CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dan Caine watched Lucretia and Gwendolyn leave, his mind busy. It was highly probable that the man called Beck had been with Clay Kyle at the Calthrop massacre and had later decided to visit High Time and his whore. Room 32, third floor. A dark and gloomy landing. It was a good place to take Beck by surprise . . . with his pants down.
Misty Maguire rose to her feet, an obese woman in a green silk dress, feathers in elaborately ringleted blonde hair that was probably a wig. She had a little doll face, china blue eyes that always held a surprised expression, and a little cupid’s bow mouth with cherry red lips. (Around 1905, a reporter for The American Magazine quipped that the madame’s lips were the only cherries to ever set foot in High Time.) Misty’s chubby cheekbones were colored with perfect circles of bright crimson rouge, a startling contrast to the rest of her face that was as white as a fish’s belly. She was only forty years old that fall, but Texas and her chosen profession had aged her.
Misty waited until a thunderclap shook the house and chimed crystal liquor decanters on a nearby table before she said, “After dinner we’ll talk about your needs, Mr. Caine. In the meantime, you may stay here until I return. Help yourself to a drink.” The woman smiled. “But first you must observe the grand procession.”
“What’s that?” Dan said.
“Why, it’s the promenade down the stairs followed by a polonaise and then a grand march into the dining room. It’s all most elegant and worthy of this house,” Misty said. “Each gentleman has his lady on his arm while my footmen play Verdi’s Grand March from Aida on the piano and violin. I take it you’re familiar with that sublime music.”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Dan said.
He had no idea what in hell the fat lady was talking about.
“You must stand in the shadows and observe, Mr. Caine. You will see something wonderful that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. And just think, one day you may be a part of it. That is, if you have the dinero. Now it’s almost time. The dinner gong is about to sound.” Then in a conspiratorial whisper, “Come with me. We’ll be as quiet as little church mice.”
Misty Maguire led Dan to a dark corner in the foyer and pushed him behind a tall potted plant that Dan guessed was some kind of aggressive fern.
“After the procession and the polonaise, you may return to the drawing room,” Misty said. “Until then”—she placed a forefinger on her lips—“shh. Be a little mouse, remember.”
Room 32, third floor. Dan Caine branded the location on his brain.
Through a curtain of ferns, he watched Misty Maguire climb the staircase. It seemed she was part of the big parade, and Dan smiled to himself. He was aware of the weight of his holstered Colt dragging on the cartridge belt, and once everybody was in the drawing room, he’d head for Mr. Beck in the attic. Dan’s face was suddenly grim, hard-boned, merciless. If it turned out that the man had taken a hand in the killing of the Calthrop family . . . it would be better for him if he’d never been born.
But then a warning thought hit him hard . . . like a clenched fist to the gut. He recalled what Clint Cooley had told him. If Beck was one of Clay Kyle’s boys, and that seemed increasingly likely, he’d be a named pistol fighter because the outlaw hired no other kind. He’d be fast on the draw and shoot, and Dan had sense enough to doubt that he could match the man’s skill with a gun. He could only hope to gain the drop on Beck and get his work in before the gunman giggled and triggered him. And the woman was another complication. Dan sighed, angry at himself. All right, let it go. There was no point in building houses on a bridge he hadn’t crossed yet. Then suddenly a piano and a violin played the opening, majestic chords of the Aida march and brought Dan back to the here and now.
He peered through the green ferns, then turned away to investigate a scuttling at his feet. Annoyed, he kicked a large rat away from him and went back to his study of the staircase.
As the dramatic music swelled, Dan watched Misty Maguire make her slow, dignified way down the staircase. Her face was expressionless, lost in the moment, but her huge bosom swelled with pride. She had donned a black top hat for the occasion, a yellowed, square clock face with Roman numerals attached to the front of the crown. Dan guessed the old dial was all that was left of High Time’s legendary steam clock that could be seen for a hundred miles. If it was, it was surely a disappointment.
Behind Misty, stepping soundlessly, came a procession of the living . . . and the living dead.
Eight white-haired men in black evening clothes, each had a young woman’s gloved hand on his crooked right arm as they came down the stairs in twos. All the men were old, mostly very old, and one of them could have been ninety, a foot shorter than the young thing on his arm. But as a group, the eight men emanated an air of wealth and power, made obvious by thick gold watch chains, diamond rings, and big bellies, the badges of office of the rich and well-fed.
The rat was persistent and again worried Dan’s boot. Irritated, he kicked it away . . . and made the fern rock dangerously in its pot. His heart in his mouth, as thunder roared and lightning filled the foyer with dazzling light, he grabbed the teetering fern and held it upright.
But nobody noticed.
The men and women descending the grand staircase were absorbed in the procession . . . wrapped up in each other, bonded by money and desire. The men’s faces were solemn, lordly, but the ladies on their arms smiled and bared their teeth. The male half of the promenade was a slow-moving column of somber black and white, but the female side was a silken kaleidoscope of clashing color—magenta, yellow, blue and purple, nodding feathers, fluttering fans, naked shoulders, glittering diamonds, and pushed-up breasts that were white, but not, God forbid, pure white.
As each couple reached the bottom of the stairs, they chose a spot in the foyer and gradually formed a circle, the unsmiling men facing their ladies. Misty Maguire stood to one side, beaming, her face shining with sweat. After a quick glance at the circle, she signaled with her raised hand, and Aida came to an abrupt and undignified halt. But after a pause of just a heartbeat, the piano and violin struck up again with Strauss’s Blue Danube waltz. The couples danced, gracefully moving around the floor in a perfect circle, and the women’s vivid dresses flared like the petals of exotic blossoms whirling on the surface of a mill pond.
Dan Caine watched and battled the aggressive rat, now joined by another, as Misty carefully avoided the dancers and crossed the foyer to the dining room. She said something to a gaunt flunky dressed like a head waiter, and the man nodded and opened the dining room doors. Then, couple by couple, the waltzers left the floor and twirled inside. When the last pair, the ninety-year-old and his statuesque partner, entered the room, the doors slammed shut behind them and the music stopped.
Dan aimed one final kick at the aggressive rodents and then stepped into the silent foyer.