The Last Illusion (15 page)

I gave her an encouraging wave and hastily retreated again. Then I tiptoed up the next flight of stairs to the third floor. There was a broad skylight in the middle of the ceiling, sending rainbow colors onto the polished wood floor below. If Mrs. Houdini was supposed to have quiet, then her room would surely be at the back of the building. The second door I tried revealed a small, dark head curled up amid white sheets. What’s more, she was alone. I heaved a sigh of relief, slipped inside, and closed the door behind me. Bess didn’t stir. Then, of course, it occurred to me that sedation means sedation. She might remain asleep all day and I was wasting my time.

It was a pleasant room, with a more homey feel than a hospital. The window was open to admit any breeze and looked out onto a small back garden with a big sycamore tree. Birds were chirping and the city seemed far away. I went over and stood beside the bed. Her eyes were closed and I watched the sheet rise and fall with her rhythmic breaths. Now that I was here I didn’t like to wake her; in fact I reasoned that trying to wake her from an induced slumber might do more harm than good. But she’d asked to see me as soon as possible, hadn’t she? She had taken the trouble to write that note from a hospital bed when she was in a most distressed state. I paced the room uncertainly. If I made it successfully down to the front door without being caught, the chances of my gaining reentry were nil.

At that moment the whole thing was decided for me. Heavy footsteps came up the stairs, tapped across the marble foyer, and straight to the door of the room. I looked around for somewhere to hide, but there was nowhere, no curtain, no closet. I half considered trying to slide under the bed, but there was no time. The door was flung upon and Houdini himself entered. He saw me standing beside Bess, obviously looking guilty, and with a roar of rage he leaped at me.

Thirteen

W
hat are you doing here?” Harry Houdini grabbed my wrist with a grip of such strength that I thought he’d snap my bones. “Who are you? If you are some damned reporter, you’ll be sorry you tried this stunt.”

“Of course I’m not a reporter,” I said. “I came because I got a note from your wife this morning, begging me to come and see her. We are old friends.”

“So how come I never met you before?” His grip on my wrist still hadn’t lessened. “I know all her friends.”

“But we have met before,” I said. “The other night at the theater, remember? I had come to see Bess, and I was the one who took her up to her dressing room when she became so upset.”

“So how do you know her? How come she has never mentioned you?”

“We met through the theater,” I said, trying to think of something plausible while not telling an outright lie.

He eyed me critically. “We’ve been together for almost ten years in the theater, and I don’t recall ever seeing you before.”

“Why, we’ve had a couple of lovely talks this very week,” I said. “In fact, she invited me to watch the show from the wings last night. You didn’t see me but I was sitting just a few feet from that trunk. I witnessed the whole thing.”

“Is that so?” His eyes narrowed. “That kind of thing has never happened to me before, you know. Harry Houdini’s equipment doesn’t let him down.”

Without warning he grabbed me again, this time by the throat. He was only a small man, not quite as tall as I, but he was lifting me off the floor with one hand. “Okay, so who sent you? And you better tell the truth because I can crush your windpipe with no problem, trust me.”

“Nobody sent me,” I croaked, because he was already putting considerable pressure on my throat. I tried to pry his hand away. It was like trying to remove an iron bar. “Your wife sent me a note to come and see her at the clinic. It’s downstairs with the nurse. You can check the handwriting.”

“
So Sie haben nichts mit Deutschland zu tun, gelt?
” he asked.

I could feel the blood singing in my head. “Whatever language that is, I don’t speak it,” I croaked. “Let go of me, before you kill me.”

I don’t know what might have eventually happened but there was a shriek from the bed behind us. “Harry, what in God’s name are you doing? Let go of her this instant!”

He released the hold on my neck. I collapsed onto a nearby chair, coughing and rubbing at my throat.

“I found her in here, poopsie,” he said. “She was standing over your bed. I thought maybe she’d come to finish you off.”

“Don’t be silly, Harry. She was the one I wrote the note to. You know, that note I asked you to deliver for me?” Bess said, “Is that the way you treat my friends?”

“How was I to know she’s your friend?” Houdini looked sheepish now. “I never set eyes on her before.”

“Sure you have. The other night at the theater.” She looked across at me. “I used to know her years ago, before I met you. When I was touring.”

“When you were part of the Floral Sisters, Bess?” Harry asked.

“Of course when I was part of the Floral Sisters. Molly was a sweet little kid in those days. Her parents were in the business, isn’t that right, Molly?”

Her eyes were pleading with me to agree with her so I had no choice but to nod.

“I’m so glad we chanced to meet up again,” Bess went on. “And you know what, Harry, she’s trying to get back into the business. I thought we could help her. And now I wake up and find you’re trying to kill her.”

“How was I to know, baby?” he said sheepishly. “I see a strange woman standing over you. All I can think is that she’s come to finish off the job that she started last night. She’s come to do harm to me and my wife.”

“Well, this is my dear old friend Molly Murphy. And you better apologize to her. Look at her. You scared her half to death,” Bess said angrily. If my throat hadn’t hurt so much, it would have been funny. Bess, lying frail and tiny in her bed and Harry, whose one hand could have crushed my throat, cowering at her attack on him.

“How was I to know?” he repeated again. “I’m only trying to protect you, babykins. You know that.”

“Apologize to her, Harry.”

