The Last Illusion Read online

  “They live in a suitcase under the bed,” Bess chimed in and got a frown from Houdini.

  “Do you think that was what someone was trying to steal?” I asked. “Bess said that someone tried to break into your house one night, then ran away when you got up and turned on the light.”

  He frowned, shot her a quick look of annoyance, then shook his head. “Bess gets nervous at night if she hears the slightest noise. If he was trying to break in, then he was a regular burglar, and obviously I scared him off.”

  As he said it I picked up a strange undercurrent and got the feeling that there was something that he hadn’t told his wife. Again my thoughts went to gangs and protection money. Somehow I would have to persuade Daniel to have his men find out more for me, because for once I agreed with Daniel. This was not something I wanted to investigate myself.

  Houdini didn’t stop drilling me until it was time for him to leave for the theater. He would have to perform alone tonight, but I was told to watch from backstage.

  “Make sure you double-check all your props, Harry!” Bess called after him. “Take care of yourself.”

  As I sat in the train going home I considered again what a ridiculous task I had undertaken. How could I possibly be expected to protect Houdini? How could I possibly be ready to go onstage as his assistant? I found myself repeating over and over, in time to the rhythm of the train, “right foot forward means spades. Eyebrows raised means . . . mouth open once quickly means . . .” How on earth was I going to master them, as well as moving gracefully like one who is a trained performer, not tripping over my feet and generally looking like a convincing magician’s assistant—at the same time as watching out for any potential threat. It seemed like such a daunting task that I was almost ready to go to the theater this evening and tell him that I was quitting.

  And I realized another thing, as the train slowed for my station: the subject of money had not come up. I was doing all this without any assurance that Houdini was going to pay me for my efforts.

  My intention was to go home, change my clothes, grab a bite to eat, and then go back to the theater to watch again from the wings—and this time to take notes. But as I reached Patchin Place the door opposite opened and Sid’s head poked out.

  “We’ve caught you, you elusive creature,” she said. “Where have you disappeared to? Are you still working on that case you told us about?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “The one involving the theater? Are we to see you as another chorus girl?”

  “You know I can’t divulge the secrets of my cases,” I said.

  “How annoying,” Sid said. “Does that mean you will not be free this weekend?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Sid pouted. “Can’t you put your work aside until Monday, because, you see, Gus and I have been invited to a cottage in Newport. Doesn’t that sound divine? Away from all this heat and noise and two days at the ocean?”

  “It does sound wonderful,” I agreed, “but I really can’t get away. I’ll be thinking of you.”

  “But Molly—I used the word ‘cottage’ but you know that it’s really a mansion. One of Gus’s many cousins has married well. Think of the strawberries and cream and croquet on the lawns.”

  “I really am sorry, Sid,” I said. “I’d really love to come but I’ve already arranged things with my client to be on hand tomorrow and Sunday.”

  “You are so annoying sometimes,” Sid said. “Why did you have to take up such a demanding profession? I hope you’ll have more time for leisure when you are Mrs. Daniel Sullivan. He was looking for you this afternoon, by the way. Pounded on our door and demanded to know where you were.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “He most certainly did. When Gus said she didn’t know, he almost accused her of hiding you in the hall closet.”

  “Oh, dear. He is tiresome at times, isn’t he?” I said. “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “No, but I believe he slipped a note through your front door.”

  I sighed. “I’d better go and see then, hadn’t I? I’m really sorry about your lovely invitation. I wish I could join you, but I can’t.”

  I opened my front door and removed Daniel’s note from the letter box.

  Dear Molly,

  I came to your house in the hope of finding you at home for once. I have managed to wangle myself two days off and thought we might go up to my mother’s in Westchester. I have been neglecting her of late. It will be a welcome escape from the heat and we’ll be able to formulate our wedding plans in peace. I can introduce you to the church and the priest on Sunday morning. I’ll come by to pick you up at nine in the morning so that we can take the nine forty-five to Westchester.

  Your future bridegroom,

  Daniel Sullivan.

  P.S. One of my men tells me that the doorkeeper at Miner’s Theatre has reported you as a suspicious character. I do hope [and these words were underlined three times] that you are not poking your nose into the strange goings on at that theater, expressly against my wishes.

  “St. Michael and all the angels,” I muttered and stood there, staring blankly at Daniel’s aggressive black script on the paper. What in heaven’s name was I going to do about this? “Daniel is going to be furious” was the first thing that flashed through my mind. Then I asked myself why I was so worried. He had given me very little notice, after all, and I was still leading my own life. Clearly I had to let him know that I wasn’t coming so that I didn’t have to face an ugly scene on my doorstep at nine o’clock the next morning.

  The easiest thing would be for me to write Daniel a note and then pay some street urchin to deliver it for me. I have been called many things in my life but I’ve never been known as a coward. I would have to tell Daniel to his face. I sighed. I had planned to go straight back to the theater for the start of the performance. But then I reasoned that Houdini’s act was not until after nine o’clock. I would have time to go to Daniel’s apartment on Twenty-third Street first and then the Broadway trolley would take me straight to the theater.

