Escapade (4 page)

Unlike most of the aristocrats I’d met since we arrived in England, she actually looked like one. Regal without being cold, composed without being stiff. But according to the Great Man, she hadn’t been born one. She came from a family that had made its money, a lot of money, in publishing, here in England and on the Continent.

Her daughter looked aristocratic, too, but there was no silver in her blond hair. The hair was straight and neatly bobbed just below her ears, cut longer in front to emphasize her slender neck. The gauzy scarlet scarf loosely wrapped around her throat helped with this. So did the scooped neckline of her pale gray dress, also silk.

She was maybe a bit too aristocratic. She held a champagne glass in her left hand. Her right hand hovered just to the side of her face. Between her extended first and second fingers, she held a lighted cigarette. When she decided that she wanted a puff, all she had to do was swivel her head a few inches. You got the impression that even this would be a terrible chore.

“Hello,” she drawled at a space somewhere between the Great Man and me. She was maybe a year or two younger than Miss Turner.

“How do you do,” said Lady Alice. There was more life in her eyes than in her daughter’s entire body. “I’m so very pleased that the two of you could join us. I do hope you’ll enjoy yourselves while you’re here. If you need anything, you’ve only to ask.” Then she turned to her husband and put her hand along his tweeded arm. “I was just coming after you, darling. I’m afraid we have a small problem.”

“Eh?”

She glanced at us very briefly, looked back at her husband. “Upstairs,” she said, and her shoulders moved in a small quick elegant shrug.

Lord Bob’s bristling eyebrows dipped downward, two pale beetles struggling to embrace each other. “Carrying on again, is he?” Scowling, he stroked his white mustache. “The swine. Comes the revolution, we’ll string him up with the rest. He’ll be the
first
to go.” He punched his right fist into the palm of his left hand.

“I know, darling,” said Lady Alice, “but let’s deal with today first, shall we? I’ll go up there with you.”

He nodded. Her hand still held his arm, and now he put his own hand atop hers. “Thank you, my love.” He turned to his daughter. “Cecily, be the good little Girl Guide, would you, and introduce Mr. Houdini and Mr. Beaumont to the other guests?” He turned to us. “Sorry. Domestic problem. Back as soon as I can. Come along, my darling.”

Lady Alice said to us, “I’m so sorry. Please, do have something.” She smiled apologetically, and then she and Lord Bob went off, arm in arm.

The Great Man said to Cecily, “There is some trouble?” He was only making polite conversation. Other people and their troubles didn’t interest him much and didn’t trouble him at all.

“It’s such a bore,” she drawled, and swiveled her head to inhale on her cigarette. “My grandfather,” she said, exhaling smoke. “He has these fits.”

“Ah.” He nodded sympathetically. He had learned to do that somewhere. “Brain seizures. A great pity.”

“Temper tantrums, actually,” she said in her flat drawl. She tapped her cigarette against an ashtray on the trestle table, then raised her hand and put the cigarette back within reach. “You know, of course, that Daddy’s a Bolshevist.” With her cigarette hand she plucked a flake of tobacco from her lower lip.

We hadn’t known, or I hadn’t. If the Great Man had known, he had probably forgotten. It had nothing to do with him, so it was irrelevant.

“Daddy’s only waiting,” she said, “for Grandpere to die so he can give Maplewhite to the peasants and workers. And that makes Grandpere furious, of course. He’s bedridden, he’s been that way since the accident, years ago. So he can’t flog Daddy, which of course is what he’d like to do.” She swiveled her head, inhaled on the cigarette. “Once a week or so he starts screaming and throwing things about his room. It drives the poor servants mad.” She showed us her thin smile again. “What would you like to drink? Champagne? We’ve whiskey, as well, I should think.”

Houdini shook his head. “Thank you, no. I neither drink alcohol nor smoke tobacco products. I never have. They sap the strength and deplete the will. And without strength and will, I would never have become what I am.”

Her left eyebrow edged upward. She took a puff from her tobacco product. “Yes,” she said, and blew out some smoke. “Some sort of magician, I gather.”

A lesser man might have been derailed by this, which is maybe what she intended. The Great Man steamed ahead at full throttle.

