Real Magic (25 page)

"I can't explain that now."

"You know you sound like a lunatic."

Bile crept up Duncan's throat. "You don't believe me," he said, gazing out the window to hide his despair.

"I didn't say that. I'm just trying to grasp it all. There's been a lot of strange things told about Verido and the Door of Vanishing. I've even read that some people thought the Door held real magic. So, what you're saying isn't so insane."

"Then you believe me?"

Lucy shrugged. "I think that we've got to find the Door. Real magic or not, it's certainly got a lot of power associated with it."

"That's the reason Nelson Walter wants to find it. He knows it's real, too. And in the hands of a man like him, it could be disastrous."

"Nelson Walter? Is that who you've been worked up about?"

"He'll hurt anyone in his way. We've got to be careful."

Pulling into Gettysburg Gas and Repairs, Lucy said, "I don't know what to think of this." She parked the car and looked straight at Duncan, waiting until he met her eyes. "I guess I figured your big secret was going to be some crime you committed in the past or that you were married or something like that."

"I wish it was that simple."

While a station attendant came out and filled the car with gas, Lucy said, "My problem is that I've fallen in love with you. So, either I've fallen for an insane man or I've fallen into a mess of trouble that doesn't make much sense. But it doesn't really matter because that's the way love is."

"What are you saying?" Duncan asked because, though he thought he knew, he had to hear her directly.

"We're going to find the Door, and if it's real or not, we'll handle whatever happens. I'm by your side on all of this. I love you. That's what I'm saying."

Duncan leaned over and kissed her.

A knock on the car window interrupted them. With an embarrassed grin, Lucy rolled down the window to pay the attendant. "Excuse me, sir," she said, "maybe you can help us?"

"Sure, ma'am. What you need?"

"We're trying to find Claude Wilkinson. He once ran a —"

"Wilkinson's Wonders. Oh, yeah, anybody growing up around here knows about Claude. I haven't gone and seen his show since I was a kid. Don't think it's still running, to tell the truth. But he's got his little showroom place for anybody willing to go out that way."

Lucy flashed her cutest smile. "Terrific, because that's us. We're willing."

The attendant put his elbow on the door and gave out the directions to a small house on the edge of the other side of town. As they pulled back onto the road, Lucy glanced over at Duncan. "See? We're in this together."

Duncan watched Gettysburg pass before him without taking much in. Instead, his mind retread the same territory — what an incredible woman Lucy was and how lucky he was that she hadn't left him by the side of the road like a gibbering idiot.

When they reached the opposite end of town, they found the Wilkinson house without trouble. It would have been hard to miss considering the wide, colorful sign post in the front yard reading
The Wilkinson's Wonders Show.
Behind the sign stood an old brick two-story house with a brick porch that had to have been built before the Civil War. Wilkinson had kept it in good condition — the painted trim looked new, the windows were spotless, and even the gravel drive lacked a single weed.

Before they reached the porch, the screen door opened. Wilkinson came out with an enthusiasm to match his untamed, curly white hair. He had a slight hunch and walked with a cane but, for a man who appeared to be in his seventies, he acted spry and sounded fully alive.

"Welcome, welcome. Come inside and see the secrets behind the magic," he said, the old barker in him sneaking through his delivery.

"Hi. My name is Lucy and this is Duncan. We wanted to ask you —"

"About magic, no doubt. Nobody comes to see an old man like me about anything else. Come, come. I'll show you everything there is."

"How much is a ticket?" Duncan asked.

Wilkinson waved him off. "No, no. I don't charge. I've made my money off this stuff long ago. This is for the discerning magician and the novice enthusiast. This is a way to give back to the world of magic that served me so well. So come on in and see. I promise you won't be disappointed."

While they had important, pressing matters to deal with, a spark of curiosity struck Duncan. No matter that his history with magic had been one of card cheating, his original love came from Pappy and that was for the wondrous, astounding events magicians could create on stage. Craning his neck to peek beyond the door, Duncan licked his lips and walked inside.

