Lord Bob was staring at me as though I had just offered him a bite of tarantula sandwich. “You’re not a personal secretary,” he said.
“No,” I said.
“You work for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, in America.”
“Right.”
He stroked his mustache. “It was a Pinkerton spy, wasn’t it, broke the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania?”
I nodded. “James McParlan.”
“And it was Pinkertons got sent in to protect those blacklegs in Homestead. Big workers’ strike against that Scottish swine, Carnegie.”
“Right.”
“Armed thugs. Capitalist mercenaries.”
I nodded. “We don’t do that anymore.”
His furry eyebrows climbed up his forehead. “Oh? Work for the labor unions now, do you?”
“Right now I work for Harry.” I shrugged. “You don’t like the Pinkertons, Lord Purleigh.” He didn’t ask me to call him Bob. “That’s your privilege. But I’m not here to clobber steelworkers. I’m here to protect Harry.”
Lord Bob scowled. He turned to the Great Man. “You’ve retained Beaumont here-” He looked back to me. “It is Beaumont? You’re not traveling under some sort of…” He paused, searching for the word, or maybe for a nasty equivalent. “Alias?”
I said. “No.”
Back to the Great Man. “You’ve retained Beaumont because someone is attempting to kill you?”
The Great Man frowned. “It was not actually an idea of my own. I believed, personally, that I could deal with the matter myself. But my dear wife, Bess, was concerned. She worries about me, you see. And after what happened in Philadelphia, she insisted I hire someone who might be able to guarantee my safety.”
Lord Bob was looking puzzled. “What was it,” he said, “that happened in Philadelphia?”
“I was staying in a hotel. The Ardmore. Chin Soo entered my suite in disguise, dressed as the room service waiter. He attempted to kill me. Or the person he believed to be me. In fact, he nearly killed a member of the Philadelphia Police Department. A Sergeant Monahan.”
“Lanahan,” I said.
Lord Bob frowned at me. So did the Great Man-he didn’t like being corrected any more than he liked being interrupted. “Whoever he was,” he said, “he was masquerading as me. It was a trap, you see. The police were there to apprehend and arrest Chin Soo.”
“Which they failed to do,” said Lord Bob.
“Yes. He escaped down a fire escape.”
Lord Bob stroked his mustache. “And so you employed the Pinkertons. In the form of Beaumont.”
“Yes. As I said, it was my wife’s idea.”
That was true. But it was obvious that Lord Bob didn’t like the Pinkertons, and probably the Great Man didn’t mind putting some distance between himself and me.
Still stroking his mustache, Lord Bob nodded. “This Chin Soo person. He’s a disgruntled magician, you say?”
“A rival, yes.”
“Takes his rivalries damn seriously, I must say.”
“The man is deranged. Completely demented. He claims that I stole my coffin escape from him. This is total nonsense, of course.
I was performing the coffin escape years ago, while Chin Soo was still catching bullets in second-rate vaudeville houses.”
“Catching bullets?” said Lord Bob. His bushy eyebrows floated up his forehead.
The Great Man shrugged dismissively. “With his teeth.”
The eyebrows dipped. “Good Lord.”
The Great Man shrugged again. “It is dangerous, yes, to some extent, but it is merely a trick.”
“And you honestly believe that this chap would follow you all the way from America?”
I said, “I got a wire from my agency while we were in Paris. A man who was probably Chin Soo bought a ticket on the La Paloma. It arrived in Rotterdam last Monday.”
Lord Bob looked at me. “Why didn’t your chaps notify the Dutch police?”
“They did. The guy never got off the boat. He disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“No one knows what Chin Soo looks like. He wears make-up on stage. No one knows what his real name is. Chin Soo’s a stage name. We’re pretty sure he’s not Chinese. And we know he’s good at disguises. When he came for Harry at the Ardmore, he made himself up to look like an Italian.”
Lord Bob frowned.
“He’s smart and he’s determined,” I said, “and right now there’s no way at all to locate him.”.
“How d’you expect to capture him, then?”
“That’s not my job. My job is to keep Harry alive. Which is why getting him out of London, coming to Devon, seemed like a pretty good idea. There wasn’t supposed to be any publicity.” I glanced at the Great Man, who blinked and glanced away. “I thought it’d be safe. I was wrong. Chin Soo must’ve seen that article in the London Times. ”
Lord Bob stroked his mustache again. “But you can’t know that it was your Chin Soo who fired the shot this afternoon.”
“Whoever he was, he missed Harry by about two inches. That’s good enough for me.”
“But you can’t be certain, can you. Not absolutely.”
“I’ll only be certain about anything when Chin Soo’s in jail. Or when Harry’s dead. But in the meantime, seems to me, all your other guests are in danger.”
He frowned at me again. He was doing a lot of frowning today, most of it at me. He sat back in his chair and put his elbows on its arms and he steepled his hands together beneath his chin. “And what is it you propose we do?”
“Harry and I can leave. Go back to London. That’s one possibility. That way, at least your other guests aren’t in danger. And that’s what gets my vote.”
“But Houdini’s the only one this chap wants to kill. Eh?”
“If he’s trying to kill Harry, he could miss him and hit someone else. He could’ve hit Mrs. Corneille this afternoon.”
He nodded. Reluctantly. “Fair enough. But you’re putting people in danger wherever you go, eh? Isn’t that right?”
“Yeah. It’s something I’m not too happy about. I’d like to have another twenty men working with me. But Harry wants to keep this thing simple. Only one man. Me.”
Lord Bob turned to the Great Man. “And why is that?”
“The more people who become involved,” he said, “the greater the likelihood that the press will learn of it. My entire career is based upon the remarkable dangers into which I place myself. If it should be thought that I was frightened by a mere individual, another magician, and an inferior magician at that-”
“Got you,” said Lord Bob. “Got you. Well, look here, old man, naturally if you’d like to leave, no one at Maplewhite would hold it against you. Entirely up to you.”
The Great Man bobbed his head lightly toward Lord Bob. “I am sorry, Lord Robert, but I disagree. It is up to you, entirely. But so long, of course, as you and Lady Purleigh wish my presence, I should prefer to remain.”
“Goes without saying,” Lord Bob said. “Welcome as long as you like.” He grinned. “No jumping ship, eh? Stout fellow.”
He turned back to me, without the grin. “You’re welcome as well, of course. In the circumstances.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“So you remain here,” he said to the Great Man. “That’s settled. What now?”
I said, “We tell all the other guests what’s going on.”
Lord Bob glared at me.
I said, “They’ve got a right to know the score-to know what the situation is. If they want to stay, fine.”
He glanced down at his desktop and thought for a moment. At last, he said, “We could tell ’em all at tea time, I suppose.”
“Next,” I said, “we tell the local police. Have them mount a guard on this place.”
He looked across the desk at me and he snorted so hard that his mustache flapped. “Got an inflated idea, I see, of the local constabulary’s resources. Their competence, too.”
“Anything’s better than nothing.”
“Not in this case. Met the Superintendent a time or two, over in Amberly. Honniwell. A nincompoop. And Constable Dubbins, down in the village, he’s a buffoon, plain and simple. Besides, even if they were geniuses, both of’em, they haven’t got enough people to watch over us here. Simple as that.”