The Last Illusion Read online

  “I suppose I could,” Harry admitted.

  “And she could help you with the mind-reading tricks I do, and act as your assistant.”

  “I could never teach her the signals in time.”

  “I’m a fast learner,” I said, although I wasn’t sure this was true. “I could give it a try.”

  “You do need an assistant, Harry,” Bess said. “You always say that it helps to have a pretty girl onstage for the audience to watch, so that they take their eyes off you.”

  “She doesn’t have a costume, does she?” I could tell he was now fishing for excuses. He really didn’t want me but he was scared of crossing Bess. “She’d never fit into anything of yours.”

  “That would be no problem, Mr. Houdini,” I said. “I have friends who know a good theatrical dressmaker. I’m sure he could make me something appropriate.”

  He opened his mouth and tried to think of something else to say, then sighed.

  “I know, but—someone who hasn’t been in the business? I’m the star performer, Bess. I don’t work with amateurs.”

  “Fine. It was just a suggestion,” Bess said angrily. She turned away from him and faced the wall. “But I had a bad scare last night, Harry. The doc says I was lucky to come through the way I did. So I don’t know how long it will be before I can trust myself on that stage again and I kind of think that the audience will soon get tired of just watching you standing there with a bunch of handcuffs.” She turned back to him. “They like variety, Harry. They like things they can’t explain. And they like a pretty girl. You know that.”

  Harry looked from her face to mine. Bess reached out and took his hand. “For my sake, Harry? Couldn’t you at least give it a try? Just a try?”

  She was gazing up at him imploringly. For a long moment there was silence. Then he said gruffly, “Okay, babykins. I guess I could at least give her a try.”

  Whether I liked it or not, it appeared I was about to become a magician’s assistant.

  Fourteen

  I was already having serious misgivings by the time I presented myself at the house on 102nd Street the next morning. The day had not started particularly well. I had already dragged Ryan out of bed and made him take me to his dressmaker friend who turned out to be a gorgeous young man with eyelashes any woman would kill for. He was introduced as Daniel, which I found amusing as he was about as different as possible from my future groom, and I knew exactly what that future groom would think of him.

  “Darling, what am I supposed to do with her?” Daniel asked, looking at Ryan in despair after we had explained what I needed. “She has a waist the size of an elephant.”

  “I do not,” I said angrily. “It’s just that I’ve never seen fit to wear a corset.”

  “And it shows, darling, it shows. I suppose I could build you something with plenty of whalebones, but you’ll have to absolutely pour yourself into it.”

  “It doesn’t have to be like the French Follies,” I said hastily. “I don’t intend to cancan or striptease. I just have to give an impression of glamour onstage and to distract the audience from what the illusionist is doing.”

  Daniel shook his head. “But glamour demands an hourglass figure.”

  “You are the master,” Ryan said. “If anyone can create her an outfit, you can.”

  “Flatterer,” Daniel responded. He gave a dramatic sigh. “Oh, well, I suppose I’ll see what I can do.”

  “And I do need it in a hurry,” I pointed out.

  Daniel rolled his eyes. “You don’t need me, you need a miracle-working saint. You Irish know your saints, don’t you? Who is the patron of producing instant glamorous outfits?”

  I looked at Ryan and we laughed, thus breaking the tension.

  “Don’t worry, he fusses a lot but he’ll do it, and you’ll look fabulous,” Ryan assured me as we came away. “He really is a genius. I absolutely insist that he makes all the costumes for my productions.”

  So I had what was probably going to be a horribly expensive costume being made for me with a grudging promise that it would be ready for a fitting in the morning. Now all I had to do was learn how to be an illusionists’ assistant in one lesson. How did I get myself into these things? I wondered.

  The day was not quite as stiflingly hot as the one before and I was altogether in a better mood when I alighted from the train at Ninety-ninth. That mood seemed to be radiated from the other people on the street. Old men were sitting on stoops, windows were open with bedding draped over sills to air. The girls were still playing jump rope games and women paused from their sweeping and polishing to look up with a smile, remembering the days when they had time for games.

