It was Briggs who came to get us. The Great Man was feeling better by then. The idea of hobnobbing with lords and ladies always cheered him up.
Briggs led us down the corridor again, and up and down some more stairways until we came to another doorway. We followed him through it.
This room was smaller than the hall. Not enough space to land an airplane, but enough to park it. More Oriental carpets were spread along the floor and the walls were swathed with tapestries. Running across the tapestries were some plump naked people chasing other plump naked people through a forest. The plump people were naked in a refined way-their vital parts were all hidden by rushing arms or pumping legs or by a leafy bush that happened to spring up in exactly the right place. The forest looked damp to me, but everybody up there seemed to be having a pretty good time.
Against the far wall stood a long trestle table. Atop the table were liquor bottles and champagne buckets and stacks and pyramids of glasses, silver teapots and china cups and saucers, silver platters and china plates. There was also a gramophone. It was playing Dixieland jazz, the horns and the piano sounding thin and tinny this far from home. Behind the table was another servant who wore a black uniform and a blank expressionless face.
Throughout the room, in cozy glowing pockets created by the electric lamps, there were small clusters of people sitting.
Briggs led us off to the right, to a cluster of two women and one man. The man sat in a stout padded leather chair, the women in a small upholstered sofa behind a coffee table of dark polished wood. The three of them looked up.
Briggs said to the man, “Excuse me, milord. Mr. Harry Houdini and Mr. Phil Beaumont.”
“Ah, thank you, Briggs,” said the man, and stood up.
Briggs disappeared. His employer offered a hand to the Great Man. He was short and burly in his gray tweeds, and his hair and his mustache were thick and white. So were his eyebrows, which were big and bristly and looked like a pair of albino beetles. He had blue eyes, a large beaked nose, pink cheeks, and a wide fleshy mouth. “Houdini,” he said, grinning. “Great treat for us, your coming. Glad you could make it.”
Smiling happily, the Great Man shook hands. “It is a great pleasure to be here, Lord Purleigh.”
“Now, now. None of that nonsense here. It’s Bob. Always has been, always will be. And this is Beaumont, is it?”
“Phil Beaumont,” said Houdini. “My secretary.”
Bob-Lord Bob? — glanced at the Great Man as his beetle eyebrows rose. “Secretary, eh? Getting up in the world, are we? Exploiting the poor workers now, eh? Well, pleasure to meet you, Beaumont.” He shook my hand. “First time in England?”
“Yes,” I told him.
“Dreadful place, isn’t it? Rain and fog and mist. Attractive women, though, eh? A couple of ’em right here. Mrs. Allardyce. Cousin of my wife’s. And Miss Turner, her companion. Marjorie, Miss Turner, let me introduce Mr. Harry Houdini. And his secretary, Mr. Phil Beaumont.”
Calling them attractive had been gallant, or optimistic, or maybe nearsighted. In her sixties, Mrs. Allardyce was built like a blacksmith, but without the daintiness. Her shoulders and her arms were thick and meaty. Her round breasts and round stomach were taut against the pink floral pattern of her black dress. Her gray hair had been carefully chiseled from granite. Someone had stenciled circular patches of rouge on her round cheeks. Her gray eyes were small and shiny and avid, glistening birdshot trapped in a pale puffy muffin.
Miss Turner was an improvement. She was young, maybe twenty-three, and she was tall for an Englishwoman. Although she wasn’t beautiful, she had that horsy English handsomeness that sometimes seems elegant and sometimes seems stiff. Right now, with her back rigid and her knees locked together beneath her plain gray dress, it seemed stiff. Her hair was pale brown and it was tightly clenched back along her skull. Behind wire- rim glasses, her large eyes were a deep, clear, and startling blue. They were her best feature, and they would look good on anyone. They looked good on her, but extravagant, like sapphires on a nun. She wore no make-up along her cheeks or anywhere else that I could see. Her wide pink mouth was turned down slightly at the corners, as though she disapproved of something but couldn’t remember exactly what it was.
