by Steve Bryant
James used the moment to steal a close look at the object in his hands. The box was the elephant in the room.
“Want to know what’s in there?” the actor said. He opened his eyes and tapped the box with his walking stick.
James nodded.
“My biggest secret. Thus it must remain. Room 3913, please.”
The floor buttons and indicator lights formed a matrix of four columns. James had to stretch to push the button for the thirty-ninth floor. Holding onto the box made it even more difficult.
“Aren’t you a little young for this line of work?” Mr. Lesley said.
“I’m almost twelve, sir.”
“Live here?”
“Yes, sir.”
James had a basement room, but it was large and well-ventilated, and Chef Anatole let him order anything off the spectacular menu. Mr. Morton, the accountant, tutored him in Arithmetic; Miss Frobish, the head of reservations, tutored him in Geography; and Mr. Clancy, the electrician, tutored him in Science. Anything else he wished to learn was available on the sixth floor, in the hotel library. The library originally belonged to Thaddeus McGrave himself, and the management since Mr. McGrave’s era had not only preserved the collection but had updated it regularly.
James was an avid reader and used the library often. His room was filled with borrowed books, and he discussed them at length with Mr. Nash and Miss Charles. He was particularly fond of books about ancient Egypt because they reminded him of the summer he and his parents spent in Cairo. He remembered laughing at the wobbly, lurching camel ride to the Great Pyramid of Cheops, at Giza. On the small bureau in his room, James kept his only souvenir of that excursion: a photograph of his mom, his dad, and himself. Their names—Blanche, Alex, and James—were inscribed on the back in his mother’s neat hand. His mom had long blond hair and looked quite beautiful in the khaki riding outfit she wore in the photo, and his dad always said she was the bee’s knees.
The elevator, which had been ascending, passed the twentieth floor.
“Did you like my gals tonight?” Mr. Lesley asked.
“The ladies in the red dresses? They seemed nice,” James said. “Were they really what you said? Your fan club? Your agent?”
“Never met them before,” Mr. Lesley said. “Look, Ace, it’s all the same. It doesn’t matter if you are a stage star, a screen star, or President Roosevelt. You have to make an entrance. In most towns, the limo comes from the local funeral home. Here in New York, you can get a real limo with all the trimmings. So tonight, the limo, the girls, even a couple of the guys asking questions, were all part of a package deal. You pay for it. It’s one of the expenses of being a star.”
As they passed the thirtieth floor, the elevator suddenly slowed. When it stopped prematurely, James stared anxiously at the button and light panel as the doors opened. All the lights were flashing. “Nuts!” he said at once. It was the wrong floor!
The opened doors revealed a corridor lit entirely by candles. The corridor seemed to drift off to infinity. From far down the hallway, something large and green was floating toward them fast. James recognized it as the ectoplasm of a lost, angry spirit. He had had trouble with this one before. Jockeying the wooden box into an arm hold with his right arm, James furiously pressed the Close Door button with his left hand. The doors sealed right before the green cloud was upon them.
The elevator jerked once and then resumed its ascent. The lights calmed down.
“Holy moly, what was that?” said Mr. Lesley.
“Oh, ah, it’s a special ward,” said James. “It’s … for foreigners. Everyone on it speaks French. Makes it easier for them to communicate.”
“Oh, well then.”
Upon arriving at 3913, James and Mr. Lesley found that the other bellhops had finished depositing the luggage and were standing in a line, discreetly waiting for a tip. As James learned quickly in his tenure at McGrave’s, Broadway stars tended to tip handsomely in the early days of a run—a fiver was not uncommon—but the well tended to dry as the reviews darkened and the audiences shriveled.
The actor himself could barely contain his surprise at the height of the suite’s vaulted sitting room. The dim light from the table lamps failed to reach the ceiling, so the upper limits lay in shadow.
“Good gravy,” he said. “How high does this thing go?”
“Three stories, I believe,” said James. “At least that’s our best estimate.”