  Houdini’s brother opened the door to me at their house. “Oh, it’s you again,” he said. He didn’t look too thrilled to see me.

  “Has Bess come home from the hospital?”

  “Yes, but she’s really weak. My mother is making her some Hungarian beef soup.”

  “And your brother is here?”

  “Ehrie? Yes, he’s with her.”

  I hadn’t heard him called that name before. “Ehrie?” I asked.

  He nodded. “That’s his name—Ehrich. I guess that’s where he got the name Harry from for his act. Well, I suppose you’d better come in.”

  He led me into a dark hallway and then opened the door to a front parlor. It was truly hideous—dark, overstuffed, and Victorian at its worst with velvet sofas, chairs with skirts to them to hide the offending legs, dried flowers and birds under glass domes, in fact not an inch of space that hadn’t been decorated with something. Then I remembered that this was a rented house and forgave the Houdinis for the awful taste. It was also clearly a traditional front parlor, the type that is never used, except for weddings and funerals. The pillows looked as if no back had ever leaned against them. I perched uneasily on the edge of the nearest chair and waited.

  Soon brother Dash returned. “They want you to go up to the bedroom,” he said with a tinge of horror in his voice.

  As I started up the stairs the mother’s face peered from the kitchen. She shot Dash a sharp question in whatever language they spoke—I wasn’t sure if it was Hungarian or Yiddish or a mixture of both. He answered and she gave me a look of pure venom. Clearly I wasn’t exactly welcome in the Weiss’s household. I wondered if they were Orthodox Jews and I was breaking some kind of taboo. I’d had a brief encounter with Orthodox Judaism early in my time in New York and had learned about all those rules and foods and different sinks. But then Harry and Bess had traveled all over Europe in their profession. They’d have learned to eat and sleep on the road in a variety of circumstances. And I also remembered that Bess wasn’t even Jewish. So that couldn’t be the reason that Harry’s mother resented my presence. I wondered what they’d told her.

  Bess was lying propped among pillows. She still looked very pale, but her dark eyes lit up when she saw me. “Here she is, Harry. Here’s our girl,” she said. “Come on in, Molly.”

  “Your mother and brother don’t seem to think I should be here,” I said, coming over to take her hand and nodding to Harry, who stood at the window.

  “They don’t like the idea of bringing an outsider into the act. Can’t say I do either,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it all night and I am not at all happy about this idea. I can’t see how it’s going to work. In fact, it’s a stupid idea.”

  “Just give it a try, Harry,” Bess said, grasping at his hand. “You promised, Harry. You’d promised you’d give it a try. That’s all I’m asking.” She gazed up at him. “Let’s teach her the basic things and if she can’t do it, then fine. You’ll have to go on solo.”

  He nodded. “Right, let’s get to work then. The first thing you have to learn is how to move. Have you noticed how the girls move onstage—everything is big and dramatic. They walk like this—” and he crossed the room in long slinky strides. “And always the arm gestures. Light and airy and graceful.” He demonstrated those. “And draw the audience’s attentio
n to yourself and your shape.” He ran his hand gracefully tracing the shape of a supposed female body. It was rather funny to watch this little man pretending to be an alluring female, but I didn’t smile.

  “Now you do it.”

  I felt horribly embarrassed as I strutted across the bedroom, gestured to Houdini, drew attention to my own costume. It wasn’t until I saw him grinning that I realized how awful I must look.

  “Well it’s quite obvious you’ve never done this before, isn’t it? You were never a dancer or acrobat, I take it?”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “That’s pretty obvious. Pity. Most illusionists’ assistants can do all the acrobatic moves. The odd cartwheel or split never hurts. But there’s nothing we can do about that.”

  “Teach her the signals, Harry,” Bess said. “That’s the most important thing she needs to know.”

  “Signals?” I asked.

