The Last Illusion (20 page)

“I’m only helping out because Bess Houdini isn’t well enough to go on,” I said. “Let’s just say I was in the right place at the right time.”

“If that’s what you say,” he said, clearly not quite believing me.

The stagehands had reacted with astonishment and amusement when they saw me rehearsing. And after they had gotten over their surprise at seeing an intruder turned into part of the show, I provided good entertainment for them as I stumbled my way through learning the physical positioning of the act. And Mr. Irving, the theater manager, had come stomping onto the stage as we were in midrehearsal.

“What’s this I hear about some new girl?” he demanded. “What is this?”

He frowned as he stared at me. “You’ve been hanging around for a few days.”

“That’s because I’m Bess Houdini’s friend,” I said. “She invited me to
the show, and then she begged me to take her place when she wasn’t well enough to go on and she knew that Houdini needed an assistant.”

“So you’ve done this before?” Mr. Irving snapped. “I run a top-class house here. I’ve no time for amateurs.”

“Do you think I’d permit an amateur to work with me?” Houdini stepped between us with the kind of flourish only he could produce. “If she hadn’t been up to par, there is no way I would have considered having her onstage with me. You’ll see. She’ll be all right on the night.”

“She better be,” Irving muttered, “or you might find that you’ve just broken the terms of your contract.”

So now I had the added worry of not disgracing Houdini so that he actually got paid for the performance. I didn’t have a chance to see the other performers before I went onstage as I was up in the dressing room, thinking that I was about to be sick. Why did I put myself through these things? Then I remembered that I had promised Daniel this would be my last case. At that particular moment I thought this was the best idea in the world.

We made our way downstairs to the backstage area. A thought struck me.

“Where is the key to the trunk?”

“In my jacket pocket,” he said.

“A lot of good it will be in there, if you’re trapped inside,” I said.

“In case you haven’t been watching properly, I hang up my jacket before they truss me up and put me in the bag,” he said. “So the key will be hanging from the coatrack. But it won’t be necessary. I have yet to find anything that can hold me.”

At that moment I heard the announcer’s voice, booming out in dramatic tones, “And let’s put our hands together in a rousing welcome for the lovely Molly, who has graciously agreed to take the place of Bess Houdini until she is well again.”

“You’re on.” Houdini gave me a shove. And I stepped out onstage, my heart racing and my eyes blinking in the strong lights. I hadn’t realized how bright they would be. Out in the darkened auditorium I could just make out that sea of faces watching me and tried to make my body
act like a glamorous magician’s assistant as the announcer whipped up the crowd into a frenzy for the appearance of Houdini.

I was vaguely aware of Houdini speaking to the audience, saying that the Irish were noted for their second sight, and how he was lucky enough to have stumbled across a true Irish medium with remarkable powers of mind reading. I managed to walk across the stage and to sit in the chair that had been placed in the center. With that he made his way down into the audience and asked someone to pick a card, study it, and then place it in a box.

“All right, Molly,” he said. “You are going to tell this nice lady what card she has put into this little black box.”

Oh, Holy Mother. Did I really see him wiggle his eyebrows up and down? And he touched the woman’s right shoulder, didn’t he?

“Molly?” he repeated. “What card comes to your mind?”

I opened my mouth but no sound would come out. “The five of hearts?” It was scarcely bigger than a whisper.

“Louder!” he boomed. “Let those in the back row of the balcony hear it too.”

“The five of hearts!” I exclaimed.

He handed the box to another audience member. “Would you see what card is in this box?” he asked.

“The box is empty,” the man replied.

“That’s strange,” Houdini said. “Where can the card have gone?”

He ran back onstage and made me stand up. I was sitting on the five of hearts. Vaguely I was aware of the applause.

Then we went into the part with the hood over my head. He made it easy for me, with the most obvious of clues that we had practiced. I guessed successfully a fan and a pocket watch. The rest of the act went without a hitch, although I’m sure I didn’t move across the stage with the glamorous grace of Lily. But Houdini successfully escaped from the handcuffs and from the trunk and there I was, standing in front of the curtains, taking a bow.

“Well done,” Houdini said, putting his hand around my waist as we came offstage. Such a gesture would have resulted in a slapped face in
the outside world, but this was the theater, after all. But I did recall Bess’s jealous outburst and moved aside with agility.

“We got through it, didn’t we?” I agreed.

“In one piece,” he added. He was half joking but I moved closer to him again.

“Tell me, Harry, do you really suspect that someone is trying to kill you, as Bess thinks?”

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Until yesterday I would have said no. Bess does tend to—well, you’ve seen what she can be like. But I’d like to know what happened to the key to that trunk. The key was in the inside pocket to my coat. Who would have known about that?”

“Bess said that strange men have been coming to your house,” I ventured, taking this further. “Making what sounded like threats. And at the theater one night I overheard you talking to a young man—well dressed, light hair. Clearly didn’t belong in the theater and the doorman had no idea how he got in.”

“Oh, that.” He stopped abruptly, then he shook his head. “That was something quite different altogether.”

I decided to take the risk. “It sounded to me as if he might have been delivering a threat from his boss.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “I want to meet with his boss. I had hoped to do so by now but there has been no time. I can’t think why—” Then he gave me an exaggerated smile, took my hand, and patted it.

