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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