The other bellhops nodded in agreement. As all the staff knew, some of the suites at McGrave’s were horizontal, some vertical.
The lower reaches of the chamber supported oversized posters advertising the most popular Broadway shows of the past few years. There was George and Ira Gershwin’s Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy and Porgy and Bess. There was Rodgers and Hart’s Jumbo at the Hippodrome, starring Jimmy Durante and a live elephant. The Broadway Suite indeed.
Victor Lesley turned a full circle as he admired the display, no doubt envisioning a new poster featuring himself as Transylvanian royalty by day, bloodsucking fiend by night.
“Where do you want this, sir?” said James.
James was still carrying the Mystery Box and extremely curious as to its contents. He continued to wonder if it contained something alive. Why else would there be air holes? What was Victor Lesley’s “biggest secret”? If only James could have a few moments with it in private.
“Put it in there,” Mr. Lesley said, indicating the bedroom. He turned his attention to the other bellhops who awaited his gratitude.
As James entered the bedroom, where the rest of the luggage had been piled, he could hear Mr. Lesley conversing with the other boys, dropping the names of the other stars working in Broadway theater. “Ginger Rogers is such a dear friend” and “I recommended that new girl, Ethel Merman, for Girl Crazy.”
Alone in the bedroom, James’s thoughts returned to his training.
“You can learn a lot about a person, kiddo, going through his mail,” his mom had said. It was the week she had taught him how to steam open envelopes. “If the opportunity arises, don’t hesitate. You might never get another chance.”
James didn’t hesitate. Quickly, he sat the box on the bed and removed his jackknife. It had two blades: a large one for the heavy-duty slicing and a tiny one for such tasks as cleaning fingernails. James flipped this smaller one open and inserted it into the keyhole of the padlock. Applying pressure just so, as his mom had taught him the week she gave him his first set of lock picks, James negotiated the lock. The simple pin-and-tumbler design was a challenge of mere seconds for a boy of his expertise. The little blade rotated, the lock snapped open, and James removed it from its hasp. Keeping a wary eye on the door, he lifted the lid barely enough to slip his hand inside.
“Aargh!” he yelled. He had touched something hairy that, while clearly not a spider, could have been something worse: a rat. It seemed to have had muscles. He held his breath as his eyes flashed toward the door, and he wished he could stop his heart from thumping in his chest. All was well: Mr. Lesley had apparently not heard him scream. The actor was still enlightening the other bellhops as to his accomplishments and acquaintances.
James tried again, this time opening the lid wider. He grasped the hairy creature and lifted it for inspection.
He smiled as Mr. Lesley’s biggest secret revealed itself.
It wasn’t a rat. It was a toupee. Victor Lesley was bald!
James hurriedly stuffed the wig back into its box, snapped the lock back in place, and returned to the sitting room to find that things were wrapping up. The other bellhops left happily, each with his newfound five-spot. Finally, only James and Mr. Lesley remained.
“Something wrong in there?” Mr. Lesley said. The actor took a brief peek into the bedroom but apparently noticed nothing amiss.
“No, sir. I’ll be going now, sir.” He was anxious to leave. Secrets were a burden.
Mr. Lesley returned his attention to the sittin
g room, appraising its antique furniture and elegant appointments. A small wind-up music box rested on an end table next to the sofa. He gave the sofa a little push, took a hard look at the posters of all those Broadway stars staring down, and leaned backward in order to look up into the darkness. James could only imagine his thoughts. Perhaps he wondered what Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula in 1897, might have thought of this place.
“It’s not exactly Dracula’s lair, but I like it,” Mr. Lesley said at last. “I think it will do. The actresses will be here any minute. We’re on a tight schedule, and we have to cast the female parts right away—Lucy, Mina, and all of Dracula’s wives. He had three, you know? I’m expecting to audition the first before midnight and the rest throughout the night. Perhaps you’ll get the nod to escort them up. Treat them nice. Who knows? You might be arm in arm with Broadway’s next big star.”
Mr. Lesley punctuated his remark with a wink.
