“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.”
Chapter Twelve
"WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY tale!” said Doyle. He sat on one of the padded leather library chairs, his great red head thrust forward, his heavy forearms planted on knees the size of pineapples. He shook the head a few times in amazement and then turned it toward the Great Man. “And you’re quite all right, are you?”
“Oh yes,” said the Great Man, tapping his palm lightly against his thigh. He sat opposite Doyle in another leather chair, beside my own. “I am in perfect health, as always.”
Seated, Doyle was more subdued. It was as though his age somehow caught up with him when he stopped moving, and then settled over his heavy shoulders like a shawl. “And the young woman? Miss Turner?”
“She’s fine, considering,” said Lord Bob, who sat to my right. “Resting in her room. Poor girl’s had rather a thin time of it. Disturbances last night, and then her horse ran away with her. And now this. Some filthy sod firing a bloody rifle. Can’t blame her for feeling a bit under the weather, eh?”
Beneath his white mustache, Doyle’s lips tightened. “Disturbances, you say? Last night? What sort of disturbances?”
Lord Bob waved his hand lightly. “A nightmare.”
“She believed,” said the Great Man, “that she had seen the ghost of Lord Purleigh’s ancestor.”
Doyle nodded his big head at the Great Man and said to Lord Bob, “That would be Lord Reginald?”
“Yes. My fault, I expect. Shouldn’t have told her the story. Cousin of my wife’s pried it out of me. Persistent woman.”
“But perhaps Miss Turner did see Lord Reginald.”
Lord Bob frowned, as though he didn’t want to discuss this possibility. “Irrelevant, isn’t it?” He held up a placating hand. “Sorry, Doyle, know you’re fond of all that—ghosts, spirits, et cetera. Fair enough. One man’s meat, eh? Agree to disagree, eh? But just now, seems to me, we’ve got to deal with this Chin Soo fellow.”
“I concur,” said Doyle. He sat back in his chair and I noticed a small brief wince of annoyance flicker across his mouth. Rheumatism, or arthritis, or maybe just ligament and bone that had grown wary of sudden movements. Whatever it was, he wasn’t as limber as he would’ve liked to be. Probably no one was, except the Great Man.
Doyle reached into the right-hand pocket of his coat, looked over at Lord Bob. “May I smoke?”
Lord Bob waved his hand. “Course you may.” He smiled. “A two-pipe problem, eh?”
Doyle smiled back, but wanly, as though he had heard this before, often. He pulled from the pocket a meerschaum pipe and a leather tobacco pouch. He opened the pouch and dipped the pipe into it and he glanced over at the Great Man. “When did all this begin?”
The Great Man put his arms on the arms of the chair. “One month ago,” he said. “In the city of Buffalo, in New York State. Both Chin Soo and I were performing there. I was at the Orpheum, he was at the Palace. You know, perhaps, that the vaudeville houses in America are extremely competitive these days, due to the increasing popularity of the cinemas.”
Doyle had pulled out a small box of Swan Vespa matches. He struck one alight. Nodding at the Great Man, he held the flame to the bowl of his pipe.
“Naturally,” said the Great Man, “I myself have no trouble filling a house, even in these difficult days. But for a performer of lesser magnitude, such as Chin Soo, the situation can be truly formidable. And when Houdini is playing the same town, at the same time, well, of course, the situation becomes in fact hopeless.” With a lot of puffing at the stem of his pipe, Doyle had finally gotten the thing lit. He slipped the matches back into his coat pocket and blew out a streamer of smoke. The smoke drifted across the room, smelling like smoldering burlap.
“Not surprisingly,” said the Great Man, “Chin Soo’s ticket sales were very poor. He grew desperate. He ordered his minions, common hoodlums of the street, to begin pasting his boards—his advertising posters—over my own. Naturally, to protect myself, I retaliated by having my assistants do the same to his. But interfering with my advertisements was not enough for the man. He began denouncing me on stage, before his performance, calling me a fraud, a charlatan. He went so far as t
o claim, in a press interview, that I had stolen my legendary coffin escape from him. Him, a mediocre trickster who had never in his life given a coffin a second thought.”
“Only fair to point out, though,” said Lord Bob to Doyle, “that the chap does catch bullets in his teeth.”
