The Last Illusion Read online

  The men nodded again. A drumroll started in the orchestra pit. Bess held open the velvet bag and the men helped Houdini into it. They drew it tight and tied it shut, then they forced the bag, with Houdini in it, into the trunk. The lid was closed, the locks snapped shut. The men returned to their seats.

  Now the drumroll increased in tempo. Bess rotated the cabinet so that it concealed the trunk from the audience.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the theater manager announced. “This trunk has about enough air to keep a person alive for about seven minutes. Of course inside a thick velvet bag, that’s another matter altogether. A couple of minutes at the most. We have men standing by offstage with axes, just in case.”

  As he finished speaking Houdini sprang up from the cabinet, his hands above his head to reveal he was free of his bonds. The audience broke into thunderous applause. Then Houdini wheeled aside the cabinet. The trunk was still locked, the great fetters quite undisturbed.

  “Let’s open it, shall we?” he said, a mischievous smile on his face. “Who knows what it may contain.”

  He bent to open one of the locks. Then he frowned, tried again, rattled it.

  “The lock is stuck!” he called out. “It’s jammed. Quick—where’s the key? My jacket, quickly.”

  Someone handed him his frock coat and he felt desperately inside. “Where’s the key?” he demanded. “It’s gone. Someone run up to my dressing room and get the spare key. Go!”

  At this point a muffled voice shouted, “Harry, get me out of here!”

  Bess was now inside the trunk.

  Houdini summoned stagehands to help him. Bess was now pounding from inside the trunk.

  “Get me out! I can’t breathe!”

  “She’s already been in there nearly five minutes, Mr. Houdini.” The stage manager came to join them. “We can’t wait for the key. Bring the ax.”

  One of the stagehands reappeared with an ax.

  “Go carefully, that’s my wife in there.” Harry said.

  The stagehand swung the ax and cracked the lid of the trunk. Houdini himself tore apart the trunk lid and finally managed to open it. He and the stagehands dragged out the velvet bag, containing what seemed to be a lifeless figure. As the neck of the bag was untied, Bess lay unconscious on the stage.

  “My God, I’ve killed her. Bess, baby, honey, don’t die!” Harry shouted, slapping at her cheeks.

  Bess gasped, coughed, and tried to sit up. “What were you doing?” she demanded. “Trying to kill me?”

  For the second time in a week the theater manager dismissed the audience before the end of the show. A doctor was summoned. I had stood up the moment the ax was brought onstage. Now I dragged out my chair and assisted Bess to it. She sank onto it, still white-faced and gasping. Someone produced a glass of water. Harry was on his knees beside her.

  “Sweetie pie, baby, I don’t know what went wrong. I swear I don’t. As if I would want anything bad to happen to you. Are you okay? My God, if they hadn’t had that ax nearby . . .”

  “I can’t do this no more, Harry,” Bess said. She was crying now, her body jerking with great sobs. “I can’t live with us risking our lives every night. I want out. I want you to find another profession.”

  “Are you crazy?” Harry rose to his feet now. “Just when we’re hitting the big time? Bess, baby, we’re going to be big stars. I mean really big. You want me to buy you a fancy house in New York City? A nice home in the country? Just a little longer, then you can have it. Anything you want, baby. Then I swear I’ll quit. We’ll raise chickens, okay?”

  At this Bess laughed through her tears and pushed him away. “You know I hate chickens,” she said.

  “Come on, I’ll take you up to the dressing room and you can have some of your calming mixture and lie down,” he said. He swept her up into his arms as if she weighed nothing and started to walk away with her. I stood watching, undecided as to whether I dared follow or not. This option was taken from me by the theater manager who fell into step at Harry’s shoulder.

  “So what went wrong, Mr. Houdini?” he demanded.

  “The lock jammed. Accidents happen,” Harry said, not turning back to him.

  “Two accidents in a week? Are you trying to shut me down?” I heard the manager’s voice echoing in that vast backstage area.

  I was left alone onstage, not sure what to do next. Clearly Bess was in no state to see me. Did this now mean I was out of a job before it started? I started to make my way from the stage, unnoticed by everyone. Just my luck that a lock would jam on the night I was supposed to be introduced as her replacement. Then I froze, standing beside a mock pillar in the backstage darkness. Had Bess had some kind of premonition that this was going to happen to her, so had she sought me out to replace her and to be suffocated instead? In which case it was indeed just my luck that the accident had happened too early.