  Harry paced uncertainly. “I’m not sure about this, honeykins. Giving away our secrets to a stranger—to someone we hardly know?”

  “I told you, I knew her family when she was a little kid,” Bess said. “They were good to me.” She certainly lied very smoothly. There was no trace of hesitancy in her voice.

  “Yes, but that was a long time ago. You’re out of touch for years, then she pops up again, out of the blue, she doesn’t have an inkling about how to move onstage, and suddenly she wants to be my assistant.” He was staring hard at me. “I don’t believe she ever had anything to do with the business, if you want my opinion. So how do we know she’s not some kind of plant?”

  “What do you mean?” Bess demanded.

  “I mean how do we know she’s not working for a rival illusionist trying to get his hands on our secrets?”

  “She’s not working for any rival illusionist, Harry, I promise you.”

  “How can you promise me? You’ve been out of touch with her for years!” Harry was yelling now, his face red with anger. “And if she’s not working for a rival, how do we know she’s not one of these damned female newspaper reporters. If we show her our stunts you might find them printed all over tomorrow’s front page for all the world to see. ‘How I out-tricked Houdini into revealing his secrets.’ Is that what you want, Bess?”

  “I assure you I’m not—” I began, but he cut me off.

  “I’m not buying it, Bess. I’m not giving away things we’ve worked on for years.”

  “But you promised to give her a try, Harry. You promised.” She was sounding close to tears now.

  “I said that yesterday because I didn’t want you making a scene at the clinic, but it never felt right to me. And you know what? It doesn’t feel right now. I don’t trust her. I’m not doing it, Bess. I’ve made up my mind and that’s that.”

  “And if I don’t come back into the act for a while?” Bess’s voice was yelling too now.

  “Then I’d rather go it alone. Or maybe I’ll find a new assistant.”

  “Oh, no!” Bess said, sitting bolt upright. “I’m not having you working with a strange girl, Harry. I know what you’re like.”

  “Honey, babykins, how can you say that?”

  She wagged a finger at him. “I’ve seen those showgirls try to get their claws into you. I’ve seen them try to lure you to their dressing rooms, and invite you out for a bite to eat when I’ve been under the weather. Don’t think I’m completely blind, Ehrich Weiss, because I know.”

  “Baby, not in front of your friend . . .”

  Bess was now really riled up. “Oh, so she’s my friend now, is she? A minute ago she was a complete stranger and someone I couldn’t trust because she was here to steal our act!”

  I was feeling horribly uncomfortable and decided that something had to be done before their marriage was ruined.

  “Stop this, please,” I said. “It would be so much simpler if your husband knows the truth, Bess. I can see why he doesn’t want to trust me. I wouldn’t want to admit a strange person to my act when there have already been two horrible accidents in a week.” I turned to Harry and looked him straight in the eye. “I think you should know the truth, Mr. Houdini, and if you tell me to get lost, I’ll go.”

  Bess held up her hand and started to say something but I shook my head. “The truth is, Mr. Houdini, or Mr. Weiss, if you’d rather, that your wife came to me in great distress. She was sure that someone was trying to kill you. As it turned out it appears that someone was trying to kill her, or at the very least wreck your act. So she asked for my help. You see, I’m a private investigator.”

  “You’re what?” Harry said.

  “A detective, Harry, she’s a lady detective,” Bess said. “I was only doing it for you. I wanted her to find out who was out to get you. I wanted to protect you because I love you.”

  And she broke into sobs.

  “Babykins. I’m sorry.” Harry sank onto the bed beside her and took her into his arms. Really, were theater folk always this dramatic?

  “I did it for you, Harry,” she repeated. “Don’t be mad at me. I thought you’d nix the idea of having a detective watching out for you, so I invented this crazy scheme. Pretty dumb of me, huh?”

  He sat beside her, stroking her hair, gazing into her face. “You’re a real sweetie pie, you know that?”

  “I knew you’d never tell the police that you were in danger and I had to protect you somehow so I thought a lady detective would work into the act real nice. I was going to pretend I wasn’t feeling well but then that awful accident happened, and it just proved what I’d been afraid of all along. So please say, yes, Harry. For my sake.”