“A trick, merely,” said the Great Man. “But no matter. What then happened, I called a press conference and I revealed the truth to the assembled reporters. That it was Chin Soo who was the fraud. That the man was a liar and an incompetent. I challenged him to appear on stage with me, bringing any restraint of his own choosing—chains, handcuffs, shackles, whatever he liked—and attempt to render me captive. I would, in turn, provide a restraint of my own choosing, for him. Whoever succeeded in escaping in the least amount of time would be considered the winner. This seemed to me utterly fair-minded.”
Doyle nodded, puffing at his pipe.
The Great Man shrugged. “But naturally, Chin Soo declined the challenge. And, naturally, as a result, he was ridiculed in the newspapers. His last performance played to an empty house. Or it nearly played, I should say. When he discovered that most of the seats were unoccupied, he stormed from the stage. Typical behavior, from such an egomaniac. He left the theater and removed all his things from his rooming house. He simply disappeared.”
The Great Man paused for a moment, letting that sink in. Then he said, “That night, as I left the Orpheum by the stage door, someone attempted to shoot me.”
“Good heavens,” said Doyle, and raised his eyebrows.
“He missed me, but by a matter of inches only. My quick reflexes enabled me to dash back to the safety of the theater. The police were notified, and when they arrived I explained the situation. They immediately suspected Chin Soo, of course. But when they attempted to locate him, they learned he had gone.”
“One moment,” said Doyle, taking his pipe from his mouth. “You said earlier that no one knew what Chin Soo actually looked like, without his stage make-up. And yet he had taken lodgings. Wouldn’t the people there—the landlord, for example—wouldn’t someone have seen him as he truly appeared?”
“No,” announced the Great Man. “Before Chin Soo arrived in a city, he retained someone to engage a room for him, and pay for it in advance. Chin Soo would arrive on the date specified, but he would be wearing his make-up. No one would ever see him without it, at least wittingly.” He sniffed dismissively. “It was something he did to make himself appear fascinating. Part of his so-called mystique.”
“And you’re quite sure,” said Doyle, “that it was make-up?”
“Oh yes. No one has ever seen Chin Soo arrive in any city in which he was performing. Not by automobile, by train, or by boat. He travels undisguised. Or perhaps disguised as someone else.”
“But how—and just when, exactly—does he transform himself into his Chin Soo identity?”
The Great Man shrugged. “If he travels by means of an automobile, perhaps he changes inside it. Perhaps he uses public lavatories. Perhaps he engages some other lodgings, from which he can come and go unseen.”
“Extraordinary,” said Doyle, and shook his head. “And you’re certain that it was Chin Soo who attempted to shoot you?”
“He himself admitted as much to me. On the day after the incident, I returned to my home in New York City, and that evening he telephoned me—on my private number—and spoke with me. He used his stage voice, and he asked me whether I would like him to give me lessons in catching bullets. I told him, of course, that I needed no lessons of any kind from him. And I suggested to him that perhaps he required some lessons himself, in marksmanship.”
Doyle smiled around the pipe stem. “Good man. Giving him his own back.” He frowned slightly. “But you say he used his stage voice?”
“On stage he speaks in a singsong Oriental manner. It was in such a voice that he spoke with me.”
“And this Oriental voice is assumed, I take it?”
“Yes. He possesses, I admit, some accomplishments as a mimic. He has telephoned me several times since then, and each time he used a different voice, a different accent. A feeble attempt at wit, I suppose. But always he has made his identity clear.”
“How did he obtain your private telephone number?”
“From someone in the telephone company, no doubt. No doubt he paid bribes. I have had the number altered several times, and each time he has somehow acquired the new one.”
“And he threatened you, you say, before you went to Philadelphia?”
“Yes. That was my first appearance after the engagement in Buffalo, and it was to be my last in the United States, before I sailed for Europe. He telephoned me two days before I left, and said that he was looking forward to seeing me in Philadelphia. At my wife’s suggestion, I discussed the matter with the Philadelphia Police Department. As I told you, they attempted to capture him, and they failed.”
Doyle nodded. “And between the time you appeared in Buffalo and the time you appeared in Philadelphia, no one has seen Chin Soo?”
“No one. He had several bookings, small theaters in insignificant cities, but he canceled them all.”
“And he made no attempt to harm you while you were in New York City?”
