by Alex Bell
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.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE WISHING DRAGONS OF DESARETH
Lex walked back into his own room to find Jesse cuffed to the bed, right where he had left him. He was gratified to see that the cowboy looked extremely uncomfortable and that he had twisted round on his side in an effort to rest his arm.
‘Well, it’s about time,’ Jesse said. ‘My arm feels like it’s gonna drop right off—’ He stopped mid-sentence, stared at Lex and said, ‘What the heck are you wearing?’
‘It’s called a disguise,’ Lex replied with exaggerated patience. Then he pulled the string of pearls out of his pocket and held it up to the light. ‘I got you these. They’re more than sufficient to cover the sum we agreed. If you try and get so much as one more piece of m-gold out of me then I’ll knock fifty off.’
‘Let me see them,’ Jesse said.
Lex walked closer to the bed and held the pearls out. Jesse took them with his free hand and examined them closely for a minute. Finally, he nodded, looked up at Lex and said, ‘These will do just fine. As long as Lady Luck keeps a hold of ’em for the duration of the Game.’
‘I’m disappointed that you don’t trust me,’ Lex said, holding his hand out for the stolen pearls. ‘But some people are just born that way, I suppose. It’s quite sad, really.’
‘Tragic,’ Jesse replied, replacing the pearls reluctantly in Lex’s outstretched hand. ‘Now let me outta these cuffs. My arm hurts like hell.’
‘I have to find the key first,’ Lex said. ‘Oh dear, I hope I haven’t lost it.’
‘You have, you little brat, and you’ll be sorry.’
‘Sorry is a word I only barely understand the meaning of,’ Lex replied, before turning on his heel and leaving, very much enjoying the fact that he was annoying the hell out of the cowboy. After an evening spent having to be so polite and likable, it was a welcome relief to finally be as obnoxious as he liked.
Of course, Lex knew exactly where the key to the handcuffs was. But he took his time finding it, anyway, because Lex Trent never did anything just because someone else wanted him to. There had to be something in it for him first.
‘Here we are,’ he said cheerfully when he walked back into Jesse’s room with the key. ‘False alarm. It wasn’t lost, after all.’
‘Ain’t that lucky for both of us,’ Jesse replied.
‘I hope you’re not going to sulk about this,’ Lex replied, throwing over the key. ‘My last companion sulked most of the way through the Game and it got quite tedious towards the end.’
‘Well, now, I guess I can’t really blame you for not trusting me,’ Jesse said as he unlocked the cuffs and freed his hand. He made to reach out for the glass of whisky at the side of his bed but it seemed that his arm was so numb that he clumsily knocked it to the floor instead. He scowled, looked up at Lex and said, ‘But if you ever handcuff me to somethin’ again, you little pipsqueak, I won’t take it half so amiably.’
Lex couldn’t help it. He grinned from ear to ear. A challenge! This was just exactly what he wanted.
‘I’ll get you another glass,’ he said, before turning back into the living room.
Lex ordered breakfast to his room the next morning. It was a bit awkward for, of course, he was supposed to be off his food and yet here he was ordering enough bacon and eggs to feed two people. But they had to eat. If anyone asked, he would simply say that the Goddess of Luck was joining him for meals. The Gods didn’t need to eat but they enjoyed doing so on occasion. And when they ate, they really ate, not having to worry about calories as mortal people did. If Lex put it about that the Goddess of Luck was spending a lot of time in the suite with him − trying to console him after Jesse’s death, or something − then no one would think twice about the fact that so much food was going up there.
Aside from the welcome dinner that first night, there were no other organised events the players would be expected to attend. This suited Lex as it would give him more time to focus on his lessons with Jesse. Lady Luck appeared in the bedroom shortly after they’d finished their breakfast and Lex quickly explained to her the new arrangement he had come to with the cowboy. Then he produced the pearls from his pocket and held them out to her.
‘So if you wouldn’t mind holding on to them until we’ve finished the Game − I know it’s a tiresome business but apparently Jesse doesn’t trust me to pay him when all this is over.’
‘Very sensible,’ the Goddess said to the cowboy. ‘Lex can’t be trusted at all, you know. He even betrayed me once. He wouldn’t think twice before stabbing you in the back.’
‘Oh, I wish you would stop bringing that up,’ Lex said. ‘I didn’t actually betray you, I just almost did. There’s a difference!’
The point was negligible and Lex had no interest in discussing it any further so he changed the subject and said, ‘If we win both the other rounds and come first in the Game, then he gets half of those pearls. If he teaches me well enough that I can pass as a cowboy at Dry Gulch, then he’ll get the other half. If he doesn’t play his part, then he gets nothing. Understand?’
‘Yes, dear,’ the Goddes
s replied.
She left them shortly after that and Lex and Jesse set about resuming their training. Jesse insisted that learning to drink strong black coffee was next on the list. Rather than ringing down for it, Lex decided to walk downstairs himself. It would give him the chance to show his face, and asking for strong black coffee to take back with him would contribute nicely to the impression he was trying to create of someone so stricken with grief that he was neither eating nor sleeping. It was a winning situation all round, for it would cause Lorella to underestimate him in the next round, it would cause public feeling to warm towards him even further and − best of all − it would half cripple Jeremiah with guilt, and serve him right, the arrogant git.
After dressing all in black and fixing the pained, strained expression back on his face, Lex went down to the lobby. He was pleased, on arriving there, to observe that there was a bit of a disturbance going on. People were flapping about and looking upset and asking questions in very loud voices. And the police were there. Lex tapped on the shoulder of an expensively-dressed man standing nearby and said, ‘Excuse me, but do you know what all the commotion is about?’