  I changed rapidly into the black-and-white striped two-piece, spread some dripping on bread, and was out of the door again. And to think I could have been spending the weekend at one of the famous Newport “cottages”! Then a wicked thought came to me. I could tell Daniel I had agreed to go away with Sid and Gus this weekend, to Gus’s cousin in Newport. It would be so much simpler than trying to explain that I was working, and at least nobody could disapprove of Newport. But as well as not being a coward, I am also not a liar. All those years of getting the strap across my backside for telling fibs certainly left their mark!

  I was admitted to Daniel’s building by Mrs. O’Shea.

  “Well, don’t you look a treat.” She smiled at me approvingly. “Going out on the town with your young man?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. I’m going out with friends, but I hoped to see him. Is he at home?”

  “I believe I heard his feet on the stairs a short while ago. The poor dear man works himself to a frazzle,” she said. “And he’s been looking so worried lately. He’s been through a lot, hasn’t he, what with being disgraced and losing his poor dear father and all. I’ll be so glad when he has a good woman to look after him.”

  Of course this made me feel even worse about what I was going to do. Daniel needed a weekend in the country, and he needed to see his mother. And we should be planning our future together. It was usually the woman who complained that her man was too busy to pay her the proper amount of attention. In our case I was more guilty than he.

  I took a deep breath and knocked on his door. His anticipatory smile when he opened it was like a dagger into my heart.

  “Molly! Don’t tell me you’ve come to make me dinner again? Or are you going to use your feminine wiles to persuade me to take you to a restaurant?”

  “I’m sorry, Daniel. I can’t stay. I just stopped by to tell you that I can’t come to Westchester with you this weekend.”

&n
bsp; “What do you mean? Why not?”

  “I”—another deep breath—“this case I told you about. I have already set up appointments with my client for both Saturday and Sunday.”

  “Can’t you rearrange them?”

  “I really can’t.”

  He was scowling now. “What could be so important that it has to take place on Saturday and Sunday?”

  “I’m sorry, but you know I can’t discuss a case with you any more than you’d discuss your cases with me. I have committed to work for my client this weekend and that’s that.”

  “Really, Molly, this is becoming ridiculous,” Daniel snapped. “This sort of obsession with work was fine when you were alone in the city and struggling to make ends meet. But you don’t have to anymore. Soon we’ll be married and I’ll be providing for you. Tell your client that something else came up, for God’s sake.”

  I felt myself flushing as I faced him defiantly. “I took the case. I can’t back out now. I wouldn’t expect you to put aside one of your investigations because I wanted you to come shopping with me, would I?”

  “I hardly think you can compare my professional life to yours, or compare a chance to plan our wedding to an afternoon’s shopping,” he said in clipped voice.

  “As to our professional lives, I don’t see a difference,” I said. “You know how often you are required to work for days without a break, and at weekends too. And anyway, this case will soon be over. Two more weeks at the most. Then you can have my undivided attention, I promise.”

  “And you have given me your word that this will positively, absolutely be the last assignment you take on, haven’t you?”

  I was about to nod, but I was beginning to get angry with this bullying treatment. “So you’re prepared to look after me from this moment onward, are you?” I demanded in the same aggressive tone that he was using. “Because somehow I have to eat between now and the wedding and I have no other source of income. And I’ll need a trousseau, won’t I? And a wedding dress. I’d not be expecting my groom to pay for those and I have no family, as you well know.”

  He swallowed and took a half step back at my sudden attack. “Molly, please. I only want what’s best for you and I’m sick of worrying about what might happen to you next. Besides, you’ll need time to plan a wedding and have a trousseau made,” he continued. “I’m sure you haven’t had a chance to find a good dressmaker in New York and I haven’t had any indication that you’re a keen seamstress.”

  I laughed. “I can patch and darn when completely necessary. That’s about it.”

  “That’s why it’s such a pity you can’t come with me tomorrow. My mother is a dab hand with a needle. If you stay up with her for a while, she’d be happy to help you with the wedding dress and all the rest. You won’t even need to pay a dressmaker.”

  Oh, Lord—he’d reminded me of my fitting with the other Daniel in the morning. Wouldn’t this Daniel be surprised if he knew that I had already hired a top-notch dressmaker to make me something that involved spangles and a lot of whalebone? I suppose I must have grinned.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Me, picturing myself making a wedding dress,” I said hastily. “I must go, Daniel. Please give my fondest regards to your mother and tell her I hope to see her soon.”

  He nodded and gave me a perfunctory peck on the cheek.

  “Don’t be so grouchy when you can’t get your own way,” I said. “I would enjoy staying with your mother when the weather is like this and I’d even be prepared to learn how to sew and cook. There, I can’t say fairer than that, can I?”

  “I suppose not.” He managed a smile.

  “Now I have to get to work. I don’t want to be fired from my last case.”

  “Oh, and Molly,” he said, grabbing my arm as I turned to go. “You read the postscript to my note, didn’t you? I don’t know what you thought you were doing at that theater against my express wishes, but I don’t want you going near it again. It was highly embarrassing to have one of my men report that a theater stage doorkeeper had described a certain Miss Molly Murphy as lurking about suspiciously and up to no good.”