  I tiptoed out of the theater, feeling like an invisible ghost. I should make a rule for myself: never deal with hysterical women, I told myself. I remembered the last time I had been employed in the theater by an actress who had lied to me and was using me for her own ends. Was no one in the theater to be trusted? I had been misled and used on two occasions now. Which then brought another train of thought into my mind. Was what I had witnessed just another illusion? Had Bess arranged for the lock to jam so that she could have an attack of hysterics onstage and thus claim to her husband that she was afraid to perform anymore?

  I realized I was dealing with a world in which nothing was what it seemed. The smartest thing I could do was walk out of this theater and not look back.

  Nine

  I was feeling both angry and relieved as I rode the trolley back home. I hated being used, and I was relieved that I was not the one almost suffocating in that trunk. Had Bess really had a premonition or was there information about a threat that she had kept from me? I had heard that theater folk were superstitious—so had Lily had a similar premonition when she climbed into that box to be sawn in half, I wondered. Then naturally I had to connect the two incidents. Bess had come to see me because she feared that someone was about to kill her husband. She had seemed genuinely worried. So was it possible that this was an attempt not on her life but on Harry’s? Perhaps the person who had rigged the lock on the trunk had expected it to be Harry’s coffin, not Bess’s. Any way you looked at it, someone had tried to kill two people in one week at the same theater and that was too much of a coincidence. I couldn’t walk away from this case until I knew more. My curiosity just wouldn’t let me.

  Of course my mother often told me that my curiosity would bring me to a bad end. She probably wasn’t wrong, but one of my faults is not knowing when to back down. I resolved to go and see the Houdinis in the morning. It would be only natural that I paid a call on my poor, dear friend Bess to see how she was faring. And I should also pay a visit to Daniel. For one thing I should probably try to patch things up with him. I could understand his frustration with my refusal to act like a normal young bride-to-be. And the best way I knew to do this—at least the best way that wouldn’t lead to complications before we were married—was to cook him a nice meal. Whoever said that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach was perfectly right. I’d also like to add that a good meal is also the best way to soften up a man if you want information out of him—and I was dying to find out if Daniel had made any progress on the disappearance of Lily and Scarpelli. All in all a busy day ahead tomorrow.

  I arrived home and got ready for bed, but it was too warm in my bedroom, my brain was now racing, and sleep was impossible. So I got out a piece of paper and sat at my window, savoring the gentle night breeze on my face and arms as I jotted down my thoughts.

  There were several explanations for what I had witnessed tonight:

  a. The trunk locks jamming had been a nasty accident, which Bess, being psychic, had foreseen.

  b. Bess planned the whole thing to look like an accident so that she’d have an excuse to drop out of the act a
nd let me take her place.

  c. Someone in that theater was trying to kill illusionists or at least ruin their acts.

  If the last, then the best possibility was one of the other illusionists, those two men who opened the bill with their doves and their card tricks. Marvo had actually stated to me that Houdini had raised the bar too high for all the illusionists and that the audience was no longer satisfied with just a clever act. They wanted danger. They wanted excitement. And he had been prowling around backstage, clearly annoyed that I was hanging around and might be in a position to watch him.

  Then there was the quiet Mr. Robinson. I should check into him also. I decided I could dismiss Abdullah the sword swallower as he had come straight from Coney Island and this show was clearly a step up for his career, so he wouldn’t want anything to happen that might ruin it for him.

  So far I had left out the rest of the backstage crew. Any one of those stagehands could be a failed illusionist or merely an antisocial person with a grudge. And as I had found out, it wasn’t that hard to sneak into the backstage area. The young man whose confrontation with Houdini I had overheard had somehow gained entrance without passing the stage doorkeeper. I thought about that confrontation. Houdini had definitely sounded rattled, or at the very least annoyed, and as for the other man—well what he said had sounded very much like the sort of threat that might come from a gang. Houdini was supposed to have delivered something and hadn’t done so. He had stated he’d only deliver it to the boss in person. Money of some kind, then. Blackmail, protection money . . .

  I stopped at this thought. Houdini hadn’t delivered and his act had gone wrong. Was that a warning from a gang as to what could happen to him if the money wasn’t forthcoming? Were any of the powerful gangs now demanding protection money of theatrical performers? That would be another thing to ask Daniel in the morning.

