Walking the Labyrinth (21 page)

“Sure, that would be great,” she said. “I’d love to tour the Paramount.”

It was overcast and windy the next day, one of those days when it seemed that summer would never come. Peter looked up occult bookstores in the phone book and took the BART train to Oakland and Tangled Tales.

“I’m interested in the Order of the Labyrinth,” he said to the clerk, a pale-skinned man wearing a turban. “Do you have anything on them?”

“The Order of the Labyrinth,” the man said. “Everyone seems to want to know about them lately.”

“Everyone? Who else was asking about them?”

“I’m afraid I can’t exactly … What do you want to know about the Order?”

“Anything you can tell me. Who they were. What they did. I met a woman who’s related to them somehow.”

“Did you?” the clerk said softly. “Did you really? What’s her name?”

“Why don’t we trade information? You tell me what you know and I’ll tell you who she is.”

“The Order of the Labyrinth,” the clerk said. “Well, it was started sometime in the 1870s—”

“I know all that,” Peter said impatiently. “What I want to know is what happened to them.”

“Well, it’s difficult to say. Lord Sanderson disappeared in 1910. And a woman disappeared with him, someone named—”

“Emily Wethers. I know her great-great-granddaughter.”

“You’re joking,” the clerk said, amazed.

“No, I’m not.”

“Whatever happened to them? We’ve been searching for years …”

“Go on,” Peter said. “We’re trading information, remember?”

“Yes. Well.” The clerk made an effort to pull himself together. “Some of the members continued meeting after Sanderson and Emily left, but it wasn’t the same without them. They kept going for a long time, though, losing purpose, becoming involved in ridiculous fads. They still meet today—a few of them are even descendants of some of the original members.

“In 1953 a group of us in the United States split away from them. We thought they had lost sight of the Order’s original purpose, which was to be guided through the Labyrinth and finally obtain enlightenment. There were arguments, accusations, even a libel case brought to court.… Well, you don’t want to hear all of that. Suffice it to say that if you want information about the Order you’ve come to the right place. We are the true descendants of the founders, spiritually if not biologically.” The man hesitated. “We’re meeting next week. Would you like to come? I’m sure the group would be delighted to initiate you into the First Grade. And bring your friend, Emily’s relative—she’ll be very welcome too.”

“She wouldn’t be interested,” Peter said. “But I’d like to come. Where is it?”

The clerk wrote down a time and an address on the back of a bookmark. “Great,” Peter said. “I’ll be there.”

He left the store, went to the phone booth on the corner, and called the Paramount Theatre. Tours were given on alternate Saturdays, a helpful voice at the other end told him. The next one would be in ten days.

He thanked her and hung up. Wind blew down the street and he pulled his trench coat around him. Things were coming together, he thought. He felt excitement building within him, the way it always did when he was on the scent of something big. He called Molly and made a date for the tour.

They waited with a small group of people in the theater’s anteroom. The tour was late starting; people murmured to each other and two children ran in and out of the crowd playing tag. Finally an old white-haired man came through a door, still speaking to someone in the other room.

“This is the third tour Joe’s missed,” the man said. His name tag said
“J. Polanski”
“I don’t mind substituting for him, but you tell him I need more notice if he wants to go on vacation. It’s hard just getting out of bed these days.”

He greeted the group and led them into the lobby on thin, trembling legs. They stood a moment and gazed at the ceiling of metal spiderwebs and green light, the yellow fountain, the frieze of golden women along the walls, the lush jungle of the carpet.

“The ceiling here is seventy-five feet high,” J. Polanski said.

It was, Molly thought, like stepping into the jewel box of a rich and slightly vulgar woman, where diamonds and sapphires mixed with tin buttons and glass beads and mold-green pennies. The fountain of yellow light rising to the ceiling, the women dancing along the walls, the leaves and vines twined underfoot on the carpet—all of it was undoubtedly beautiful, but somehow everything seemed at odds with everything else. It overwhelmed the senses.

“Tacky,” Peter whispered.

She frowned. This was the theater of Callan’s diary, his favorite place in all the world. Here, in a way, was her inheritance. “I’d say exuberant,” she said. “Ornate.”

