Fighting with fire

CHAPTER TWELVE

The hotel had several restaurants but it was the largest, poshest one? the one with all the vaulted ceilings and crystal? in which they had the welcome dinner. There were name cards at the various tables? each one seating between seven and fifteen people. Lex found himself on one of the largest tables completely surrounded on all sides by wealthy, fat women who were positively weighed down with jewellery. There was simply no doubt about it? finding something suitable to pinch from one of their rooms later would be no trouble whatsoever.

Jeremiah and Lorella were already seated when Lex walked in. He was pleased to note that Jeremiah looked distinctly unhappy and Tess? who was sitting beside him? looked subdued almost to the point of appearing unwell. Lorella didn’t look too happy either. Lady Luck had smugly told Lex that she had been caught by an enchanted dolphin trap almost as soon as she left the galley, right at the very start of the round. The episode had rather taken her down a peg or two.

Lex spent the evening looking suitably morose, pushing the food around his plate and quietly resisting the attempts of the clucking women all around him who were trying to entice him to eat.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t been feeling very well the last couple of days,’ he said pitifully, whilst the women exchanged knowing looks over his head.

After the food had been cleared away, the manager of the hotel got a microphone from somewhere and called for quiet. The room fell silent whilst the man did a little speech about what an honour and a privilege it was, blah, blah, blah, to have all the players assembled at the hotel between rounds. Lex was pleased when Lorella stood up at the end of the speech and said that it was her pleasure to be there. She sat down and Jeremiah obviously then felt honour bound to say something as well for he stood up and? looking distinctly awkward at all the unfriendly looks people were shooting him? said that he, too, was pleased to be a guest at the Majestic. Once Jeremiah had retaken his seat, Lex got to his feet, being careful to look extremely reluctant to do so when he was, in reality, utterly delighted. A greater hush seemed to descend on the room when Lex stood up. All eyes were on him? which was just the way he liked it.

‘I’d like to echo what my fellow players have said. I’m truly honoured to be here. And I… I’d like to take the opportunity to..’ Lex trailed off, cleared his throat and continued in a stronger voice. ‘If you don’t mind, I would be very glad if you would all join me in a toast.’ Everyone in the room had their glasses in their hands so quickly that it was almost like magic. ‘I’d like to raise a glass to my fallen comrade,’ Lex went on, pleased to note out of the corner of his eye that Jeremiah seemed to have slid down even further in his chair and rather looked like he desired nothing more than for a hole to appear in the ground and swallow him up. ‘Jesse Layton,’ Lex went on, ‘was a good man and a true friend. He always put other people before himself. And I know that he gave his life gladly for Tess East and the last thing he would ever have wanted would be for anyone to feel resentful or angry about how the first round ended. That… That wasn’t his way. Jesse didn’t bear grudges and he wouldn’t want anyone else to, either. He knew what he was doing when he grabbed that octopus and he did it with no regrets.’

Lex paused, as if he was fighting to keep himself under control, and in that pause he distinctly heard the woman seated next to him whisper to her neighbour, ‘He’s an orphan, you know. They say the cowboy was like a father to him.’

Excellent idea, Lex thought to himself.

‘Some of you may know that my parents died when I was five,’ he went on. ‘My brother and I were orphaned. We barely remember our real father. But Jesse… Jesse was almost like a father to us-’ He broke off abruptly at the same time as he willed tears to appear in his eyes for the first time. The seconds dragged on in tense silence before he finally said, ‘I’m sorry, I… I can’t go on.’

And, with that, he sat down and covered his face with his hand. After another moment of silence, the entire room applauded warmly? which was nice. It is always gratifying to be rewarded for a performance. If Lex had been a less disciplined sort of fraud then he might have taken the opportunity to smirk behind his hand, especially as he alone knew precisely where Jesse really was? handcuffed to a bed upstairs. But he was far, far too professional for that. Smirking was for when? and only when? he was safely back in his room, securely away from prying eyes.

The women on either side of him put comforting arms around his shoulders and Lex spent the next half hour being thoroughly mollycoddled.

It was towards the end of the evening, when Lex was almost ready to make his excuses and go back to his room, that he became aware of Jeremiah standing up from his table and making his way towards him.

Everyone in the restaurant shot him evil glances as he went. They had all seen him hit the dying cowboy who’d heroically saved his sister’s life. Lex even heard a few muttered words along the lines of, ‘Disgraceful!’ ‘Outrageous!’ and ‘Surely he won’t have the audacity to actually speak to Lex Trent!’

