The Last Illusion (37 page)

The act began. First the usual sort of magic tricks to warm up the audience. Summer took off his top hat and poured a pitcher of water into it. Then he replaced it on his head. Collective gasp from the audience, then applause. I suppose a week or so ago I would have gasped, but I had become used to magic tricks. After a few such stunts the exotic Kitty wheeled an upright cabinet onto the stage. Summer extended his hand to her and she stepped into it from behind. Her face could be seen through a hole in the top section, her hand waved through the middle, and her foot protruded from a hole at the bottom.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Summer announced in his deep, booming voice, “we shall see whether the lovely Kitty enjoys being divided into three pieces.” He started to push the middle section of the
cabinet to his left until it was barely in contact with the top and bottom sections. I knew a little about illusions now, but I couldn’t even begin to imagine how this was done. The hand still waved from that middle section, the head and foot still appeared at the top and bottom.

I found I was holding my breath, waiting for something to go wrong. But Summer reassembled her to great applause and she stepped unharmed from the cabinet. I suppose that has to be the deception cabinet I saw advertised in the magazine, I thought. Suitable for the most dangerous stunts?

The cabinet was whisked away by a stagehand and in its place a glass table was carried out. Summer then invited Kitty to lie on the table. He announced that he would put her into a trance and then float her across the stage. As she lay on the table he bent over her. “Look into my eyes,” he commanded. “You are getting sleepy. Your limbs are becoming heavier and heavier. When I snap my fingers you will awake and be completely in my power.”

I was staring at the stage, hypnotized almost as completely as Kitty. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, because I had witnessed this same scene before, on this very stage. Only one of the players had then been an aged doctor and one a dying girl. You can disguise your face with false hair and makeup, but you can never completely disguise your voice or your manner of movement. This man had been the doctor who appeared from the audience to whisk Lily away to a hospital, and—I blinked a couple of times, wondering if my eyes were deceiving me—the brown-skinned beauty who lay on the glass table was in shape and movement exactly like Lily. The hand that draped languidly from the side of the table resembled that long white hand I had held as I put my wrap over her. I almost laughed out loud. The whole thing had been an incredible illusion.

Thirty-one

I
couldn’t wait to get out of there and pass along this astounding information to Daniel. He’d be amazed that what we had witnessed was not a crime at all but a brilliantly executed illusion. The question, however, was why? Why make it seem that someone had been killed onstage—unless it was to get rid of Scarpelli, to make him flee from New York. What did they want to do—take over his successful forgery business? I shouldn’t forget that Sommer was possibly German and had been with Houdini in Germany, so Mr. Wilkie might well be interested in hearing about him, although how this tied in with the disappearance of Houdini, I couldn’t fathom.

I shifted uneasily in my seat, longing to make my escape. However I thought it wise not to move while they were still performing, in case they noticed me. In fact I leaned back from the front of the box so that my face was in shadow. I sat perfectly still while Summer apparently hypnotized Kitty/Lily and then removed the table that supported her so that she lay unmoving in midair. It was a wonderfully convincing illusion but I didn’t really appreciate it because my head was trying to make sense of what I had deduced.

If the “accident” during the sawing-the-lady-in-half trick was an illusion, what had they hoped to accomplish with it? What if Scarpelli was in on it? Maybe the forged money was all part of the same plot. Maybe all three were German agents. But he had seemed so genuinely upset and stunned by what had happened. He was a performer after all, so perhaps he was simply a good actor.

So what had the accident achieved? Well, to begin with it had taken Lily out of the picture so she could no longer be a suspect in any subsequent crime. But if she was supposedly dead, she couldn’t have risked coming back to the theater to kidnap Houdini. She would surely have been spotted by one of the stagehands—

As the word “stagehands” went through my mind I leaned forward again, digesting what I had just seen. The man who whisked away the cabinet and brought out the table was one of the stagehands called Ernest. And now I remembered that he was the one who helped me bring out the trunk and who placed it for me on the stage, exactly over the trapdoor, as it turned out. So Ernest was in on the plot too. He was the one who had gone for the ambulance to whisk Lily away. All beautifully orchestrated to fool us.

A stirring round of applause announced the end of the act onstage. They came forward to take a bow and I ducked down, just in case they looked in my direction. The moment the curtains closed I slipped from my seat, down the side corridor, and out of the theater. It is always a shock to come out of a theater and find it is broad daylight outside, but it’s also a shock to emerge to find the weather completely changed. Whereas I had entered the theater to sultry, merciless sunlight, I came out to find heavy clouds had gathered overhead and odd breezes swirled to herald the arrival of a thunderstorm. I glanced nervously at the heavens. I hadn’t brought a brolly with me and quickened my pace toward the closest El station.

Now all I had to do was make my way back to Harlem and wait for Mr. Wilkie to come to me. But as I threaded my way through the busy crowd on the Bowery I realized that I was about to expound a preposterous theory and wondered if he’d believe me. What proof did I have, apart from a strong hunch? Surely many magicians’ assistants were willowy
with long elegant fingers and I couldn’t really see her face because of the mask that covered her eyes.