“Uh, yes, sir,” James said. He couldn’t help staring at Mr. Lesley’s hair, and he smiled at the notion of a bald Count Dracula.
“Here you go, Ace,” said Mr. Lesley, forcing a final five-dollar bill into James’s hand. “I think you might be a big help to me in the next twenty-four hours. Yessiree.”
Turning to admire himself in a mirror, he licked a fingertip and traced it across one of his handsome eyebrows.
“Casting beautiful young women is one of the little burdens we stars have to endure,” he said, continuing to gaze into the glass. “Ah, here comes one now,” he pretended.
James could almost imagine the actress in the mirror as Victor Lesley draped his cape across his forearm, peeked over it as menacingly as a villainous European vampire could, and uttered the famous line from the movie: “I am Drac-u-la. I bid you welcome.”
James closed the door to the sounds of a loud, hideous, bloodcurdling laugh.
Chapter Five
The Beautiful One Who Sings
“This way, gentlemen,” said James as he led the four men in dark suits and red fezzes away from the Front Desk. When Mr. Nash told the visitors that James had once spent a summer in Cairo, they had shaken his hand enthusiastically and had gladly surrendered themselves to his care. They seemed to accept him as one of their own.
A blast of cold New York City-in-December air stung the cheeks of the party as they exited the back of the hotel, where a moving company tractor-trailer was parked and running at the hotel’s loading dock. The truck’s engine emitted a deep friendly rumble, and a plume of white vapor rose into the night like a ghost from the mammoth vehicle’s exhaust.
Mohammed Bey, the leader of the Egyptians, clapped his hands twice, and the great doors at the rear of the truck swung open. “Come,” he said to James. “You are the first in America to see this.”
After the planks connecting the truck to the dock were in place, the gentlemen and James stepped inside.
There in the artificial lighting of the vehicle’s interior stood the sarcophagus of Queen Siti, the Great Royal Wife of the Pharaoh Kaphiri II, in the Nineteenth Dynasty. Detailed hieroglyphics, the once-forgotten beautiful sequences of birds and jackals and a myriad of pictographic symbols, deciphered by the Rosetta Stone studies of the early 1800s, covered every square inch with excerpts from the Book of the Day and the Book of the Night.
Four much taller men, with sun-bronzed skin and huge muscles, stood guard over the mummy of Queen Siti. Mohammed Bey introduced the largest of these royal sentinels as the leader of his guards, a giant of a fellow named Abasi. Upon Mohammed Bey’s command, Abasi and his companions removed the huge lid of the sarcophagus and extracted a human-shaped coffin. They placed this container on the floor and then removed its lid to reveal a second coffin nested within, like a nested Russian egg. This second coffin in turn was removed and opened, at which point everyone had to look away from the outpouring of reflected light. The third and final container proved to be a coffin of pure gold, brilliant to behold, meticulously designed to look like Queen Siti herself. Its glow filled the chamber of the trailer, and James thrilled to see the beauty rendered by the sculptor. The queen would have been a stunner in 1936. She had a movie-star face framed by a plaited wig of fine locks that hung to her breasts. A headband formed of a royal cobra circled her hair, and she held a floral scepter in her hand.
Housed within this priceless receptacle, James knew, rested the three-thousand-year-old mummified remains of the lady herself.
“She’s so pretty,” James said.
“They discovered her in the Valley of the Queens,” Mohammed Bey informed him. “She was known as the Beautiful One Who Sings. Her beauty inspired a cult that continued through the Third Intermediate Period.”
“I wish I could have known her then,” James said. Her presence took James back to his family summer in Egypt and to the Great Pyramid.
“Two million blocks of stone, kiddo,” his mom had said. “Each over two tons.”
Then and now, James wondered at the brilliance of the architect who had designed it, at the magnitude of the labor force that moved all those stones into place.
“Come,” said Mohammed Bey in the belly of the trailer. “Danger lurks, and we must be quick.”
