to.”
I shrugged. “Like I said, Harry. He’s crazy.”
“Phil, he is perhaps the best-known and the most respected author in the world. He was knighted. By Queen Victoria. Aside from his credulousness in these matters, he is an extremely rational and intelligent man.”
“Pretty big aside. ”
“Phil, he lost his son in the War, and his dear mother only this past year. He wishes to believe, and so he believes.” He shrugged his muscular shoulders. “Who knows? Perhaps if I lacked my extraordinary expertise, perhaps I too should become a credulous believer.” He looked off, frowning, as he considered that.
I read his mind for him. “No,” I said. “Not you, Harry. You re too sharp.”
He nodded. “Yes. That is true, of course.”
The smell of smoldering burlap filled the room. Sitting back in his chair, Doyle took his pipe from his mouth.