“The Paramount opened in 1931,” Polanski said. “It was in use almost continuously from the thirties to the seventies, as a theater, a movie house, a concert hall. In 1972 the great work of restoring it began.”

He led them under the black arch of the stairway to the theater itself. The huge auditorium was as Callan had described it: more friezes and grillwork on the walls and ceiling, gods and warriors and stars and waves. The amber light he had mentioned was here too, turning everything to a deep dull gold. Blue exit signs, like turquoise inlay, shone brightly in the near gloom.

They went from there to the maze of bare rooms and sloping hallways backstage. Polanski pointed out the laundry room, the wind machine that powered the organ. They ended in the room beneath the stage, what the guide called the trap room.

Andrew Dodd had said he had interviewed Fentrice and Callan and Thorne in the trap room. Suddenly Molly thought she could feel them all around her, the music, the confetti, the throng of costumed men and women.

The guide paused for questions. “Do you know anything about the Allalie Family?” she asked. “They played here in the thirties.”

Polanski looked at her sharply. “The—what was that name?”

“The Allalie Family. The magicians,” Molly said.

“Never heard of them,” Polanski said. “Though I suppose they could have been here—hundreds of acts came through back then.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I was an usher here in the thirties.”

The audience murmured in confusion, clearly wondering why he hadn’t mentioned that earlier. This was just the sort of thing they wanted to hear.

More hands were raised, more questions asked. Polanski took a few of them, then hurried the audience back to the lobby and outside. Books and postcards were on sale from a table in the entranceway, and several people clustered around looking at the souvenirs. More stood talking to Polanski, seemingly unwilling to let the enchantment of the tour end.

J. Polanski, Molly thought. It could be. She joined the group hovering around him. He turned away from her, pointing to a young girl who had asked a question. When he finished with his answer Molly raised her hand, but he continued to ignore her, nodding instead to an old man at the back of the crowd.

“What are you doing?” Peter asked, coming up next to her and whispering harshly. “He said he doesn’t know who they are.”

“I think he does,” Molly said.

“Oh, fine. So now you’re an investigative journalist.”

“Just wait a minute,” Molly said.

Peter frowned; she could tell he was displeased again. She turned away from him, and at that moment the guide met her eyes briefly. “Hey, Jake!” she said, as loudly as she could.

“Yes?” he said. Then he scowled, obviously angry with himself for giving so much away.

“I thought so,” Molly said. “Tell me about the Allalie Family.”

“You should know,” Jake said. “You look almost exactly like that damned woman. What was her name? Fentrice, that was it.”

“Fentrice is my great-aunt. What did they do to you that was so terrible?”

“They stole from me. Stole from me in the middle of the Depression. I nearly lost my job.”

The people buying souvenirs looked up at that, left the table, and began to cluster around him. Everyone fell silent, waiting for the story to continue.

“What did they steal?” Molly asked.

“The day’s take, that’s what. I was supposed to add it up, take the deposit to the bank. I opened the safe and it was gone. Nothing.”

“Well, but why do you think they stole it? Couldn’t it have been someone else?”

“Callan was there when I opened the safe, that’s why. Callan Allalie, your—what? Great-uncle?”

“My grandfather, actually.”

The crowd drew closer. This was better than the tour. “Your grandfather,” Jake said. “Did he teach you to lie, cheat, and steal too? He made some ridiculous suggestion, that we look backstage for the money, something like that. And then that damned tiger, Jewel—Well, never mind.”

“The tiger spoke to you.”

“How did you know that? I
thought
the tiger spoke to me, which is a completely different thing. I was overworked, under a lot of stress. I went home early that day, weeded the garden.”

Suddenly Molly knew the rest of the story. “And you found the money there, in your garden. The tiger told you to dig deep.”

“Did Callan tell you this story? Yeah, it was there. I pulled the bundle out and something tore—roots had already started to grow around it. I remember counting it—my hands were shaking so much I had to do it two or three times.”

“So Callan didn’t steal the money.”