“Not merely a magician,” he said, and smiled indulgently. “Anyone can become a magician. A few gimmicked props, some sleight of hand. Child’s play. Nothing. I, on the other hand, am an escape artist. A self-liberator. I was the very first self-liberator, anywhere. I have many imitators, in many countries, but it was I who invented the art. And, if I may say so, with no false modesty, Houdini is still the greatest of them all.” He turned to me. “Would you agree, Phil?”

“Sure,” I said. It was true, after all.

“Really,” she said, pronouncing every letter in the word. A faint light had begun to flicker behind her eyes, and a faint note of irony had slipped into her voice. “And just what is it you escape from, exactly?”

Irony, faint or otherwise, was wasted on the Great Man. He waved a hand. “Everything. Anything. In the beginning it was handcuffs and shackles. But anyone can escape from handcuffs and shackles. Always, you see, I try to go beyond what others can do, what even I can do, and that is the greatest challenge of all, naturally. Nowadays Houdini escapes from everything. Locked trunks. Coffins. From coffins under water, or buried in the earth. And naturally this requires enormous physical strength and stamina. Tremendous stamina. Would you like to hit me in the stomach?”

“I beg your pardon?” she said.

He opened up his suit coat. “Go ahead. Hit me. As hard as you like. Years of conditioning have turned Houdini’s muscles into steel.” He nodded toward his stomach. “Please. Feel free.”

“Ah,” she said. I saw that she was blushing. Quickly, she glanced around the room. She wasn’t as jaded as she pretended to be. She looked back at him and cleared her throat. “Thanks awfully, of course,” she said. “But perhaps some other time.”

Houdini flexed his arm and held his biceps out to her, like a proud butcher presenting a prime slab of porterhouse. “Here. Go ahead. Feel.”

She looked over to me, as though expecting a rescue. I didn’t have one. She hesitated. The Great Man still held out his arm.

She said, “Oh, well,” and she shrugged lightly, as though it didn’t really matter in the long run. And she reached out and touched it, tentatively, experimentally.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” he said. “Exactly like steel. Feel it.”

“Yes,” she said. She touched it some more. She blinked again as her fingers moved along the tight black fabric. “Yes, it’s really quite . . . firm, isn’t it?”

“Yes, naturally,” he nodded. He let his arm drop. “Conditioning, exercise,” he said, “years and years of it, every day without exception. Alcohol would ruin that in an instant. It destroys muscle tissue, you know. Eats it away, like sulfuric acid. A glass of plain water is what I would like, if I may.”

She was staring at him with her lips slightly parted. She blinked again, like someone waking from a daydream, and she closed her mouth. Blushing once more, she glanced around the room. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.” There was a faint sheen of perspiration on her forehead.

I had seen it happen before. People were never prepared for the Great Man’s bald, boundless ego. Some people were repelled by it. But a lot of them were attracted.

And some people are also attracted to firm muscles.

The Great Man hadn’t noticed the girl’s reaction. He had turned away from her and he stood now with his hands behind his back, his head held high. He glanced thoughtfully around the room, like a theater director gauging the house and its profits.

She turned to me. She cleared her throat. She had wrapped her world weariness back over herself, but I think she realized that it didn’t fit nearly as well as it had before. “And you, Mr. Beaumont?”

“A whiskey, thanks. With a little water.”

She turned and she stabbed her cigarette into the ashtray. Her movement was so quick and violent that I felt sorry for the cigarette.

She ordered the drinks from the servant. She didn’t look into the Great Man’s eyes when she gave him the glass of water, but her hand was rock-steady. She handed me the whiskey and water. No ice. The English don’t trust it. “You must meet the other guests,” she told me.

The GRAMOPHONE was tinkling out a Scott Joplin rag as she led us from the trestle table. We walked across some Oriental carpets and past a fireplace big enough to roast a woolly mammoth. There was no mammoth inside. There was no fire either, even though the air was chilly. The English don’t believe in heating their homes before January. If then.

Beyond the fireplace, we came to another cluster of people, three men and a woman sitting in a circle around another coffee table. One of the men was saying, “And it is this, you see, this completely wish-fulfilling nature of the dream, that Herr Doktor Freud discovered.”

He was a small, slight man with a thick German accent and a thick beard, neatly cut and shot through with curling wires of gray. His scalp was completely bare and it gleamed as though it had been waxed and buffed. He wore sparkling black pince-nez glasses, a neatly pressed black suit, glistening black patent leather boots, a crisp white shirt with a stiff wing collar, and a tiny, tidy black bow tie. He was immaculate. He was spotless. Dust and disarray would never touch him. They wouldn’t dare.