The visible rooms in the house were chock full of old magic props — many were even old by 1934 standards. A small table with a blue felt cloth held numerous decks of cards — marked cards, Svengali decks, and other types of gaff decks. There were stacks of old issues of
The Sphinx: An Independent Magazine For Magicians.
Duncan could have spent hours on those magazines alone.

On another table, Duncan found letters and notes written by Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser, one of the great innovators of card magic. The Hofzinser pass, the slip force, the pinky count were but a few of the numerous sleights Hofzinser either created or perfected. And right there on the table, Duncan saw crinkled, brittle papers written in Hungarian with drawings that clearly demonstrated Hofziner's classic routine called "Think and Forget." The spectator would choose two cards, focus on one and forget about the other, and the magician would locate the focused card, then magically transform it into the forgotten card. Such a wonderful trick, and it lay before Duncan in its creator's handwriting.

"Look here," Wilkinson said, pulling Duncan and Lucy into what was once a dining room in the house. "This is a marvel."

To one side, Duncan saw a straightjacket with a signed photo of Houdini next to it. As he stepped towards it, Wilkinson said, "Not that. I want you to look here."

Duncan turned around.

"Holy shit." The words escaped his lips as he laid eyes on one the great illusions of the past, Robert Houdin's Marvelous Orange Tree. Houdin was a French magician considered to be the father of modern magic. The Tree was one of his most beautiful and elegant creations.

On a special side table, Houdin would have an egg, a lemon, and an orange. He would pick out a lady from the audience and borrow her handkerchief. He rolled the handkerchief smaller and smaller, telling the audience that he was placing it inside the egg. Once the handkerchief had disappeared, he picked up the egg, and of course, the audience expected him to crack it open, revealing the lady's handkerchief. Instead, he made the egg disappear into the lemon and then the lemon into the orange.

Up to this point, the trick was rather a simple matter of skillful sleight of hand. But then the incredible happened. An assistant rolled out a lovely pot holding a small orange tree. It was, in fact, a mechanical marvel of the 19th-century. Once wound up, the tree "blossomed" flowers and then sprouted oranges. Houdin would plucked the oranges, cut them open, and hand them out, proving they were real oranges. He continued until only one which was not real remained at the very top. The orange split into four sections and something white and fluffy could be seen. Then two mechanical butterflies rose from behind the tree to grab and spread open the lady's handkerchief.

Houdin died in 1871 making the tree that Wilkinson displayed an antique in its own right. "Does it work?" Duncan asked.

Wilkinson's mouth broke into a rotten-tooth smile that still managed to be endearing. "It most certainly does. Would you like to see it?"

"I'm sorry," Lucy said, "but we actually came here for some information."

Duncan could feel the little boy face he wore as he said, "This won't take long, and it's really amazing. This machine is nearly a hundred years old and it's a remarkable —"

"Okay. Run the machine. It'll go quicker that way."

Giddy, Duncan nodded to Wilkinson who turned the crank in the back of the tree. "I won't slow things down with a demonstration of the performance," Wilkinson said, though the disappointment he showed said far more.

As the tree cycled through, slowly pushing out the orange blossoms and then pulling back leaves to reveal oranges, Duncan peeked at Lucy. Bless her, she watched it with every bit of excitement he felt.
Of course, she did,
he admonished himself. She had spent a lifetime learning tricks from Vincent and several years researching magic for Vincent's book. She knew exactly who Robert Houdin was, and as much as she was right to keep them focused on the Door, Duncan could tell she enjoyed every bit of this moment.

While the tree sprouted the last orange and split it open, Duncan squeezed Lucy's hand. "Thank you," he said to Wilkinson. "That was wonderful. Unbelievable."

"But you didn't come here to see Houdin's tree, did you?"

"We were hoping you could help us locate a specific trick, one by a magician who traveled with you for some time. It was called the Door of Vanishing."