  He waited for me to say something. Wisely I stayed silent, so he continued. “Just exactly what made him suspicious of you?”

  “Daniel, it’s a storm in a teacup,” I said. “I told you that Bess Houdini invited me to see the show from backstage. What is so strange about that?”

  “And then when the second accident happened—to the Houdinis this time, you thought you’d come back and ask a few questions?”

  “I may have asked one or two.” I gave a nonchalant shrug. “I was worried about poor Bess. So I actually went back to the theater to find out where she was staying so that I could go and see if she was fully recovered.”

  “Hmmph,” Daniel said. “Go and see if she was fully recovered in your case means go and do some snooping, I suspect.”

  “Not at all. It was an act of mercy.”

  “There must have been something more than that to make the stage doorkeeper suspicious enough to report you to a policeman.”

  “All right, if you really want to know, that old man was suspicious because he thought I was a newspaper reporter. He told me so. He thought I was trying to get a scoop on Houdini.” I returned the peck on the cheek. “I must run.”

  Daniel sighed. “Why couldn’t I have chosen a young lady who played the piano and practiced embroidery?” he called after me.

  “You could have done so, remember?” I called back. “At least I’m not boring.”

  “That I don’t dispute,” he said, laughing as I disappeared down the stairs.

  Sixteen

  I arrived at the theater after the show had started.

  “Good evening, Ted,” I said to the doorkeeper, giving him an innocent smile. “Mr. Houdini is expecting me. I’ll go on through, shall I?”

  He scowled at me. “Yes, he told me you’d be turning up again like the proverbial bad penny. But let me give you a word of warning, girlie—if all this chumminess is in aid of getting a good story, you’ll be sorry. Guys like Harry Houdini—they don’t take well to being hoodwinked.”

  “I can assure you that I’m not here to hoodwink anyone,” I said, “least of all Mr. Houdini. Why have you been so suspicious of me? Have other people been coming around, trying to bother the Houdinis? Other, less desirable sort of people, shall we say?”

  His eyes narrowed and he squinted at me. “Less desirable than what? The usual riffraff we get around at the stage door? There’s been plenty wanting to get an exclusive interview with him, that’s for sure.”

  “I meant anyone you suspected had come to threaten him—like that young man we saw the other night—the one you said must have come from front of house.”

  “You know what’s wrong with you, don’t you,” he grunted. “You ask too many questions. It ain’t healthy. Curiosity killed the cat, remember that.”

  “I’ll remember,” I said.

  I walked on into the theater. If that wasn’t a direct warning, what was? Old Ted knew something and he wasn’t about to tell me. My only reassurance was that he had spoken to the police at some stage, when he had reported me as a suspicious character. I could only hope that he had reported any other suspicious characters at the same time and that the police were now investigating.

  Music was playing and the stage was ablaze with light as I entered the backstage area. A burst of applause came from the audience as a dove flew across the stage. Marvo was currently performing.

  I jumped as a hand grabbed my forearm.

  “Where do you think you’re going, miss?” a voice hissed in my ear. It was one of the stagehands I had encountered before—the surly one. Ernest, I believe his name was. “No outsiders permitted during the show.”

  “I’m here because Houdini asked me to come.”

  “What for?”

  “Not that it’s any business of yours, but I’m a friend of the family. Go up to his dressing room and
ask him if you don’t believe me.”

  “I’m not allowed up to performers’ dressing rooms. You must know that. Besides, I’m working.”

  “Then you’ll have to trust my word, won’t you? Now please let go of me.”

  Renewed applause signaled the end of Marvo’s act and the side curtains moved as he swept off past us. Ernest let go of my arm and rushed to remove Marvo’s props from the stage. I took the opportunity to get away and position myself where I had been sitting the night before. I could sense Ernest taking another look at me, but he didn’t say any more. Clearly I was an object of suspicion for more than one of the workers at this theater. That fact was also confirmed by Marvo the Magnificent. As he came past me to retrieve his props he stared at me in surprise.

  “You again?” he said in a low voice.

  “I’ve come to support Houdini because his wife can’t be here tonight,” I whispered sweetly because the announcer was already introducing the next act.

  “I heard he’s got an eye for the ladies.” He gave me a knowing smirk. “Providing support, are you?” The smirk turned into something close to a leer.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m actually Bess’s friend, not his,” I said. “She asked me to come to give him moral support tonight because she can’t be here.”

  “How is she?” He whispered because the announcer had finished and the curtains were opening. “Out of danger? Or was that all just one of her bouts of hysterics?”

  There was applause as Billy Robinson came out onstage.

  “Recovering, thankfully,” I said. “I visited her today.”

  “Strange thing, that trunk,” he said. He put his finger to his lips as the applause died away and the act started.

  I watched him go about his business, then turned my attention to Billy Robinson and his card tricks. He seemed like a nice, unassuming man and surely nobody that would see Houdini as a rival. I supposed that he could be jealous of the latter’s stardom and large earnings, however. People have done worse things out of spite and it’s often the quiet ones who keep their feelings to themselves.