Jeremiah stopped before the table. His head was high, his shoulders were back and he looked right at Lex and said, ‘Lex, I just want to say how… how terribly sorry I am. I realise there’s no excuse for what I did. My action was unforgivable. But I can assure you that I simply didn’t realise what had just happened when I… when I hit Jesse. I thought he was trying to hurt Tess. I love my sister and it’s my fault she got dragged into this Game in the first place. I’d give anything in the world now to shake Jesse’s hand and thank him myself. I… tried to give up the win for the first round. I told Kala I shouldn’t have won in the first place, but it was too late.’ He lowered his voice and went on more quietly. ‘I understand that you and Jesse were friends for a long time so I’ll understand if you never speak to me again. I just want you to know how heartily sorry I am. If I could swap places with him, I would, in a heartbeat.’

Lex could have throttled him! Jeremiah East was acting like a decent human being, blast him! Already Lex could feel the others thawing? their icy hatred melting away to be replaced with cautious sympathy. Jeremiah certainly seemed genuine, for he hadn’t even brought Tess over with him, but had left her back at the table instead. If Lex had been in his place, he would have dragged the kid over for the apology because it was much harder to remain stony-faced when the dear, sweet, angelic-looking child whose life had been saved was gazing at you with big eyes.

As it was, Lex would have loved nothing better than to snap, ‘Your apologies be damned! Jesse is still dead and nothing you can say will bring him back, so piss off!’

But that would never do at all, for then he would lose sympathy. He therefore had no choice but to exercise some damage control. He sat motionless for a moment, as if thinking about what the nobleman had said. Then he slowly rose to his feet, very aware of his own table, and several others nearby, looking at him with baited breath as he turned to Jeremiah and said graciously, ‘I believe you, Jeremiah. And I forgive you. I hope we can put this behind us.’

Then he held his hand out to Jeremiah, who looked rather stunned. After a moment, the nobleman gripped Lex’s hand firmly and shook it vigorously. Several people actually clapped. Jeremiah then leaned closer and muttered in Lex’s ear, ‘If there’s ever anything I can do for you? anything at all? please don’t hesitate to let me know.’

Lex pulled a face inside his head. A sap? that was what Jeremiah really was. Underneath all the arrogance and the bravado and the conceit he was just another silly, gutless sap who could be manipulated so easily that it wasn’t even funny.

Playing his part flawlessly, Lex thanked Jeremiah quietly before releasing his hand and looking away. ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m very tired. I think I’ll call it a night.’

Lex slipped out of the restaurant and swiftly made his way upstairs. He was rather tired and looking forward to his bed. But first he had some diamonds to pinch, and he was looking forward to that even more than he was looking forward to going to bed.

How you carried out a theft depended on where you were thieving from. The different locations all had their own set of advantages and disadvantages. Lex had never stolen anything from a hotel before. Most of the things he’d pinched had been from museums and the like. Museums were harder to get into but, once you had gained entrance, you were unlikely to be disturbed provided you didn’t trip off any alarm systems. Hotel rooms, on the other hand, would be easier to get into than a museum and wouldn’t have alarm systems, but the major problem was that you could never be entirely sure when someone was going to come back to their room. You therefore had to work under the constant threat of being suddenly interrupted at any moment. That meant one thing and one thing only: a damned good disguise.

Lex had picked his victim in the dining room downstairs. There had been a big fat woman sat at his table who insisted upon being called Margie and was wearing so much jewellery over her lacy white dress that she positively sparkled like a frosted vanilla cupcake. She had spent much of the evening talking loudly to anyone who would listen about Murray? her ‘dear departed ’usband.’ She was quite perfect because she was rich and she was lonely. Therefore, she was likely to spend a lot of time down in the bar that evening, chattering away. That should give Lex more time to sneak through her room. He had slipped the room key out of her bag whilst pretending to pick his napkin up from underneath the table.

But he certainly wasn’t going to rely on not being interrupted by her. That was something you learnt early on in this game: expect the worst and prepare for it. Assuming Lex were to get interrupted in her room, he would need a viable excuse. And that, naturally, meant dressing up as a member of staff. It wasn’t fool proof, of course, for the woman had spent the entire evening sitting across from Lex at the dinner table. But people who were that disgustingly rich didn’t usually see servants. Not really. And Lex would only need to mumble his reason for being in her room before making a speedy retreat. She would not see his face clearly during that time, especially if he was wearing a hat.