“So let’s assume that all will be well. Only one more night here, then new theater, new show, new people.”

Seventeen

I
woke on Sunday to a lovely morning—not too hot, blue sky, exactly the right sort of day to spend in the country or on the seashore. That thought prompted another one. Coney Island. As a detective, did it behoove me to take a trip to Coney Island and ask questions about the infamous Risey and his threat to get even with Houdini? Much as I hated to go back to that place because it was connected with such horrific memories, I decided that today would be the day to do this. It would be crowded with city workers escaping from the heat and toil of the city. So I put on an inconspicuous shirtwaist such as a factory worker would wear and off I went to catch the trolley across the Brooklyn Bridge.

The trolley and then the train to Coney Island were packed and I regretted that I had ever had such a foolish idea. Memories came back to me of the time I’d had to find a killer lurking in the funfair and had had a nightmare experience in a freak show. I found that I was sweating and not just from the heat. Did I really want to go through with this? However, when we descended at the terminus the crowd streamed toward the amusement parks and the beach and I felt my spirits lifting a
little. The sea was sparkling, everyone was having a good time, and what’s more, a new amusement park had sprung up since I was there last. I could hear screams and laughter as fairgoers were swung around on the new rides.

I tried to remember where the Cairo Pavilion had been, then did remember—along a street called the Bowery, after the well-known thoroughfare in the city. It was a shady kind of place with legitimate amusements side by side with girlie shows, bars, and dance halls. I was propelled along with the crowd, my hand firmly on my purse because the place was notorious for pickpockets, and came to the Arabian arch that led to the Cairo Pavilion. I recalled that the fire-eater had stood outside it, luring in the crowds, and to my surprise, there he was.

“Step right up, ladies and gentlemen!” a voice was shouting through a bull horn. “All the wonders of the mystic East—ride a real camel, take a forbidden peek inside a harem . . .”

The man who had been introduced in the theater as Abdullah ran a firebrand along his bare arm, making a passing girl scream and grab on to the young man she was with. The fire-eater glanced in her direction, then he spotted me and his dark eyes flashed recognition.

“Hello,” he said. “Didn’t expect to find you here. You with somebody?”

I was surprised to find he spoke with a New York accent. I didn’t like to admit that I was there alone. “I’m supposed to be meeting some friends,” I said, “but I don’t know how I’m going to find them in this crowd.”

“I get a break in a few minutes,” he said. “Stay around and I’ll buy you a soda.”

“All right.”

This was working wonderfully—maybe too well to be true. Daniel had told me over and over that a good detective never goes anywhere alone and never without telling someone where he is going. I, with a detective agency of one, had to work alone all the time and consequently had gotten myself into too many difficult situations—including one in this very place. But I couldn’t pass up a chance to interview someone who had appeared on the scene right before Houdini’s act
went wrong, and a soda fountain, in the middle of a crowd could hardly be classed as dangerous, could it?

I waited out of the sun beside a shooting gallery, watching young men trying their hardest to impress their lady friends by shooting down a row of ducks. The crowd surged past me—working girls from the factories, courting couples, families with excited children—all making the most of a day out of the heat and oppression of the city. But the waiting also gave me time to think. My own memories of this place were so tinged with horror and regret that I began to wish I had never come here. In fact I was just deciding that I was acting stupidly and should go home when Abdullah appeared from the Cairo Pavilion and came to join me.

“So your name is Molly, is it?” he said as we walked down the Bowery together. “I heard the announcer say it.”

“That’s right. And is yours really Abdullah?”

He laughed. “That’s just for this act. It’s really Mike. I’m Irish like you. My parents came over in the great famine.”

“Irish?” I looked at his bronzed torso, then I noticed that his eyes were that alarming blue of the so-called Black Irish, just like Daniel’s, in fact.

He laughed again. “You’d be surprised what a little walnut juice will do and I usually spend my spare time sunning myself on the beach, to keep up appearances.”

“So what are you doing still working here?” I asked. “I thought you’d have left this place when you were hired by a real vaudeville house. Surely that was a lucky break for you, wasn’t it?”

“I’m not stupid enough to give up my job here, especially Saturdays and Sundays when we get the crowds. I do quite well for myself. I’m not just paid to perform, you know. I’m also supposed to keep an eye out for the wrong types. The boss don’t want no one who might cause trouble, you understand. And sometimes I’m needed as a bodyguard.”

“A bodyguard for whom?”

“Ah, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?” He grinned and gave me a wink. “Let’s just say that not all the things that go on around here are as wholesome as watching a belly dancer or petting a camel.”

“Criminal activities, you mean?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” he said with exaggerated innocence. “All the bosses around here are as pure as the driven snow.” Then he laughed again. “So tell me about yourself. How long have you been in the business?”

“Not long,” I said. “In fact I’m not really a performer at all. I’m a friend of Bess Houdini. She asked me to take her place until she’s well enough to come back.”

“So what do you do the rest of the time, when you’re not performing?”

“Whatever I can get,” I said. “It’s not that easy for someone arriving from Ireland, as you know yourself. I was a chorus girl a few months ago. I worked in a sweatshop once.”