Smiling, Houdini made a small, quick formal bow to each woman. “ Madame, ” he said. “And mademoiselle.”
I nodded and I smiled, politely. I had been working on my politeness.
Mrs. Allardyce and Miss Turner both sat with cups and saucers on their laps. Mrs. Allardyce lumbered her bosom out over her cup and said to the Great Man, “What a thrill this is, Mr. Houdini! Jane and I have read all about your exploits. Will you be doing some of your wonderful magic for us?” She batted her eyelids at him.
“Now, Marjorie,” said Lord Bob. “Houdini’s a guest. No one here need sing for his supper.”
“Oh no, of course not, Robert,” she said and now she batted her eyelids at him. She turned back to the Great Man. “But surely Mr. Houdini could perform just one teensy weensy little trick for us?”
Houdini shrugged theatrically. “Alas, madam,” he said. “Unless I am much mistaken, I fear I am too late. For observe…”
He bent forward at the waist, used his left hand to pluck the lid from the silver teapot on the coffee table. He poked the first two fingers of his right hand inside the pot. When they emerged, nipped between them was a crisp five-pound banknote, folded into quarters. With a graceful twirl of the wrist he held it out toward Mrs. Allardyce.
Lord Bob laughed. “Marvelous,” he exclaimed.
Mrs. Allardyce produced a delighted little chortle, clapped her hands, and then leaned forward and grasped for the banknote. The Great Man surrendered it. If he hadn’t, probably she would have ripped his arm off.
She unfolded the thing and examined it. A five-pound note was almost as big as a road map. “It’s authentic, too,” she said, looking up at him. “Absolutely genuine. And to whom does it belong?”
“Well, madame,” he said, “since it was in your teapot, then clearly it must belong to you.”
Five pounds was enough money for a long week in Paris.
“Yes, of course,” she said, and chortled again as she folded up the note. “It must, yes, of course.” She picked up a small black leather purse that lay beside her on the sofa. She opened it and carefully slid the note inside, then closed the purse and clutched it to her bosom. “All mine, ” she said, and she shivered with a kind of pretended avarice. Hidden behind the pretense, it seemed to me, was the real thing.
I looked at Miss Turner. She was watching Mrs. Allardyce and her mouth was still turned down in disapproval. She must have felt my glance, because suddenly she turned and her blue eyes dazzled up at me from behind the glasses. Then, blinking, she looked toward the floor. The corners of her mouth veered down another notch.
“Marvelous,” said Lord Bob again. He slapped his hand against the Great Man’s shoulder. The Great Man beamed. Applause always made his face open up like a flower in the sunshine.
Mrs. Allardyce most likely believed that she had established her position by commanding a performance, and getting it. What she didn’t understand was that in the Great Man’s eyes, she was merely a member of the audience. Like all the rest of us.
She smiled up at the Great Man. “Are you interested in ghosts, Mr. Houdini? Robert was just telling us, before you arrived, the most fascinating story about Lord Reginald, the ghost of Maplewhite.”
The Great Man smiled. “Ghosts are not one of my main fields of interest,” he said. “I feel-”
“You don’t believe in them?” She had her eyebrows raised. “Whether they exist or not is irrelevant to my own-”
“But surely one wants to keep an open mind?”
“My own feeling is that-”
“I must confess that I do love a good ghost story,” she said.
“Wicked spirits and bloodcurdling screams in the night. Stories of that sort-so long as they’re done well — in the best of taste, I mean-they give one of the most delicious chill, don’t they?”
“Yes,” said the Great Man. “of course. But you see-”
“And Lord Reginald-Robert’s ghost-is really quite chilling. He wanders into one’s bedroom in the very dark of night, it seems. In a long white nightgown, isn’t that right, Robert?”
Lord Bob nodded patiently. “So the stories have it.”
“Absolutely spectral, ” she said, and she put her hand to her chest and produced another small shiver. “I’m sure I should die with fright.” She turned to Lord Bob. “But what exactly does he do after he arrives?”