And, fortunately, the bellhops at the Majestic all wore hats.

Obtaining a uniform wasn’t too terribly difficult. Lex simply slipped out of the hotel and went round to the back. All hotels had back entrances for members of staff to come and go less obtrusively; somewhere the trash cans were kept and where the chefs could nip out for a quick smoke when it all got a bit too much for them in the kitchens. So Lex wandered around and found the place easily enough. From there it was a simple enough thing to wander unobtrusively through the kitchens. Lex had mastered the unobtrusive walk some time ago, now. It was very important to a fraud to be able to walk through a busy place without being noticed. And this was where he blessed his relative lack of height and his generally unimpressive stature. Jesse would find it much harder to walk unobtrusively because of his broad shoulders and height, whereas Lex could just slip right past everyone with barely more than a second glance spared his way. Now that it was a little later in the evening, one might expect the hubbub in the kitchen to have died down a bit. Not so at the Majestic. It appeared that, at this luxury hotel, breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner were not considered to be enough. There was a midnight buffet as well, the centrepiece of which was a magnificent hog roast. There was, therefore, much hustle and bustle going on. Lex slipped through it all easily, grabbing up a big pile of dirty discarded aprons as he went.

Once he was out of the kitchens he wandered around for a while in search of the laundry room. No one stopped him. After all, he was carrying dirty washing. In the end he stopped a waiter who was going past and said, ‘Er… can you tell me where the laundry is? I’m new.’

The waiter quickly gave him the directions before hurrying towards the kitchens. Once Lex got to the laundry he dumped the dirty aprons down and rooted around in the great mounds of clean clothing until he found a bright red jacket that was about his size. Yet another benefit of wearing all black was that it was adaptable: put on a red jacket with a bit of gold braid and he looked like he was wearing a uniform. He grabbed a matching hat and rammed it on his head before walking back to the kitchens. There he lingered just long enough to pick up an unattended plate of cakes? walking off with them with complete confidence as if he was absolutely supposed to take them.

Margie’s room was on the fifth floor, number 512. Lex walked into the elevator with his head held high in a posture of absolute confidence. The quickest way to draw attention to yourself was to look guilty. So he strutted into the elevator and calmly told the attendant that he was heading for the fifth floor. Unfortunately, it got a little bit hairy at that moment because, just as the doors were closing, a foot rammed into the gap to open them again and two people walked into the elevator. Lex knew, of course, that there were bound to be people milling about in the lobby, and possibly using the lifts, who had come from the dining room and had seen him there, or else had seen him play in the first round. But he also knew that most of those people would not really have seen him to the point of recognising him in a bellhop uniform. After all, there was no obvious reason why Lex Trent would be wandering about dressed up as a member of staff.

It was, therefore, most unfortunate that the two people who entered the lift now were Tess and Jeremiah East, probably the only two people (with the exception of Lorella and her sprite) who would recognise Lex in such a get-up. Instantly, he assumed a slouching attitude, hunching his shoulders and leaning against the elevator wall in a sulky sort of manner, his head bent at such an angle that they could not see his face.

Luckily, it was irrelevant, anyway, because Jeremiah and Tess paid him no attention whatsoever. Tess was too busy crying and Jeremiah was too busy trying to comfort her. At least she was doing it quietly? Lex couldn’t stand bawling kids. He would never even have realised Tess was upset if it hadn’t been for Jeremiah leaning down to her level, with his hands on her shoulders as he said, ‘People die in Games all the time, Tess. Jesse would have known that when he signed up for it. What happened wasn’t your fault.’

‘It… was,’ Tess replied, so quietly that Lex could hardly hear her. ‘I shouldn’t have picked up the octopus. But I didn’t want someone to stand on it…’ She trailed off with a whimper, but she was scowling through her tears, as if angry with Jeremiah or herself or perhaps both.