Houdini held out his hand. “I’m sorry, miss, but what was I to think?”

“That’s all right. I do understand,” I said. “Especially after what happened last night.”

His handshake nearly crushed my hand. This was one extremely strong man. I tried not to grimace.

“I hope I didn’t hurt you too much,” he said, still looking sheepish. “All I thought was that someone had gotten in here to kill my wife.”

“So someone has really been trying to harm you?” I asked.

“Someone sure as hell tampered with that trunk last night,” Houdini said. “I got out with no problem, the same way I always do. Those locks on top, they’re really just there for show. They should snap open real easy, but one of them wouldn’t budge.”

“I told you, Harry. Someone jammed that lock,” Bess said, propping
herself up on one elbow. “And how come the only key was upstairs? What happened to the one you normally carry in your pocket? Someone was trying to kill me, right enough.”

“Someone certainly fixed that lock.” Harry nodded his head vehemently. “Just like someone tampered with that poor sap Scarpelli’s equipment on Tuesday.”

“That was awful, wasn’t it?” I said. “You haven’t heard what happened to her, by any chance, have you? Did she live? I’ve been looking in the papers but I haven’t seen a thing after that one first mention.”

He shook his head. “Everyone in the business is talking about it. No one knows what happened or where he went to. Some say he just ran off because of the shame of it, and some say that he ran off because he killed her deliberately and the cops are after him. Some guys even think he stole the body and disposed of it.”

“What do you think?” I asked.

Houdini ran his hand through his thick black curls. “What do I think? I think he was rushing to do a trick he hadn’t perfected, if you want my opinion. When he heard I was coming back to America and was going to be on the same bill, he knew he had to do something out of the ordinary. As far as I know nobody’s tried to saw a lady in half onstage since some guy did it in France years ago. And there are no records of how he did it or whether it was always successful.”

“You think it was an accident? A stunt gone wrong?” Bess demanded, her voice rising with hysteria now. “After what happened to me, Harry? Someone is out to get us. Isn’t that obvious?”

Houdini nodded thoughtfully. “That certainly was no accident last night,” he said. “Bess and me, we’ve done that stunt every night for the past nine years and never had a problem with it. It’s as easy as pie.”

“So how did Bess get into the trunk, if the lock was jammed?” I asked.

Bess looked suddenly coy. “We can’t give our secrets away. Let’s just say it wasn’t through the lid.”

“And you couldn’t get out the same way?”

“Not without revealing to the whole world how it’s done. It’s our bread-and-butter piece, you know,” Bess said.

“So you’d rather die than reveal how it was done?” I looked at her incredulously.

“I thought Harry had the key in his jacket pocket.”

“I see.” I looked from one of them to the other and a suspicion went through my head. Could this also have been some kind of stunt—some way of heightening the drama? But then Bess’s passing out was absolutely genuine. I was close enough to see how horribly pale she was, and how she regained consciousness gasping for breath. And her subsequent hysteria was genuine too.

I eased forward on the chair. “So do you have any idea who might have done this? Has anybody threatened you at all?” Of course I was thinking of the overheard conversation in the theater and the neat young man with blond hair who had pushed past me in the dark hallway. I wondered if he was the same young man who had made what sounded like threats to Bess when he had shown up at their front door and Houdini wasn’t home. He’d be back, he had said.

I looked at Houdini, but I didn’t detect any reaction as I said the words. Of course I suppose illusionists must have to master their expressions, and if he was being threatened by gangs, he certainly wasn’t going to divulge this to a strange woman, or to his wife. So I switched to another tack. “Is there someone in your world you can think of who carries a grudge or is out to get illusionists?”

Harry laughed. “I can name a whole lot of guys who’d love to see the end of me. But none of them was in that theater last night.” He perched on the bed beside Bess and took her hand.

“Are you sure? What about the other illusionists on the bill?” I asked.

“Marvo and Robinson? Nah. They’re lightweights. They’ll never be headliners. And that sword swallower guy they brought in to replace Scarpelli—Abdullah? He was a carnival showman. Nothing to do with us.” He paused, and ran his tongue over his lips. “Now Scarpelli—he could have been a threat. We were in Germany together earlier this year and he said some pretty cutting things about me—how my handcuffs were a fraud and how I bribed people from the audience. I had a couple of my guys go over and straighten him out.”

“You mean you sent men over to rough him up?” I asked, surprised.

“Something like that. Just to give him a friendly warning.”

“Harry, you never told me that!” Bess said.

“I don’t tell you a lot of things, sweetie pie. I don’t like to worry you. But I’m not having fellow illusionists slandering me. What I usually do is send them a challenge—in public. The same handcuffs, the same stunt—let’s see who gets out first. I always win and they’re always sore losers. So in answer to your question, yes there are plenty of guys who would like to get even with me.”

“Including someone called Risey, from Coney Island?”

Houdini laughed. “That old guy? He was pathetic. I locked him in a box and I had to rescue him when he started hollering for help. He was in a real panic, I can tell you. Talk about egg all over his face.”

“But I heard he is a powerful man on Coney Island and he had sworn to get even with you.”

“Maybe he had, but that was a while ago. He’s all talk.”

It suddenly struck me how dense I had been. “The sword swallower they brought in at the last minute. He came from the carnival on Coney Island. You don’t think there’s any connection, do you? You don’t think that Risey sent him to get even with you?”