you were very impressive, standing up to that man for my sake.”
“Doing my job, Harry. Guarding the body.”
“But it was unnecessary, you know. I was suffering not at all.”
“You, maybe. I was getting a pain in the neck.”
He grinned happily. “The man is a pig, is he not, Phil? Tomorrow, when you fight your great battle, you must teach him to mind his manners.” Sitting there on the bed he mimed a prizefighter, fists jabbing at the air. “Pow, pow,” he said. Take that, Sir David! Ha ha!”
Suddenly he raised a finger in the air. “Phil,” he said, “I have it!”
“Have what?”
Excited, he clasped his hands over his knees and he leaned forward. “Tomorrow morning, when you go to the scene of the combat, I will come along as your-how do they call it? Yes, your second. How would that be, Phil? Houdini will be your second!”
He said this as if it were the biggest favor he could possibly do for me. Maybe it was. The Great Man was never second to anyone, in anything.
“That’d be great, Harry,” I told him.
Smoothly, in what looked like a single movement, his legs untied themselves and his hands slapped against the mattress and he bounded off the bed. “But now you must conserve your strength, eh? You must sleep, Phil. Would you like to borrow some ear wax?”,
I smiled. He meant the beeswax he used as plugs. “No thanks.
“You are sure? Perhaps a blindfold?”
“No thanks, Harry.”
He bent over and scooped up both his shoes in his right hand, fingers hooked beneath the tongues. He padded lightly across the room and clapped me on the shoulder. “Very well. But you must rest, Phil. It is an important business, this fight. Everyone will be there.”
“My audience,” I said.
“Exactly, yes!” He squeezed my shoulder and then dropped his arm, beaming at me like a proud father.
“Everyone but Lord Bob, probably, I said.
“Lord Purleigh,” he corrected, sadness in his voice. “Poor Lord Purleigh. The death of his father has affected him deeply.”
“Yeah.”
“Tomorrow, no doubt, he will feel terrible about his behavior tonight.”
“He’ll feel terrible anyway. He put away a quart of brandy this afternoon. And more, maybe, later on.”
“Alcohol,” he said, and shook his head. “It destroys muscle tissue, you know. Eats it away, like sulfuric acid.”
“I’ve heard that, yeah.”
“Well,” he smiled, and clapped me on the shoulder again. “To bed then, eh? Pleasant dreams, Phil.”
“You too, Harry.”
“Ugh,” he said. “Ha ha.” Cackling, shaking his head, he padded from the room.
I waited on the bed. In ten minutes, I heard him finish in the bathroom. In another fifteen, I heard his snoring start in the bedroom. At twelve-thirty, I got up and left.
“COME IN,” SAID Mrs. Corneille. I stepped in and she shut the door.
I was still wearing my rented dinner jacket. She was wearing her red robe, its dark silk looking sleek and bright below the bright sleek spill of black hair. Between the scarlet neck of the robe and the marble neck of Mrs. Corneille, on both sides, ran a slender frill of black lace nightgown. She wasn’t wearing a corset beneath the nightgown, or much of anything else.
“Please,” she said, “do sit down.” She indicated a small love seat along the wall, braced by two end tables. “May I pour you a brandy?”
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
I sat.
This room, which was a bedroom in the suite I shared, and in the suite shared by Mrs. Allardyce and Miss Turner, was a kind of parlor here. Off to the left was the door that led to her bedroom.
The furniture here was just as old as the furniture in mine, but it was light and feminine, with a lot of fluffs and flounces and floral patterns. There were old paintings on the walls misty landscapes and pictures of vases filled with flowers. There were more flowers, maybe just as old, embroidered into the carpets on the floor. And more of them, older still, embroidered into the scent of her perfume.
She poured brandy from a pale green bottle into two snifters that sat on a dark wood sideboard. She set down the bottle, lifted the snifters, and carried them over. She stepped lightly around the coffee table and she handed me a snifter and sat down on my left. She moved like someone who had practiced moving, years ago, until she got it exactly right and then never needed to think about it ever again.
She sat with her body leaning slightly toward the room and her knees together beneath the robe. To the late Earl, she said, and raised her glass.
I raised mine. “To the Earl.” I sipped at the brandy. “You knew he was dead,” I said. “Before the seance.”
“Alice told me.” She lowered the snifter to her lap and held it with both hands. “Are you really planning to fight with David tomorrow morning?”
“Looks like it.”
“You feel that this is absolutely necessary?”
“It is now.”
“I’ve heard that David’s a very good boxer.”
“He probably is.”
“And what does Mr. Houdini think about this?”
“He thinks it’ll be a swell performance.”
She raised an eyebrow. “He isn’t concerned for you?”
“Everything Harry does, he does better than anyone in the world. He probably thinks that I wouldn’t have gotten into this unless I could pull it off.”
“And can you?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
“You aren’t concerned for yourself?”
“Wouldn’t help any.”
She sipped at her brandy, eyed me over the snifter. “Is that bravery speaking, or stupidity?”
“Stupidity, probably.”
She smiled. “But just now, shouldn’t you be getting some rest?
I know I asked you here, but that was before this bout of yours was arranged. I shouldn’t be offended if you wish to leave.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m not tired. What did you think about the seance?”
“We’re changing the subject, are we?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” she said. She looked down, smoothed the robe along her thigh, looked up again. “I thought it was a charming piece of theater. I understand how they did most of it, I think. They re working together, of course. Madame Sosostris and her husband.”
I nodded, sipped at my brandy.
“The roses,” she said. “They were in her wheelchair, beneath that gown of hers. Mr. Dempsey released her hand and she simply reached down and retrieved them. And then tossed them onto the table.”
I nodded again.
“And the bell and the trumpet,” she said. “She keeps them beneath her gown as well.”
“The chains, too.” I had figured most of this out, too, even before the Great Man explained it all.
Her red lips tightened thoughtfully. ‘ That thing that touched me on the shoulder. Could that’ve been one of those extending tools that shopkeepers use? Do you know what I mean? To reach something on an upper shelf?”