"Ahhh," Wilkinson said, touching the tip of his nose with his index finger. "That is a part of my life that I'd sooner forget but I'm afraid I never will."

"Then you remember The Amazing Verido?" Lucy asked.

"A strange man. Nervous all the time. Dark and mysterious. It played great on the stage and when the crowds saw him slinking around before the show, pacing and muttering to himself, oh my, the intrigue he built. I couldn't have bought that kind of interest. I never really thought too much of him as a magician to tell you the truth. Not until he developed the Door. Before that he would do some card tricks and a few bigger illusions but nothing very exciting. People liked him enough and they left happy but I wanted the kind of show that would spread word from town to town. I wanted it to be that when Wilkinson's Wonders arrived in a town, the folks already knew we would put on an incredible show. I wanted them to be clamoring to see what we had. And, frankly, Verido was going to be fired if he didn't come up with something good."

"But he did."

"Yes, yes, little lady, he sure did. We had taken two weeks off to let everyone visit family and for me to line up more shows and such. I sat down with him before he left and told him the bad news. I never liked threatening someone's job, but any old magician could do what he was doing. I told him I needed somebody that got people talking, and he promised that when he returned, he'd have something that would put Wilkinson's Wonders on the lips of every kid in every town. I didn't think anything of it. I've heard all kinds of boasting before, and honestly, I suspected I'd never see him again. I remember getting ready to start looking for a new magician when he showed up a few days before the rest of my people. And he had the Door of Vanishing with him. He wouldn't let anybody look at it, kept it from prying eyes all the time. Of course, we managed to get a look anyway, and as far as anybody could tell, it was just a door with a bunch of 'magical' writing on it."

Duncan asked, "Where did he get it?"

Wilkinson raised his eyebrows. "He's a magician. He'd never tell me that. Anyway, the show took off and he built a small name for himself. I had dreams of the trick hitting it to worldwide proportions — maybe even put us in for a licensing deal so the money would keep rolling in. I even started worrying I'd need a new magician because pretty soon he'd be leaving me for a bigger stage. But then one night, he sent somebody through the Door and they didn't come back. He covered it up well for the performance, and though the audience was confused, they still ate it up. All except the wife of the man who disappeared. After the show, I asked him why he changed the script, and he was whiter than a ghost. Terrified. He told me something went wrong and we better leave town before they turned the cops on us. It happened twice more. After that there was no hiding that something bad was happening. When the police showed up, though, Verido had packed up and disappeared himself. They searched for weeks but nobody ever found him."

Lucy said, "We're trying to find him. We want to know more about the Door trick."

"He won't tell you a thing."

"Then you know where he is?"

Wilkinson shook his curly head. "Haven't seen him in ages. He showed up once, a few years after his escape, and we chatted about nothing in particular. Haven't seen him since. I merely meant that if you do find him, he won't talk. He took his magician's oaths very seriously."

Pouring on her sweetest voice, Lucy said, "You wouldn't, by any chance, be able to tell us his real name? That might help us in our search."

"It won't help you, but if it makes your day, his name was Dominic Rosini. He's not a stupid man though. He would certainly be living under a different name now."

"Probably," Duncan said, "but it's a big help. Thank you."

"Yes, thank you," Lucy said, and taking Duncan's arm, the two headed for the door.

Wilkinson cleared his throat. "Wait a minute. Don't go yet."

"I'm sorry, but we've still got a lot of work to do."

"But you haven't seen the Door yet."

Duncan's stomach lurched. "You have the Door?"

"I have one of them. He had several he rotated, and when he left, this one stayed behind. It's in the basement." Without waiting for an answer, Wilkinson shuffled down a hall and into a kitchen with Lucy and Duncan close behind. He lifted the latch on a weathered wooden door and flicked on a small bulb. "This way," he said, climbing down a wobbling staircase, his white hair reflecting the dim light like a beacon in the fog.