The Confabulist (30 page)

He buried his face in his hands. All the things that had never happened, that now would never happen.

“Go,” he said to Rose, and the car pulled away from Bess, sleeping upstairs or maybe lying awake wondering where he was going. He looked out the window at the empty streets and murmured, “I’ll never see my house again.”

MARTIN STRAUSS

1927

I
STOOD IN THE DARK ON
L
IME
S
TREET IN
B
OSTON.
A clouded sky obscured the moon, and the glow of the streetlight barely penetrated the night. I was glad for the shadows. Whatever was happening inside the large well-kept house that loomed in front of me was connected with my predicament. I wanted to know how, and I didn’t want anybody to know I was there.

In the haste of my departure from New York I’d nearly forgotten the papers I’d removed from my attacker’s pockets during the police raid. I didn’t look at them until I was safely on a train out of Manhattan. There were a few loose bills and two envelopes. One of the envelopes was full of cash—when I counted it later, out of view of anyone who might like to deprive me of it, I discovered almost a thousand dollars. It appeared that my financial worries were over for some time. When I examined the contents of the other envelope, however, any relief this windfall had offered dissipated.

Our contact in the house of the disbeliever has located the whereabouts of his journal. She followed the pigeon to a flophouse at Hudson and Vestry. One Martin Strauss. Walter advises that it would be of great benefit if the hand of John G. Nemesis would retrieve the book and if necessary remove him from consideration. Expenses and remuneration enclosed
.

The letter was on the stationery of a Dr. Le Roi Crandon, 10 Lime Street, Boston, his signature scrawled on the bottom of the letter. I didn’t know who Walter was, but there was nothing comforting about either the tone of this letter or the rather massive sum of money he was willing to pay to gain possession of Houdini’s book. I assumed that Nemesis was the man who had come after me.

I thought of Clara. The last time I had seen her was on a night like this one. I remembered the way she had looked at me, right before I punched Houdini.

A light came on inside the Crandon house, and then the porch light as well. A few moments later all of the lights on the second floor began to glow. There was a hedge in front of the next house over in which I found an excellent hiding spot.

For a time there was no further activity inside the house. Hiding in bushes made me feel I was doing something wrong. It would have been difficult to explain my situation to the police.

“Oh, Martin,” my mother said, “you worry about the oddest things.”

“They don’t seem odd to me,” I whispered.

“You don’t need to worry about what things look like. You only need to worry about what they are.”

Coming up the sidewalk was an older couple, possibly in their late
fifties or early sixties. Their clothes and the way they carried themselves revealed their wealth. These were the sort of people Clara’s father associated with. People of stature, of substance, of reputation.

“My goodness,” my mother said, “those are some well-dressed people.”

When they reached the Crandon house, they turned and went up the short path leading to the door. The woman paused to adjust her coat and her husband knocked on the door. After a few seconds it opened, but I couldn’t see past them to whoever was there.

Not long after, a taxi pulled up and four people got out, three men and a woman. Another car arrived close behind with another quartet. Together the eight of them walked up to the door. They had a jovial air.

The door opened, but once again I was unable to catch a glimpse of the person inside. No one else arrived. From where I was hiding I couldn’t see much of what was happening, only a shadow of someone at a window, a silhouette imprinted on the drapes. I would have to get closer.

I stood and crept nearer to the house. There was possibly a good vantage point on the far side of the property, and if I were to climb the large tree in the front yard I might be able to see into the second-floor window.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a voice behind me. I turned and saw a man dressed in black standing in the shadows.

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

“Of course not, Mr. Strauss.”

“How do you know my name?”

He stepped forward into the light. He was in his early sixties, with white hair, but appeared to be in good physical condition. He
was dressed modestly but wore his clothes with precision. It was easy to imagine him springing from bed in the morning with not a hair out of place.

“I’ve been watching you for a long time. You’ve done well. But you don’t want to get any closer to the Crandons. You shouldn’t be here.”

Just then the lights upstairs went off.

“They’re starting now. We should go.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Grigoriev. I’m a friend.”

Grigoriev. This was the man Bess Houdini had told me about. He might know about the book, why Houdini had planted it on me, and why Dr. Crandon and Walter wanted it.

I followed him down the street to a car. It had a scrape on the side. I got in the passenger side and he drove us away from Beacon Hill. He kept his eyes on the road while he spoke.

“There is much I cannot and will not tell you,” he said. “Some of it is for your own safety, and some information I am not at liberty to divulge. I work on behalf of Houdini. I know that you are in possession of his notebook, and I have been keeping track of you for some time. Unfortunately, when you went to visit Bess, the maid alerted those faithful to the spiritualists. Since then you have been in danger.”

“You’ve been following me?”

“Yes.”

“Were you there in New York when John G. Nemesis attacked me?”

“The way I saw it, you attacked him. John G. Nemesis is a spiritualist catchall name for the hand of fate. He has many guises and can be anyone. In this case, he is a man we know very well.”