Then suddenly I changed direction and darted across the street between a trolley car and a delivery cart. I did have proof. At my house, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, was a bloody cloth I had retrieved from the rubbish bin at the theater. I made up my mind to go home and to take the cloth to Daniel. He would probably be angry with me but I couldn’t afford to waste another minute before having that cloth tested. If it revealed that the substance wasn’t human blood at all but some kind of theatrical paint, then they’d take me seriously.

Patchin Place seemed so delightfully normal and safe as I left the bustle of Jefferson Market and made my way over the cobbles. Flowers were blooming in window boxes. A window was open and someone was playing the violin. How I longed to shut myself in my own house and stay there, not be involved any longer in this dangerous business, but I couldn’t back out now. And in truth I was feeling rather pleased with myself at my great discovery that had eluded everyone else. A triumph for Molly Murphy, I said to myself in the way that Houdini had penned similar sayings under his newspaper clippings. I took the cloth from the drawer in the scullery where I had kept it. It looked remarkably unappealing and extremely like blood, not paint. It smelled like old blood too, I thought, and I wondered if I had made a terrible blunder after all. But I was determined to go through with it. I put the tissue parcel into my bag and off I went again.

I was just locking my front door behind me when I heard my name being called and saw Gus was waving from the bedroom window.

“Molly, you will never guess—I’ve just sold a painting,” she said excitedly. “To one of the members of our suffragists’ group. Isn’t it thrilling? I’m a true professional artist at last. Sid is arranging for me to have a show in the fall so I’m painting up a storm. Come and see my latest effort—I think it’s my best work yet.”

“Gus, I’d love to but I have to go to police headquarters this minute,” I said, “and a man is arriving by train from Washington to see me.”

“Mercy me,” she said. “Well, I won’t keep you then.” She sounded disappointed and I felt terrible. They had been such good friends to
me and she was so anxious to show me her painting. But she and Sid would never understand that life for me was not all play, that when you work for a living and run your own business, you can’t take a break anytime you feel like it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll come and see it tomorrow, I promise. And if Daniel shows up, please tell him to meet me at police headquarters right away. It’s very urgent.”

“All right.” She nodded, then called after me. “Molly, take care, won’t you? Don’t do anything reckless.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I called back as I turned the corner.

Given the importance of the situation, I hailed a cab and we were soon clattering toward Mulberry Street.

“I’m here to see Captain Sullivan,” I said. “Is he in his office?”

“He is, miss, but—” the young constable at the desk said, as I pushed past him. “You can’t go up there!” he shouted after me as I started up the stairs. I didn’t slow down and got surprised looks from a couple of detectives as I pushed past them down the hallway to Daniel’s office. Through the frosted glass front wall I could see that he had someone with him, but even that didn’t deter me. I knocked and burst straight in. Daniel’s surprised face, plus that of Detective MacAffrey, stared up at me.

Both men rose to their feet.

“Molly, what on earth is the meaning of this?” Daniel asked. “I’m in the middle of an important meeting. Didn’t they tell you downstairs that I wasn’t to be disturbed?”

“I’ll only take a minute of your time,” I said, “but I have something I want you to do for me right away.” I looked from one face to the other. “It’s extremely important or I’d never have barged in on you this way.”

“I’m sorry about this, MacAffrey,” Daniel said.

The other man gave him an understanding smile that said that women were an infernal nuisance but had to be humored occasionally. “I’ll come back in a few minutes,” he said, and tactfully stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

“Molly, this is inexcusable,” Daniel said. “You simply can’t burst in on me like this. You’ll make me the laughingstock of the police force.”

“Daniel, before you go on anymore, just shut up and listen to me,” I said. He was so surprised that he opened his mouth, then closed it again.

I rummaged in my bag and brought out the tissue-wrapped parcel. “I take it you never did locate Lily’s body?”

“Lily?”

“The illusionist’s assistant who was supposedly killed last week.”

“Supposedly? You mean you think she recovered from that wound?”

“I mean that the wound was an illusion, that I’ve seen her, alive and well, in the theater this afternoon.”

“That’s—preposterous. Are you sure?”

“Not one hundred percent sure,” I said, “but I have proof here.” I put the parcel in his hands.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a blood-soaked cloth that I took from the rubbish bin at the theater after Lily was killed,” I said.

He opened the parcel gingerly, staring in disbelief at what lay in his hands.

“What the devil possessed you to take it in the first place?”

“I thought it might be useful as evidence later,” I said. “And as it turns out, I was right.”

“What exactly do you want me to do with it?” he asked.

“I want it tested to see if it really is human blood or just another theatrical illusion. If it’s not Lily’s blood then I know that I’m right and she didn’t really get hurt.”

“But why would anyone pull off such a gruesome stunt?” he said in a more normal voice now.

“I’m not quite sure yet, but it has something to do with the body in the trunk and the disappearance of Houdini,” I said.

“Molly!” He wagged a finger at me. “Are you still pursuing this when I made it very clear that you were to have no part in a criminal case?”

“I’m still employed by Houdini’s family,” I said cautiously. “They want him found and I’m trying to find him.” I felt bad as I said it, but then I reasoned that I wasn’t lying to my future husband. I was just leaving
out the whole truth about Mr. Wilkie. “You can’t stop me from doing that,” I added to make myself feel better.