  He stroked her hair and smiled down at her. “I’d do anything for you, babykins, but what good is some dame going to be onstage with me? No offense, ma’am, but if someone has rigged my equipment how the hell are you going to know that?”

  “Language, Harry,” Bess said.

  “I expressed the same concerns to your wife, Mr. Houdini,” I said.

  “Where I think I can help you is more likely to be offstage, keeping my eyes open and asking the right questions. But I needed a valid reason to be with you all the time.”

  He nodded. “Can’t do no harm, I suppose, unless you look so bad up there that you turn my act into a comedy.”

  “I’ll try not to,” I said.

  “So you’ll do it, won’t you, Harry?” Bess insisted. “If he’s tried something once, he could try again.”

  Harry shrugged. “If you want a detective onstage with me, watching out for me, then okay, you got it.”

  Bess gave me a triumphant smile as she hugged him. Harry turned to look up at me. “I could tell right away you’d never been a performer in your life,” he said.

  Fifteen

  There was silence in the bedroom while we all recovered from the excess of emotion. Then Bess lay back among her pillows, looking quite at ease again. “So hadn’t you better start teaching her the signals if you want her to go on with you tomorrow night?”

  “Tomorrow?” I said as this reality dawned on me. “You think I could be ready to go on by tomorrow?”

  “For the mind-reading act,” Houdini said. “We have a system of signals. You saw when I went down into the audience and I had someone pick a card? There’s no mind reading involved. I told Bess what card it was by the things I did and the movements I made. It’s a system as old as the hills and it’s really simple. For example, supposing the person in the audience selected the ace of clubs. I would just happen to touch that person’s shoulder. That would signify to Bess that it was an ace. And if I was standing with the right foot in front of the left—that means clubs. If I touch my hair it means the next word matters. Nothing to it except for learning the signals and watching carefully. It has to be done ever so casually—the merest brush of a hand. The sort of gesture that people don’t even notice.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “But part of the time she had a hood over her head. Can she really see through that blind?”

  “Of course not,” he sa
id. “We have members of the audience test that hood. It has to be the real thing.”

  “Then how does she know what objects you’re holding?”

  “Ah.” When he smiled he looked like a mischievous imp. “Then we use the verbal clues. We’ve a whole long list of them. Let me show you. Bess, I’m standing next to a lovely lady here, so pray tell what object she is holding in her hand?”

  “A purse,” Bess said quickly.

  I looked at them, perplexed. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Again we have a great long system of code words. If I use the word ‘pray’ I am referring to ‘purse.’ If I use ‘please’ it’s ‘handkerchief.’ ‘Say’ means ‘money,’ and so on. We’ve about twenty items that usually come up at these performances. If it’s something unusual—and sometimes they try to trick us—then those same words will be used as letters, to spell out the word or enough of the word for Bess to guess. Supposing someone gave me a child’s toy soldier. “I’d say ‘Pray be quick,’ and I’ve spelled out ‘T O Y.’ ”

  “Then I’d say, ‘I’m getting the feeling that it’s some kind of toy. . . .’ and wait for more clues, and Harry would then spell enough of soldier until I get it.” Bess nodded at me encouragingly. “But we rarely get something difficult. It’s usually watches, jewelry, handkerchiefs, smelling salts—”

  “What is the word for smelling salts?” I asked, intrigued now.

  “Speak,” Houdini said. “So I’d say, ‘Speak up, my dear.’ ”

  “I see.” I nodded. “That’s really clever.”

  “I hope you really are a fast learner,” he said, “because I’ve a lot to teach you and not much time.”

  “I’m ready to start now if you are,” I said. I opened my purse and took out my notebook.

  Harry shook his head. “Oh, no. You’re going to have to keep it all in your head. I’m not having my signals leaving this house. I keep the diagrams for all my illusions under lock and key all the time.”