Lex rather liked her for that. And the fact that she was getting all wound up and upset about a man who wasn’t dead at all, almost? almost? made him feel bad. So, as the doors opened for the Easts on the third floor, Lex took a chance by picking up one of the pretty, frosted cupcakes on the plate he was carrying and thrusting it out to Tess. It was a risky thing to do. After all, she only had to look at his face and she would surely recognise him. And how the heck would he explain to Jeremiah what he was doing dressed up in a bellhop outfit? He could try making out that he’d cracked under the strain of Jesse’s death, but that really seemed to be stretching it just a bit too far and he was sure Jeremiah would be suspicious. But Lex liked risk. Sometimes he just couldn’t help himself. So he held the cupcake out to Tess, even though he knew it might get him caught.

She started shaking her head but Jeremiah said, ‘Take it, Tess; you barely touched your dinner.’

So she took the cake from Lex’s hand with a muttered word of thanks.

‘That’s very kind,’ Jeremiah said. ‘Thank you.’

Lex merely nodded? careful to keep his head lowered? faintly surprised that Jeremiah would even bother to thank a mere bellhop. He supposed it was because there was no one important around to witness it. In another moment, Jeremiah and Tess had stepped out and the elevator continued up to the fifth floor without them.

When Lex got to Room 512, he took out the key and let himself in. It was just a bedroom, and so not as nice as his own suite on the top floor, but still rather impressive, nonetheless. Lex walked in and left the door slightly ajar behind him. Margie probably wouldn’t notice her key was missing until she actually got to her room, and Lex didn’t really want her going down to reception and possibly returning with a manager to let her in, so he left the door slightly open. He would hear her approach in time to put down anything he shouldn’t have been touching and the plate of cakes he was carrying would constitute an effective excuse to explain his presence there.

As soon as he walked in, his eye fell on the large framed photo by the bed. He wandered over to it and saw that it was a picture of Margie with a thin little man wearing a monocle and a bemused sort of expression.

‘Dear departed Murray, I presume,’ Lex said.

Then he wandered away from the bed and towards the dressing table. There was a hairbrush there and several bottles of perfume. And there were several large brooches. They were all set with precious stones of various sorts and, taken together, would easily constitute Jesse’s fee. But it was all a bit easy and boring for Lex. So he wandered over to the wardrobe; if the room was anything like his, he knew the safe would be here.

Lex had some rudimentary experience with picking locks but, in actual fact, he had no need to try and do so this time. When he saw the keypad, the combination code jumped right out at him. There were letters and numbers on the pad so that guests could chose a numerical password or an actual word. Lex knew it couldn’t be anything other than ‘Murray’, even before he typed in the name and heard the click of the lock as it swung open.

He rolled his eyes. Wasn’t there anything that could challenge him anymore?

‘I’m too good at everything,’ Lex muttered irritably to himself as he rifled through the contents of the safe with one hand. ‘That’s my trouble. Too bloody good at everything.’

The safe was packed full of jewellery, most of which was extremely ostentatious, almost to the point of being gaudy. Keeping his ears strained for noise, Lex rummaged about until he finally found something he liked, for he sure as heck wasn’t stealing something ugly. But, finally, there it was at the bottom of the safe? a stunning string of grey pearls. They were extremely valuable and would easily cover Jesse’s fee and then some. Lex stuffed them into his pocket. Really, there was so much jewellery in there that the rich old biddy probably wouldn’t even notice that the pearls had gone. He took one of the little enchanted hats out of his pocket, anyway, and left it in the safe, for it wouldn’t do not to leave his calling card as the Wizard. He balanced the little hat on top of the remaining sparkly pile and then securely closed the lid of the safe with a snap.

He shut the wardrobe door and turned away just as Margie came bustling in. Finally: something to spice up the theft a bit.

‘Good evening, ma’am,’ Lex droned, lowering his voice and speaking in a sort of monotone. He held up the plate of cakes and said, ‘Compliments of Mr Lex Trent; he asked me to deliver these to your room as a gesture of his gratitude that you went to such trouble to look after him tonight.’

It had occurred to Lex at the last minute that it wouldn’t do simply to say that the kitchen had sent them up for no apparent reason. That would look far too suspicious, especially once the theft was discovered. But, this way, Lex himself could verify that he really had sent a bellhop up to her room with cupcakes, if Margie were to ask him about it later. He could be his own alibi, so to speak.

Of course, Margie instantly gushed all over the cakes and what a dear, dear boy that Lex Trent was. Lex left her to it. He’d intended to tell her that he’d found her room key on the floor outside the door but it didn’t even seem to occur to her that she hadn’t used it to get in. So he slipped it on to the coffee table as he walked out, strolling cheerfully away with the grey pearls in his pocket.