“No. Perhaps he is aware of the esteem in which I am held there. Or perhaps he wishes to harm me only while I am on tour. Perhaps he feels that this would be more dramatic.”
“And it was at the start of the tour that you retained Mr. Beaumont’s services?”
“Correct, yes.”
Doyle turned to me and took the pipe from his mouth. “Do you have anything to add, Mr. Beaumont?”
Across the carpet, Lord Bob scowled.
“A couple of things,” I said. “First off, although Harry doesn’t agree with me, I think that maybe Chin Soo isn’t really trying to kill him.”
“We have discussed that, Phil,” said the Great Man. Suggesting that there was no point discussing it again.
“What do you mean?” Doyle asked me.
“Maybe Chin Soo is just trying to rattle Harry. Shake him up. Make him nervous, so he’ll lose his concentration on stage, botch up the performance. Bungle it.”
“Phil,” said the Great Man, “nothing could make me lose my concentration. I have never bungled anything in my life.”
I smiled. “Like I told you, Harry, maybe Chin Soo figures there’s a first time for everything.”
Doyle said to me, “You’re basing this notion upon what? Your understanding of Chin Soo’s character?”
“Partly,” I said. “I think Chin Soo would love the idea of Harry screwing up—making a mistake. But also, Harry’s told me about this bullet-catching trick. In order to pull it off, you’ve got to know a fair amount about guns and bullets. You’ve got to be a pretty good shot yourself.”
“Just how is the trick performed?” Doyle asked me.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s Harry’s cat.” I turned to the Great Man. “He’ll have to let it out of the bag himself.”
The Great Man smiled sadly. “I regret to say, Sir Arthur, that—”
Doyle held up the palm of his hand. “I understand completely. I should never have asked.” He turned back to me, took hold of the bowl of his pipe, puffed. “You were making a point about Chin Soo’s marksmanship.”
“Yeah. He’s a good shot. But one of our ops—operatives, agents—examined that alley in Buffalo. The one where the shooting took place. Harry was standing only about fifteen feet from the spot where the gun was fired.”
Doyle nodded. “And yet Chin Soo’s bullet missed him.”
The Great Man shifted in his seat. “The alley was dark, Phil.”
“The gas lamps were lit,” I said. “Harry, you were a sitting duck, and he missed you.”
Doyle said to me, “But I understood that he did shoot a police officer in Philadelphia.”
“When the guy was trying to nab him.”
The Great Man said, “But you have no way of proving that Chin Soo wouldn’t have shot
me, if I had been in the room.” He was dead set on getting shot at.
Doyle said to him, “The shot that was fired today.” He puffed at the pipe. “That missed you, as well.”
“Yes,” he said, “but it was fired from—what was it, Phil?— something like two hundred yards.”
“A hundred and fifty.”
“Still, his missing me is entirely understandable.”
“Why didn’t he fire again?” I asked him. “You were standing there and he just walked away.”
“A single-fire rifle, perhaps?” suggested Doyle.
Lord Bob said, “Filthy sod spotted me chasing after him.”
“A single-shot rifle, maybe,” I said to Doyle, and I turned to Lord Bob. “But if it wasn’t, he had plenty of time to let off another shot before you got to him. And plenty of time to shoot you, if he wanted to.” I looked at the Great Man. “And, Harry, it was a handgun he used in Buffalo. A Colt forty-five, a semi-automatic. Cops found the slug and the spent cartridge. Why didn’t he empty the whole clip into your back?”
“Phil,” he said, “as I have explained to you countless times, I moved too quickly for him to attempt a second shot.”
“Seems to me,” I said, “if he was serious, he would’ve given it another try.”
Doyle took his pipe from his mouth and narrowed his eyes and he said, “You do realize, Mr. Beaumont, that even if these speculations of yours are correct, your own position remains essentially the same.”
“Sure,” I said. “Even if he’s just trying to spook Harry, I’ve still got to stop him. He could make a slip, and kill him by mistake. But the idea that he’s trying to shake him up, not kill him, that’s the only thing that gives me a sliver of hope. Because if I buy the idea that he really wants to kill Harry, I might as well pack up and go home. There’s no way that one man can stop him.”
“And,” Doyle said, “despite your doubts, you must proceed as though the man were in fact determined to effect Houdini’s death.”
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