“Excuse me, Dr. Auerbach,” said Cecily. The flat, weary drawl had returned to her voice. “Daddy’s appointed me hostess. This is Mr. Phil Beaumont, from America, and Mr. Harry Houdini.” I thought she gave the word
Houdini
a soft, sour spin.

The other men and the woman remained seated, but Dr. Auerbach bounded to his small shiny feet. “Mr. Houdini! he said. He displayed his small shiny teeth as he groped for the Great Man’s hand. The Great Man granted it.

“Dr. Erich Auerbach,” said the doctor. “What a truly gigantic pleasure this is! I witnessed myself your magnificent performance in Vienna several years ago! Astonishing!”

The Great Man looked down at the doctor and smiled his charming smile. “Thank you so much.” Flattery always brought out the best in him.

Dr. Auerbach whirled toward Cecily. His brown eyes were opened wide behind the glasses. “You will please permit me, Miss Fitzwilliam, the introductions?”

She smiled her thin listless smile, and she shrugged indifferently. “Yes. Certainly.”

“Wonderful!” he said. “Thank you so very much. Well, then, gentlemen. Gracious lady.” He bowed toward the seated woman to our right. “Allow me to introduce the extraordinary Mr. Harry Houdini. As you heard, I had myself the honor to witness in Vienna his performance there.
Overwhelming
, absolutely! Mr. Houdini, allow me to introduce to you first the extremely charming Mrs. Corneille.”

The extremely charming Mrs. Corneille was the seated woman. She was probably over thirty years old and she was probably under fifty. That was all that I could tell about her age and it was probably more than she would ever tell. She wore black high-heeled shoes, sheer silk stockings, and a pleated black silk dress that exposed her long pale arms and her smooth pale shoulders. Her hair was cut like a pageboy’s and it was straight and black and glossy. Her cheekbones were feline, her nose was small, her mouth was red and wide. Beneath long black lashes, her eyes were large and almond shaped. They were the same color as her hair and they looked like there wasn’t anything in the world that they hadn’t seen at least twice.

In her hand, lightly, she held a long brown cigarette. She inclined her head toward the Great Man and she smiled.

“And this gentleman,” said Dr. Auerbach, “is Sir David Merridale.”

Sir David was in his forties. His shoulders were broad beneath his tailored black coat, his stomach was flat beneath his tailored black vest. His hair was black, too, except for the elegant waves of gray that lapped elegantly back over his temples. He had a high forehead, a strong nose, a black mustache, and a dark broad mouth. He sat comfortably, sprawled back in a padded leather chair, his hands along its arms, his legs crossed at the knees. He held a glass of champagne in his left hand, comfortably. He seemed permanently bemused.

Sir David nodded hello. The Great Man said, “And this is my secretary and close personal friend, Mr. Phil Beaumont.”

I nodded and I smiled. Politely. It was easy once you got used to it.

Sir David said, “Do join us. Dr. Auerbach was just explaining psychoanalysis.”

“Oh no, no,” said Dr. Auerbach quickly, and semaphored his small manicured hands. He had obviously taken charge. “We finish this now, with the great Houdini here. Please, Miss Fitzwilliam, you will sit beside me?”

She did, on the embroidered love seat. The Great Man chose the empty leather chair at the head of the table, which wasn’t much of a surprise. The only seat remaining was the one beside Mrs. Corneille, on the sofa, and I took that. She inhaled a puff from the cigarette and exhaled pale blue smoke through her delicate nostrils, and she looked at me from beneath slightly lowered eyelids. She was wearing a perfume that had been distilled from flowers grown in the Garden of Eden.

Sir David was studying the new arrivals. He was still bemused. “So,” said Dr. Auerbach, leaning toward the Great Man, rubbing his hands together. “You are here for a test of the medium, isn’t it? To verify her genuineness, yes?”

Houdini nodded judiciously. “I see you know of my work. Yes, I have had much success uncovering the fraudulent techniques used by these people. But in my youth I was a noted stage medium myself—although only for a brief time, and only for the purpose of healthy family entertainment. Since then, I have made a lifelong study of the occult. I have put together the finest and most extensive library on this subject in the world. And so naturally, Houdini is better equipped than most men to determine trickery and fraud.” He smiled. “Only as we grow older do we acquire wisdom.”