The Camelot Caper by Elizabeth Peters Page B

I’d forgotten that what you call the fourth floor is what we call the fifth.”
    â€œThat’s so, isn’t it?” The man put the tray on a chair and drew it up to the side of the bed. “Ordinarily, of course, I wouldn’t have dreamed of disturbing you. But Mr. Randall rang up, and said to make sure you were awake before I put him through to you. He has such a sense of humor.”
    â€œDoesn’t he, though,” Jess said coldly. “Thank you for the tea.”
    â€œMr. Randall said to give you five minutes, then he’ll ring back.”
    When he had withdrawn, Jess contemplated her pot of tea with mixed emotions. Amusement finally won out. Whatever David Randall was up to now—and she suspected it would not be to her taste—she owed him something for finding this gem of a hotel. Her funny little room, upunder the roof, must have been part of the servants’ quarters of the original house. It was the oddest blend of old and new; there was a telephone, but no bedside table, a washbasin in the corner and a ceiling that sloped so abruptly over her bed that she had nearly brained herself when she sat up. And the manager—was he the manager? Or Lord High Every-thing Else? Had he made the tea, besides carrying it up five flights of steps? It was excellent tea; by the time the telephone rang she was ready to face even David Randall.
    â€œAwake?” said the familiar voice.
    â€œI’m awake, but I don’t know why.”
    â€œYou’ve been sleeping for hours. It’s almost midday.”
    The dulcet tones sounded different. Jess peered suspiciously into the mouthpiece.
    â€œAre you drunk?”
    â€œNo, but I soon shall be. Meet me. I might even give you lunch.”
    â€œYou can just keep your lunches. I don’t think I want to meet you.”
    â€œI think you’d better.”
    â€œThat sounds like a threat,” Jessica said slowly. All at once she was struck by a bombardment of doubts. His fortuitous appearance—his odd behavior—and he knew where she was.The flaw in the plot, he had called it. But it was no flaw, if he was one of the enemy.
    â€œIt is a threat. But not from me. They came, I saw, they conquered.”
    â€œThey—oh, no! You don’t mean—”
    â€œYes, I do mean,” said the peculiar, blurred voice, with a theatrical gasp. “We must have a chat. Have them call you a taxi; I presume you don’t know London well enough to get around. Tell the driver you want number thirteen, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Got it? The house is a museum—Sir John Soane’s Museum.”
    â€œBut I’m not even—”
    â€œThen get dressed. In something less conspicuous than that glaring yellow costume you wore yesterday. Drab brown, that’s the thing. Ask the guard to direct you to the Monk’s Parlour. If I’m not there, wait for me.”
    It was half past twelve when Jess paid off the taxi and climbed the steps to the entrance of Sir John’s museum. It was not precisely the most popular tourist haunt in London; there were more guards than visitors. When she asked for the Monk’s Parlour, the guard directed her downstairs. She had been too preoccupied to do more than glance at the other rooms of the house, which was a handsome building in its own right, but the Monk’s Parlour brought herup short. It would have attracted the attention of a dope addict in the grip of the drug.
    The room was gloomy and low-ceilinged. It looked smaller than it was because it was crammed with the most grotesque collection of miscellany Jess had ever seen. The walls were covered with fragments—bits of sculpture, and isolated gargoyles, and staring antique faces, looking like blind decapitated heads in the thick dusk. Though the house stood on a London street, the window of the room looked out on a vista of ruins—columns and arches and melancholy fallen stones.
    Jess staggered back