Sitting in the middle of the room was a long table covered with white linen. On a sideboard to the right were five or six silver warming pans, all of them the size of washtubs. There were stacks of porcelain plates, teapots and coffeepots, cups and saucers.
Lord Bob was sitting at the end of the empty table, in another gray suit.
“Ah, Houdini, Beaumont,” said Lord Bob cheerfully. “Up at the crack of dawn, eh?” He chuckled. “You’ve missed the others, sorry to say. Gone into the village, all of’em. Shopping, seeing the sights. Both sights, presumably. The church and the pub.” He chuckled again. “Grab some grub, why don’t you. Isn’t that how you Americans say it? Marvelous language, American. Help yourself, we’re informal at breakfast. And coffee, tea, whatever. Probably need your coffee this morning, eh, Beaumont? Comforting damsels in distress all night long, eh?”
He was in too good a mood to be talking about his daughter. I smiled at him as I lifted the lid of a warming pan. “You heard about last night?” Inside the pan were glistening layers of chunky pork sausages. I picked up a fork and stabbed a few, levered them off the fork onto a plate.
“Everyone has,” said Lord Bob. “Talk of the town, eh?”
I said, “How is Miss Turner this morning?” I looked inside the next warming pan. A small beached school of stiffened fish stared up at me with scorched cloudy eyes. I returned the lid.
“Fine, fine,” said Lord Bob. “None the worse. Funny, though, wouldn’t you say? Never would’ve pegged her for the flighty type.”
The next dish held rashers of bacon. I took some. “Me neither.” Like me, the Great Man was piling food on his plate. He asked Lord Bob, “This ghost was your ancestor, Lord Purleigh?”
“Supposed to be.” His bristly white eyebrows dipped. Impatiently, he waved his teaspoon. “But too nice a day for that sort of thing, eh?”
Both the Great Man and I had filled our plates. We sat down next to each other and the Great Man turned to Lord Bob. “You have a lovely home, Lord Purleigh.”
“Bob,” he said. “Nice of you to say so. Can’t take all the credit, of course. Been here a lot longer than I have. Make a lovely golfing club, though, won’t it?”
“A golfing club?” said the Great Man.
“For the toiling masses. Idea of mine. Poor chaps don’t get enough fresh air, do they.”
“Ah,” said the Great Man. “Yes. Miss Cecily mentioned something about this, I believe.”
“Cecily did, did she?” He stroked his mustache. He nodded, faintly, sadly. “Doesn’t approve, Cecily. Neither does her mother. Upbringing, you know. But they’ll see the light. Know they will.” He leaned forward. “Think of it. A golfing club for the proletariat. Plenty of good fresh air, plenty of sound, healthy exercise. And we’ll have more, of course. Nursery school for the young ’uns. Free medical care for everyone. And research facilities with first-rate people, eh? Finding ways to improve the quality of life. Everyone’s life. And educational classes, as well, readings from Das Kapital. Not all those statistics, mind, but the gist of the thing. The meat. Read it, have you, Houdini?”
The Great Man blinked. “Not as yet, Lord Robert.”
“I’ll give you a copy. Got hundreds of ’em. It’ll change your life. Changed mine, for a fact. Would’ve started this thing years ago, the golfing club, if it hadn’t been for the Earl. My father. Dead set against it. Well, what can you expect? Complete reactionary. But he can’t hold on forever, thank goodness. Soon as he pops off, we get to work. Should be any day now, too. Got a bad ticker, the swine.” He grinned happily.
“Well,” he said. “I’m off.” He stood up. “There’s coffee, tea, whatever. Help yourself.”
“You are going into the village?” asked the Great Man.
“No, going for a ride on my new motorbike. Arrived just yesterday, straight from the factory. A Brough Superior, one-liter engine, four gears, hundred miles an hour top speed. Real beauty.” He smiled at the Great Man. “Almost forgot, Houdini. You’re in the Times this morning. Maplewhite, too. The society page. Well, you two want anything, food, whatnot, just ask one of the servants. The others should be back soon. Tea at four o’clock. Till then, enjoy yourselves, eh?”
Lord Bob left the room, as the Great Man looked over at me. “The Times?” I said.
His eyelashes fluttered. “I know nothing about it,” he said. He leaned forward and plucked up the folded newspaper that lay in the center of the table. He opened it, turned the pages. I waited.
He read silently. After a moment he began to smile with pleasure. Then he looked in my direction and he frowned. He said, “I had nothing to do with this, Phil.”
“Let me see it.”
He handed me the newspaper. I glanced over the society page until I found it. It was only one small paragraph in a long column, but it was enough. Viscount Purleigh will this weekend be entertaining Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of one of England’s, and the world’s, most popular fictional characters, Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. Also present at Maplewhite, the Devon estate of Lord Purleigh’s father, the Earl of Axminster, will be the famous American Escape Artist, Mr. Harry Houdini.
I closed the newspaper, folded it, tossed it to the table. This, I thought, was why he had been so cooperative. “Damn it, Harry,” I said.
He showed me the palms of his hands. “I did nothing, Phil.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“It must have been Carlyle.” His manager.
“Uh-huh. And how did Carlyle know?”
“I cannot imagine. I shall telephone him. I shall tell him I am furious.”
He snatched up the newspaper, started to read it again.
“It’s a little late for that,” I said.
Still peering at the page, he said, “Why do you suppose they mentioned Sir Arthur first?”
“Harry, we’ve got more important things to worry about right now.”
He lowered the paper, looked at me. “But perhaps Chin Soo is not in England yet. And even if he is, perhaps he did not read the Times this morning.”
“Is that something you want to bet your life on?”
He frowned.
I reached into my pocket, took out my watch.
Ten-thirty.
“What are you thinking, Phil?” he asked me.
“Let’s say that Chin Soo is in England. Let’s say he’s in London. Let’s say he read the paper this morning. The earliest he could read it would be eight o’clock, maybe. Let’s say seven, to be on the safe side. I don’t know how many trains are running from London to Devon on a Saturday, but there can’t be that many. And the trip takes six or seven hours. So we’ve got a few hours of leeway.”
“Yes? And what do we do with them?”
“ We don’t do anything. You stay in your room.”
“Phil-”
“Just for a few hours, Harry. Read a book. Write a letter. Meanwhile, I’ll take a look around the grounds.”
“And why will you do that, Phil?”
“To see if I can figure out how he’s going to come at you.”
Chapter Eight
The Great Man and I went up the stairs and down the halls. He didn’t say anything, but his mouth was set in a thin petulant line and I knew that trouble was coming. When I closed the door to our suite, he turned to me. And on me.
“Phil,” he said. “This is entirely unfair. You are treating me as though I were a child.”
“It’s for your own good, Harry.”
“But you said yourself that we have a few hours of leeway.”
“Sounds like you’ve got something on your mind.”
He drew himself to his full height. “I refuse to stay here, cooped up in that tiny room.”
“Cooped up? Harry, you’re the guy who spends his time in coffins.”