Escapade

Chapter Eleven

"Let me see,” said Lord Bob, “If I understand you.”

We were in his study, a large room on the ground floor. It smelled of new flowers and old money. It had probably always smelled of old money, but the smell of flowers came from a tall vase of red roses on Lord Bob’s desk. The desk was big enough to make the vase look like a tiny skiff floating on a lake of cherry-wood.

The Great Man and I were sitting in red padded leather chairs studded with brass tacks. On the dark paneled walls hung framed etchings of elegant hunting dogs. Beyond the casement window hung a postcard view of green grass and distant trees.

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.”

“What about the police in London?” I asked him. “Couldn’t they send someone down here?”

He shook his head. “Too busy up there. Your sort of work- breaking strikes, bullying workers. Even if they could spare some of their thugs, they wouldn’t be able to get ’em here till tomorrow, at the earliest. And all the guests are leaving tomorrow, eh? Not much point in that, is there.”

He paused. “Tell you what. I’ll have MacGregor get some of the tenants together. The local farmers. Have them search the grounds. They’re good lads, all of’em. Know the country like the back of their hands. If Chin Soo’s anywhere about, they’ll flush him out.”

I said, “They’re not cops, Lord Purleigh.”

“My point exactly.”

Someone knocked at the door.

“Yes?” Lord Bob called out.

The door opened and the butler stood there, looking as magnificent and as blank and expressionless as he had looked last night. “Forgive me for disturbing you, milord.”

“Yes, Higgens?”

“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has arrived. With Madame Sosostris and her husband.”

“Ah,” said Lord Bob. “And what have you done with them?” “The lady and her husband are being shown to their room. Sir Arthur is waiting in the library.”

Lord Bob nodded. “Very good, Higgens. Please tell Sir Arthur that we’ll be joining him shortly.”

Higgens inclined his head. “Very good, milord.” He pulled the door shut.

Lord Bob turned back to the Great Man. “Doyle’s something of an expert on all this, eh? Guns, disguises, mystification. Let’s put this before him, shall we, and see what he has to say?”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stood tall and massive at the library window, blocking the light like the trunk of an oak tree. As we entered the room, he was gazing out at the grounds with his lips thoughtfully pursed and his hands thoughtfully clasped behind his back. He turned toward us and raised his eyebrows and opened wide his brown eyes and he smiled at us from beneath a plump prosperous white mustache. The smile was more boyish and open than you would expect to see on the face of someone so famous, or someone so large.

“Houdini!” he called out in a rumbling bass voice. “And Lord Purleigh!” He strode briskly across the room and held out a ruddy hand that looked as big as a flounder.

In his sixties, he was at least six feet four inches tall. His shoulders seemed almost as wide. He must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds but he carried it with a relentless vigor, like a retired athlete who still took his strength for granted, or still wanted to. He was so charged with physical energy that he appeared even larger and more imposing than he was. He made the Maplewhite library feel frail and flimsy and cramped.

The Great Man smiled his own charming smile but he remembered his manners long enough to let his host take Doyle’s hand first.

“Looking splendid, Doyle,” said Lord Bob. Doyle pumped at his arm as though he were trying to raise water from thirty feet below ground.

“ Feeling splendid, Lord Purleigh!” said Doyle. His large white irregular teeth were sparkling. His thinning hair was ginger and gray where it ran back along his wide pink crown, but at his temples it was white as his mustache. He was wearing a doublebreasted suit of dark gray wool, a white shirt, a blue and red silk tie, and a pair of the biggest brogues I’d ever seen, black and bulbous and shiny. You could have carried mail in those shoes. Across the Mississippi River. “Absolutely tiptop!” he said to Lord Bob. “How goes it with you? And Lady Purleigh?”

“Fine, thank you, fine, both of us. But it’s ‘Bob, old man. Told you a hundred times. You know Houdini, of course.”

“My good friend,” said Doyle. He grabbed the Great Man’s hand and buried it within the lumpy mass of his own and he pumped the Great Man’s arm. He reached out and his left hand slammed down, affectionately, onto the Great Man s shoulder. Grand to see you again,” said Doyle. “How are you?

“Excellent, Sir Arthur,” said the Great Man, nodding and grinning up at him. The top of his head was below the level of Doyle’s square red jaw. “Please let me introduce my… ah… friend, Mr.

Phil Beaumont.”

“Delighted!” said Doyle, and he smiled down at me, crinkling up the corners of his eyes. He captured my hand and he imprinted some creases in my palm that felt like they would be there until the day I died. “American, are you?” he asked as he pumped at my arm.

“Yes,” I said.

“ Topping! Welcome to England!” He released my hand.

My fingers were still attached to my body but it was a good thing that nobody would be asking me to play the piano any time soon.

Lord Bob was glowering at me as if I had slithered out of a hole in the wainscoting. He turned away. “Listen, Doyle,” he said. “Something’s come up, I’m afraid.”