“It was his idea of a practical joke. Throwing his voice so I thought the tiger was talking, stealing the money, and then burying it in my backyard—I ran back to the Paramount for the bankbook, made it to the bank with no time to spare. I don’t know why he did it, but I didn’t think it was very funny. You can tell your grandfather that for me.”

“He died a long time ago.”

“Well. I suppose I’m sorry. All right, I’m sorry. But the joke wasn’t very funny, all the same.”

“Maybe he wanted you to think about things. To wonder at how strange the world is. To dig deeper into yourself.”

Jake looked at Molly suspiciously. “Why on earth would he do that?” he asked.

The Paramount was near Molly’s last temp job, near the deli she had gone to with John. When the tour ended she led Peter to the deli and they ordered lunch. Peter looked different, more open somehow, and after a moment she realized why: she had rarely seen him in daylight. Even when she’d worked for him he had come by in the evening to collect the pages she had typed.

“This is great,” Molly said. “So the Allalies traveled the country, changing people’s lives. Showing them there was more to the world than what they knew. Performance art, almost.”

“I like the magic angle,” Peter said. “The older generation performing their tricks for the British aristocracy, the younger generation more democratic, traveling through American cities and towns … People would find them sympathetic, but there’s this almost sinister edge to them that’s fascinating in its own way.”

“Look at all the people they met. Andrew Dodd, Jake Polanski, some of the people who volunteered from the audience …”

“And then there’s Thorne’s disappearance. The mystery angle.”

Molly became aware that they weren’t talking to each other but at each other, each pursuing a completely different subject. “Peter,” she said.

He said nothing for a while, lost in thought. Then it seemed to Molly that he ran the conversation through his mind, realized that she had spoken his name. “Yes?” he said.

“You’re not going to write a book about them, are you?”

“Why not? It’s a great story.”

“Because it’s my family, that’s why not. Think of what it would do to Fentrice—she’s too old for this kind of publicity. And what about Samuel Allalie, for that matter? He trusted me with Callan’s journal when he barely knew me—I can’t repay him this way.”

“You can’t think about those things when you’re doing a book. The truth is always going to hurt someone.”

“Sure, when you’re doing an exposé or something. When someone’s lying, and the public good is served by the truth coming out. But no one’s been harmed by my family—they’re just a bunch of performers, for God’s sake.”

“How do you know that? Didn’t you say they blackmailed Lady Dorothy? Hey—there’s another angle, the money angle.”

“Oh, please. She helped them out a few times, gave them some of her fortune. That’s a far cry from blackmail.”

“Well, you’d have to research it, of course—”

“Peter. Don’t do this.” She took a breath, summoning all her courage for what she was about to say. “I’ll have to stop seeing you if you’re going to write a book about my family.”

Peter held up his hand. “Hey. I was just thinking out loud, that’s all. This is my job—you can’t blame me for trying.”

“Okay,” Molly said. She smiled at him. “Great. Thanks.”

“Sure,” Peter said. He took a bite of his sandwich, chewed it thoughtfully. They said very little for the remainder of the meal.

She woke in the middle of the night with the strong feeling that she was close to an answer. What was it, the answer she had found? She lay still, reaching out for it.

Callan had said that the family had bought property in California, that his mother Edwina stayed there with the children too young to tour. He’d mentioned a family reunion when they’d got to Oakland. And Samuel, Callan’s son, probably lived in California; it had been easy enough for him to meet with her the day after she’d requested it. Lived in Oakland, maybe, or nearby. Was he still on the old family property? And did others in the family, Lanty’s children and her children’s children, live there too?

In the morning she dialed John’s number. The line was busy.
Gwen’s taken it off the hook again,
she thought impatiently. She dressed and drove to John’s apartment.

John answered the bell when she rang. “What is it?” he asked suspiciously.

“I’ve got a question for you,” she said. “Where does Samuel Allalie live?”

“You know I can’t give you that information.”

Molly sighed. She told him about the conclusion she had come to the night before. “When Samuel gave me Callan’s diary you said that now we all know each other’s secrets,” she said. “I know yours, and you know mine, but maybe we don’t know everything about Samuel. He could be holding out on you.”