The Last Illusion (35 page)

I
had to let Mr. Wilkie know immediately. I could hardly breathe with excitement as I asked for directions to the nearest telegraph office. I expect the man behind the counter wondered why I was so agitated and spending all that money to send a message that said, “Thank you for birthday present. Your niece.”

“I take it you won’t need to wait for a reply, miss,” he said in a bored sort of voice.

“No, I don’t think so.” Mr. Wilkie had already instructed me that he would come to me and I didn’t think he’d risk naming a meeting place or time.

“It must have been a very nice birthday present,” the clerk said, “when someone spends two dollars just to thank him for it. A nice uncle you’ve got there.”

“Very generous,” I said frostily, because I could tell what he was hinting—that he was not my uncle but a very different sort of relation who had been showering me with gifts. Since I didn’t look like the kind of girl who had rich admirers, he was probably bemused by this. “The wire will be sent immediately, I take it?” I asked.

“It has to wait its turn. If the line’s in use it may take a few minutes. It’s not that urgent, is it?”

“Very urgent,” I said. “It has to reach my uncle before he sails to South America.”

“Don’t you worry, miss. We’ll get it out to him,” he said in a patronizing way now. Maybe I was just overwrought but I had a desire to slap him. Instead I gave him a curt nod and stepped back out into the street. Why were men so insufferable when dealing with women?

I found a church clock and checked the hour. Eleven thirty. That meant that even if Mr. Wilkie received my message instantly, he could not be in New York before five o’clock at the earliest. So I had some time to follow up on my other plan for the day, namely to find out what might have happened to the elusive Mr. Scarpelli and if he had really met a bad end, as the police believed. I wasn’t too keen about lugging that bag of books around for the rest of the day, but I didn’t have much choice. It was lucky that I’d grown up used to carrying sacks of potatoes and peat from the fields, wasn’t it?

As I stood outside Miner’s Theatre I found that my stomach was clenched in fear. There was danger inside those doors. People had died there. I hesitated on the sidewalk while the stream of pedestrians flowed around me, and it occurred to me that someone connected to the theater had to be involved. Of course it would have taken an illusionist to pull off the switching trunks trick so smoothly, but someone had to know exactly where the trapdoor was on the stage. Someone had to be able to help move a body without being noticed. And a thought crossed my mind. Mr. Irving the theater manager. He was there all the time, standing on the stage right in front of that little door behind the curtains that led to the area below the stage. And the passage that led to his office was on that side of the stage as well. Wilkie’s man could have been lured into the office, stabbed, and then taken down below in a trunk.

So did I really want to go back in there? I certainly wasn’t going to face Old Ted at the stage door again. He already thought I had ulterior motives and was up to no good. And to be honest, I didn’t want to find myself in the dark passages of backstage.

“Come on. Don’t be such a ninny,” I said to myself. They only knew of me as Bess’s friend and Houdini’s fill-in assistant. What did I have to fear?

I shook my head and stepped into the cool shade of the theater foyer. The box office was doing a lively trade for the matinee. People were pressing around the kiosk and I could hear excited whispers: “They’re not sold out already, are they?” “Do you think anything terrible’s going to happen this week?” “Did you hear there was a curse on this theater? Some are saying there’s a monster lurking in the basement.”

I wondered if the new illusionist was as famous as Houdini, or if the reason all these people were here was merely that morbid human fascination with death. Did they want to see another girl sliced in half or another dead body roll from a trunk? Apparently they did. I hesitated, not sure whether to push past the throng and into the theater or not. As I waited I studied this week’s playbill. The new illusionist was called Stevie Summer and he too sported an impressive handlebar mustache. Was this a requirement of illusionists, I wondered? In which case why was Houdini clean shaven? I stared at the face again. There was something about the deep-set eyes that caught my attention. It was as if the face was set in a perpetual worried frown.

“Wait a minute,” I muttered, and stepped into the far corner of the foyer where there was a gilt-and-velvet bench. I sat down and brought out the scrapbooks. I had seen those eyes, that worried scowl, I was sure of it. I thumbed hastily through the pages and, yes, there he was. It was a group photo taken onstage in Berlin. Houdini was standing front and center, looking rather pleased with himself, but right behind him, much taller and thinner, his face half obscured in shadow, was a man who looked remarkably like this Mr. Summer, only he was clean shaven. The article below was in German, of course, but I scanned through the words, hoping to find something familiar, and came across the word “Fommer.” Was that character an “F,” as I had previously decided, or an “S” in the German script? In which case was “Sommer” the German equivalent of “Summer”?

I hurried to rejoin the throng around the ticket booth. I had to
come to the matinee this afternoon and see this Mr. Summer for myself. As I was jostled forward toward the booth I wondered why I was so excited to find that Mr. Summer might also be Herr Sommer from the Berlin newspaper. Even if he was the same person, he hadn’t been at this theater last week. I supposed I could dare to pay a visit to the suspicious stage doorkeeper and ask if Mr. Summer had shown up in advance, but that would probably mean admitting that I was working for the Houdini family and that message could be passed along to unfriendly ears.

The important thing, as far as I was concerned, was that I now had one tangible link between Houdini and Germany. The two men had stood close together on a stage not three months ago. And his name, in the German newspaper, was not Summer, but Sommer, which might suggest that he was of German origin. I calculated that I would have time to attend the matinee before Mr. Wilkie could possibly arrive in New York and make his way up to Houdini’s residence to find me. I reached the ticket booth only to hear the young man inside it saying to the person ahead of me. “All sold out now, I’m afraid. I can sell you a ticket for tomorrow, if you’d like.”