“Who is Dr. Le Roi Crandon? Who is Walter?”

“Dr. Crandon is the husband of Margery Crandon, the witch of Beacon Hill. She’s possibly the most prominent medium in America. Walter is her dead brother, with whom she claims to communicate from beyond the grave.”

I remembered Houdini talking about the witch of Beacon Hill at the Princess Theatre in Montreal. According to him she was a fraud of the highest order.

“Why do they want the book?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Why did Houdini give me the book?”

“I can’t answer that either.”

“You can’t, or you won’t?”

“I’m not sure you appreciate the situation you’re in. I am not your enemy. This isn’t about you or me or even Houdini.”

“Then what is it about?” I felt an anger rising in me that I wasn’t sure I could contain.

Grigoriev’s voice was soft and calm. “It is about competing views of the world, a question of what is real and what is not.”

“And what do I have to do with any of this?”

“No more or less than anyone. Perhaps you have yet to discover what is real and what is not in your own life.” He swerved, the momentum of the car leaning me away from him.

“The book is coded.”

“It’s a standard keyword code.”

A keyword code. I knew a bit about these from the spy novels I read as a kid. A word or phrase created a numerical value that would allow a person to encipher passages of text. If the person receiving the garbled text knew the keyword, it would be a relatively simple matter to decode the text. “What’s the keyword?”

“If I were to tell you and they were to find out, they would kill you.”

They were already trying to kill me. Knowing the contents of the book didn’t seem to make a difference. “I could destroy the book.”

“Yes.”

“I could just give it to them.”

“Yes.”

Perhaps if the Crandons had the book, they’d leave me alone. Though the incident with their thug probably wouldn’t go overlooked. But giving them the book or destroying it didn’t feel right.

“I didn’t mean to punch Houdini,” I said. I knew that the reason I had kept and would continue to protect the book was guilt.

“Didn’t you? It didn’t look like an accident.”

“You were there?”

He said nothing, his eyes on the road. But he was right. The punch wasn’t an accident. I may not have known why I did it, but my fist swung with intent.

“I didn’t mean to kill him.”

We had arrived back at my cheap hotel. He parked across the street and turned off the engine.

“Houdini was fond of saying that when he died, the spiritualists would declare the day a holiday. He may have underestimated their glee. All over the world telegrams and letters flew back and forth proclaiming victory. He was, for them, their greatest obstacle. They had tried to kill him before, and were actively trying to kill him now. There is no limit to what they will do in the name of their cause. Bear that in mind, Martin.”

Grigoriev reached into his pocket and removed a letter. “This is for you. I collected it when you left New York.”

I took the letter from him. It was indeed addressed to me, posted from Montreal. The return address was Clara’s but the handwriting on the envelope wasn’t hers.

“Thank you. What happens next?”

“Do we ever know what happens next? They will make a move, and we’ll see where that leads us.”

“I meant what happens to me.”

Grigoriev smiled. “You should get some sleep. I’ll be nearby, and will be in touch if need be. Just stay away from the Crandons for now.”

I got out and watched him drive away. It was baffling how easy it was for people to find me. After all the precautions I’d taken, telling no one where I was, making no friends and keeping to myself, using a false name, and living completely disconnected from the world at large, it was simple for Grigoriev to track me and the Crandons to find me. Were Houdini’s escapes so popular because people knew deep down that there was no way for anyone to escape?

I walked around the block to make sure no one was following me and then climbed the stairs to my fifth-floor room. Each thud of my feet was a thumping reminder of my exile.

The hair I had placed on my doorknob was undisturbed—another technique I’d read about. I opened the door and slipped inside. My hands were steady as I sat on the bed and tore open the letter Grigoriev had given me.

Mr. Martin Strauss
,

Clara does not wish for you to have further contact with her. Given what you have done, I suggest you respect her wishes. As it stands I hereby discharge you of any further duty concerning her. You have disappeared, and you will stay disappeared. Should you contact her again I will bring down the full force of the law upon you
.

The letter was signed by Clara’s father.

I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. What was I doing? What was I trying to accomplish? You don’t abandon those you love, or those you could love, for nothing. Houdini had done it. And I had done it too. This elaborate game he had mixed me up in was just an excuse.

“It doesn’t matter why you did it,” my mother said, sitting on the bed beside me.

“Yes, it does.”

“It only matters that it’s done. It can’t be taken back.” She looked so young. Like she’d looked when I was a boy.

“Then there’s no hope?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t you?”

She smiled and reached toward me. “Martin, dear Martin. Haven’t you been listening?”

I stretched out to grasp her hand, but she was gone.

Houdini’s book was hidden in the lining of my coat. I retrieved it and opened it to the first page. I’d looked at the letters many times before, but they remained as cryptic as ever.

QRQHRIWKLVLVUHDO

BRXUPHPRUBFDQQRWEHWUXVWHG

WKLVLVDOOUHDO

Gibberish. If there were clues inside, I wasn’t going to find them, not without the keyword at least.