The four large porters draped the golden coffin in a nondescript oilskin shroud and hoisted it to shoulder height. They would leave the outer casings behind and follow James to the queen’s suite in the hotel. Mohammed Bey and his business associates would accompany the procession.
“The entire enterprise is strictly hush-hush, a task commissioned by Egypt’s King Farouk himself,” Mohammed Bey explained to James. “The shadow of war lies heavy over Egypt,” he continued. “An invasion could come at any time. Many of our treasures, including the remains of our royal ancestors, are being moved to underground locations where bombs may not be felt. For others, we seek refuge outside the boundaries of Egypt.
“Tonight, in your hotel restaurant, we shall meet with the curator of the Brooklyn Museum. We shall discuss the option of Queen Siti spending some time there. She would like to see a little of your United States. We hope the reverse is also true, that your citizens would enjoy spending some time with her.”
In the elevator, James watched the ascent closely as the lights indicated the floor-to-floor progress. He didn’t want to have to explain paranormal building structure or green phantasms to these important visitors.
At the forty-second floor, thanking goodness to be there, James supervised their arrival. There was still a long corridor to traverse. He would take the lead with Mohammed Bey beside him. Next came the four porters with the golden coffin, the remaining gentlemen following behind.
The trek commenced with James alert to any possible interference. If he could conclude his business with the Egyptians in the next few minutes, he might return to the lobby in time to escort Victor Lesley’s first aspiring actress.
James also knew that, although foreign dignitaries occasionally rated VIP status, these Egyptians were pleasant gentlemen who constituted Mr. Nash’s “contingent of foreigners,” not the visitor he feared. That VIP had yet to appear.
As the assembly approached the first hallway perpendicular to their corridor, James could hear a distinct high-pitched squeal, as if a door with a rusty hinge were swaying to and fro. He raised his hand to stop the procession.
The eerie squeaking continued, coming closer, closer, closer.
James held his breath in apprehension. What was about to appear around the corner?
He sighed in relief as a housekeeping maintenance cart appeared, pushed by an old lady. The cart contained bedding, towels, wrapped toilet paper, cleaning supplies, rubber gloves, a hamper for soiled laundry, and a trash receptacle.
“Mrs. Kobler!” James said.
Mrs. Kobler was elderly for a housekeeper, and yet James knew she worked tirelessly, around the clock. She must have been in her seventies at least, he thought, or possibly her eighties, and no one would guess from looking at her that she o
nce had a career in show business. She now had sad blue eyes, saggy skin, and a wattle at her neck. Her hair had been gray for as long as anyone at the hotel could remember, and she wore a long dress. She looked suspiciously at James’s group and the large object it carried.
“I’m showing some guests to their room,” James said. “It’s nice to see you.”
“Master James,” she said, keeping an eye on the coffin. “Nice to see you too, young man. Nice to see you. Be good.”
She resumed her voyage down the hallway, her cart’s bad wheel again squeaking out her slow advance.
The Egyptians’ suite was of the normal horizontal variety, with a ceiling no more than ten feet up and trimmed in teak crown molding. James explained that it was called the Royal Suite, especially selected for Queen Siti’s visit. Guests entered via a tiled foyer leading to a salon for entertaining. The suite also boasted a guest library of rare photographic and art volumes, a bathroom that featured twenty-four-karat gold-plated faucets and Italian marble facilities, and a large private bedchamber off the salon.
At Mohammed Bey’s nod, the porters carried their regal parcel into the bedchamber and deposited it alongside the bed, arranged so Queen Siti’s head would align with the head of the bed. A family of pillows invited rest at the same end of the bed, yet none of the queen’s retinue would be sleeping in that room this night. She appreciated her privacy.
As James had been informed by Mr. Nash, Mohammed Bey and his colleagues had separate rooms in this same wing of the hotel, though none of them planned on sleep any time soon. They had scheduled a late-night business conference with the Brooklyn Museum representatives. As Mr. Nash had explained, they wanted the queen’s whereabouts for the next several years to be settled as soon as possible.