“Forget it,” the woman snapped, and pushed past me angrily.

I stepped up to the ticket booth. “So there is nothing at all left for this afternoon?” I asked.

“Only a stage box with partially obscured vision,” he said, then translated in case I was particularly dense. “That means you might not see everything that’s going on all the time. Especially the acrobats.”

“But it’s close to the stage, right?”

“Almost on top of the orchestra,” he said. “You have to lean out a bit.”

“I’ll take it,” I said.

“It will cost you a dollar.”

“A dollar? For a seat I have to lean out of to see anything?”

“It’s a box, isn’t it? And box seats go for more.”

I had no alternative. I paid the dollar, wondering as I did so whether I’d ever see any money from the Houdini family. But I did have the advance from Mr. Wilkie. And promise of more.

“By the way,” I said. “That illusionist who was at the theater last week—Signor Scarpelli. Any idea where he was staying before he vanished? I need to get in touch with him.”

The man laughed. “Doesn’t everybody? It seems he owes half of New York money. But if the police can’t find him, then you’re not likely to either.”

“So who would know his address?”

“The manager, I suppose.”

“So this manager—is he likely to be in his office at the moment?”

The clerk shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you, miss. I just sit out front here and do my job. And a right busy job it’s been these last couple of weeks too. Sold out every performance since that first accident happened with Scarpelli.”

“I’ll go and see if I can find the manager in his office then,” I said, sounding a lot braver than I felt. I pushed open the frosted glass swing doors and stood in the darkness and silence of the theater. Every step forward I took, I felt more reluctant. Did I really need to know where Scarpelli had taken rooms in New York? Was it at all relevant to Houdini’s disappearance? And surely the police must have searched his rooms most thoroughly. So was I putting myself in danger for nothing?

I had to come up with a good, convincing lie. Why would I need Scarpelli’s address? Think, I commanded myself. Use your brain. But my brain refused to work. I went along the side aisle, up the steps, and pushed open the pass door. The backstage area was eerily quiet and shrouded props loomed like ghosts ahead of me. Mercifully, there was a small light on in the narrow hallway leading to the manager’s office and light shone from a half-open door. I tapped on the door nervously, then pushed it farther open and went in. The office was empty. I couldn’t believe my luck. Now all I had to do was to find some kind of file or card system that he kept on the performers. Of course it was possible that there was nothing of the kind in this little back office and that the circuit that owned this theater took care of all the booking arrangements, but surely a theater manager must be able to get in touch with his performers?

The desktop was messy in the extreme, but seemed to be all random
papers, plus a couple of ashtrays that needed emptying. I went to the filing cabinet on the wall and pulled out the top drawer. It contained financial statements and I didn’t feel comfortable going through them. I closed it again and tried the drawers below. The bottom drawer contained contracts. I found one for Scarpelli (alias Alfred Rosen), and noted that the address stated, “represented by Morgan Highfield management, 294 Broadway.”

I heaved a sigh of relief. It would be easier to face his manager and I might even learn something from him. Just as I was closing the drawer I heard the sound of heavy footsteps coming toward me. I spun around guiltily as Mr. Irving came into his office. He started in surprise when he saw me, frowned, and tried to place me.

“Miss—uh?”

“I’m Bess Houdini’s friend, remember? I was the one who filled in as Houdini’s assistant when Bess was taken ill,” I said.

“Ah, of course.” I detected no flicker of interest.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, sir, but I was very upset when I left the theater that night, and I rather fear that I left behind a small cameo brooch that I always wear for good luck. It was given to me by my departed mother, you see. So I just wondered if it had been turned in to you?”

He frowned even harder. “A cameo brooch? I haven’t seen one. Nobody’s mentioned it.”

“Oh, dear. That’s a pity,” I said. “Then it might have fallen on my way into the cab and somebody’s nabbed it.”

“Too bad,” he said. His expression was unreadable. Had he glimpsed me at his file cabinet? Did he suspect me of being anything more than a friend of the Houdinis?

“You can come and check the lost property closet if you like,” he said. “Someone may have just put it there without telling me.”

Again I hesitated. Was my gut telling me not to go with him?

“That’s all right,” I said. “I really shouldn’t trouble you anymore. I’ll give it up for lost.”

“The closet’s right here,” he said, literally steering me back down the passage. “I’d hate for you to lose your beloved trinket.” And he opened a door in the passage.

I was truly expecting to be shoved inside, or to find it led to a flight of dark stairs, but it was a perfectly normal closet. I looked through it for what seemed the required amount of time and was about to close it when I noticed a bag on the bottom shelf. It was a canvas bag and across it was painted in bold letters
SCARPELLI
.

“That’s Signor Scarpelli’s bag,” I said. “So I see he never came back to collect it.”

“Nobody’s heard a squeak from him after he took Lily off in an ambulance,” Mr. Irving said. “If you want to know what I think, I think he’s scared he’ll be charged with a crime. The police didn’t think it was an accident, you see. So he’s lying low for a while.”

“I could take it to his manager, if you like,” I said. “I’m on my way there right now.”

“Are you? What for?”

I attempted to look coy. “He also represents a friend of mine who’s away on tour. I need his address on the West Coast. He promised to write but he hasn’t. I expect he’s been too busy.”

“Yes, I expect so.” He gave me an understanding smile. “Well, I suppose you could take the bag to his manager. It’s only cluttering up the place here.”

And he handed me the canvas bag. I went off triumphantly. I had done something risky and I had succeeded. I always love it when things go right.

Thirty