Ahead of us, Briggs glided across the marble floor toward another wide, open doorway. I noticed that the far wall of the hall, off to my left, held no paintings. It held weapons: lances, pikes, broadswords, cutlasses, rapiers, wheel-lock muskets, flintlock rifles, an enormous blunderbuss, some shotguns, a Sharps buffalo gun, a scoped Winchester Model 1873, a selection of handguns. Most of the handguns, like most of the long arms, were black powder antiques. But there was a Peacemaker Colt, a long-barreled artillery officer’s Luger Parabellum, a Colt Army 1911 automatic, and what looked like a Smith amp; Wesson. 38 caliber revolver. If the Apaches attacked tonight, we would be ready.
I don’t know what the Great Man noticed. Maybe everything. He was glancing around, calmly appraising, like someone who was mulling over the idea of adding all this to his private collection.
We followed Briggs up some stone stairs and through a wide doorway, then down a wide hallway with parquet wooden floors. More dead people hung from the walls. We climbed up a wide, worn, wooden stairway and we went down some more hallways. The place was a maze.
Carpets flowed along the wooden floors. Cabinets and chests and tables clung to the stone walls. Perched on these were vases and bowls and lacquer boxes, statuettes of porcelain and ivory and alabaster. I’ve been in museums that owned less bric-a-brac. Maybe most museums did.
We came to another corridor. On our way down it, we passed ornate wooden doors, left and right. Each door had a small card thumbtacked to it. On the cards, names had been written in a flowing cursive script. Mrs Vanessa Corneille, said one. Sir David Merridale, said another. Mrs Marjorie Allardyce and Miss Jane Turner, said the card on the door opposite. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, said the card on the last door to the left. On the door opposite, the card said, Mr Harry Houdini and Mr Phil Beaumont.
The corridor ended up ahead, about thirty feet. In the stone wall was another door, unmarked. Probably it led to a stairway.
Briggs set down the Great Man’s bag, opened the door, and gestured for us to enter. As usual, I followed the Great Man. Briggs picked up the Great Man’s bag and followed me.
Chapter Two
It was a big room, tall stone walls and a beamed ceiling. The wooden floors were spread with carpets. To the left was another door, opened, and beside this, a small writing desk and a chair. Directly ahead, against the wall, was an antique cupboard and an antique dresser that held a ceramic basin and a ceramic pitcher. To the right was a huge four-poster bed covered with white satin. White satin curtains were drawn back to each of the posts. Large night tables stood on either side of the bed.
Briggs set the Great Man’s bag down on the nearest of these. “The bathroom is through here, gentlemen.” Carrying my battered bag, he moved through the open door. Inside, he opened a door on the left, to show us the bathroom. A sink, a towel rack hung with heavy white towels, a huge tub squatting on big brass lion’s paws. Paws from the same lion, probably, whose head was trapped in the front door.
Briggs opened a door on the right to show us the toilet. It was a fine toilet.
The second room was beyond, and smaller than the first. But it was as comfortable as the other, with a second writing desk and chair, a second cupboard and a second four-poster bed. The bedspread here was also white satin.
“Your room, Mr. Beaumont,” said Briggs. He placed my bag on the nightstand. “Will there be anything else, gentlemen?” “No,” said the Great Man. “Thank you, Briggs.”
Briggs nodded, his face still expressionless. “When you’re ready, please ring the bellpull beside the bed. Someone will come for you.”
The Great Man nodded. “Yes, certainly, thank you.”
Briggs glided off.
The Great Man looked around, smiling. “Not bad, eh, Phil? This is a very pleasant room, don’t you think?”
“Well, Harry,” I said, “I’m glad you like it. Because this is the room you’ll be taking.”
He frowned.
“I’ll take the outer room,” I said.
He looked at me for a moment and then he said, “But Phil! Surely you don’t believe that anything will happen here? With people present, with all those servants?”
“Something happened at the Ardmore. With all those house dicks and all those cops.”
“But that was a hotel! And the newspapers had announced that I was there. No one knows that I am staying at Maplewhite.”
“Maybe that’s true,” I said. “Maybe it’s not.”
“But Phil-”
“Harry. You remember when you made me take that oath? About not giving away your secrets? You promised me something too, remember? And you promised Bess.”
He stared at me. Finally he nodded. He drew himself fully upright. This usually meant that an announcement was coming. “Houdini always keeps his promises,” he announced.
“I know that,” I said. “So we’ll switch rooms.”
He nodded and he compressed his lips. He had made a promise and he would keep it, but no one had said he couldn’t sulk.
He looked around the room with a sour expression on his face. I took my suitcase into the main room, exchanged it for the Great Man’s bag, carried his bag back into the other room. The Great Man was sitting on the bed with his shoulders slumped, staring at the floor. He didn’t say anything when I put the suitcase down.
“Harry,” I said.
He looked up.
“It’s for your own good,” I told him.
He nodded glumly.
“Let me know when you’re finished washing up,” I said. “We shouldn’t waste too much time. They’re all waiting for you.”
He frowned for a moment, considering this. Then he smiled. “Yes. Yes, of course. You are right, Phil.”
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.”