  The sound of a distant police whistle and the clatter of feet on cobbles made me pause and look up from my thoughts. In a backwater like Patchin Place it was easy to forget that I was in the heart of a big city. But every now and then something happened to remind me that crimes were happening every minute. Someone was having a pocket picked or jewelry stolen or their head bashed in at this very moment, and I was never completely safe. I stood up, half resolved to close my open window, then told myself that my nerves were on edge and I was being silly. But it did make me pause to wonder if perhaps Daniel was right. Had I really had my fill of this kind of work and the danger it brought me and wouldn’t it be wonderful to know I was safe, loved, and protected, and would never have to jump from a rooftop or take a fearful risk again? I had half promised Daniel that this would be my last case. Did I really mean it?

  The morning dawned with the sun shining in fiercely through my window at six o’clock and the day promising to be a scorcher. Not ideal weather to be running around on a case. If I were married, I told myself, I’d go to stay with Daniel’s mother out in Westchester during this kind of weather. I’d sit on a shady porch, sip lemonade, and play croquet. Maybe one day my husband would be able to afford to build me a house on Long Island, or on the Hudson, where I could escape from the heat in the summer while he toiled on in the city. The idea of being a wife was beginning to show some benefits after all!

  I got up, washed, and dressed. There was no way I could wear Oona Sheehan’s theatrical two-piece on a day like this. I’d expire with heat. The Houdinis would just have to put up with me in my usual muslin, however untheatrical it looked. There was no point in my going to visit them too early: theatrical folk are notoriously late risers. So now I was all ready, champing at the bit, with nowhere to go.

  Ryan had offered to take me to his dressmaker, of course, but not before ten o’clock. And I wasn’t going to order a costume at this stage, not until I knew a lot more about what had happened and what would be involved. I decided I could always pay a call on Daniel at his rooms, just in case he had not gone into work early. I’d bring supplies and promise to come by later to cook him dinner. If that wasn’t extending the olive branch, then I don’t know what was. I went across to the market and bought lettuce and cucumber for a salad. I even threw caution to the winds and purchased a tomato. Then I went to the delicatessen and came away with some lovely slices of cold boneless leg of pork, stuffed with sage and onion. Some small potatoes and we were ready for a delicious summer meal.

  I took the Sixth Avenue El up to Twenty-third Street and walked toward Daniel’s apartment on the corner of Ninth Avenue with great anticipation. Our time spent together recently had been tense and uneasy. I suppose it’s always that way before a marriage. I realized I was possibly being the difficult one, unwilling to let go to one ounce of independence. If I hadn’t known people like Sid and Gus and Nellie Bly, that newspaper reporter whose risky exploits are legend, I suppose I should just have succumbed to the notion that wives were supposed to be submissive. But I had never been submissive to anybody, even when I lived in a cottage in Ireland and we were as poor as church mice.

  Ten

  I reached Daniel’s building, already feeling the heat of the day at this hour, and made my way up the stairs. If he wasn’t at home, then I’d get the key from Mrs. O’Shea, who lived on the ground floor, and have the meal all ready for him in his meat safe when he returned. I had just tapped on his door when I thought I heard voices. The voices stopped and footsteps came to the door.

  Daniel opened the door. “Yes?” he demanded impatiently, then he saw me. “Molly! Is something wrong?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I’ve come to make amends for my behavior last night. I come bearing gifts—or rather the ingredients to make you a nice meal.”

  He gave a rather embarrassed smile. “Why, that’s good of you. Much appreciated. Unfortunately I’ve got company at the moment or I’d ask you in.” He held out his hands to take the basket from me.

  “Don’t leave the little lady standing outside, Sullivan. Invite her in, for God’s sake. I’m anxious to know what kind of young woman comes to cook for you.”

  Daniel’s face flushed red. “This is actually my intended, Mr. Wilkie. Come on in, Molly, and let me introduce you.”

  I stepped into the room. A pleasant-looking man with light brown hair and neat mustache was seated in Daniel’s leather armchair. He was probably in his forties and had a distinguished air about him, but he rose to his feet as I came in and gave me an encouraging smile.

  “So you are the young woman who has finally managed to rein in the wayward Captain Sullivan, are you?” He held out his hand. “John Wilkie. A pleasure to meet you.”

  “Mr. Wilkie, this is Molly Murphy, my future bride,” Daniel said.

  Wilkie chuckled. “So you’re marrying an Irish lass. That should make for a lively household.”

  Daniel smiled. He was normally the sort of man who was supremely self-confident. There was a swagger about him as if he knew he held an important position and expected respect. To see him so deferential and embarrassed reinforced my own feelings that this was indeed an important man. I was curious to find out who he was and what he was doing in Daniel’s rooms at breakfast time.

  “Do you live in New York, Mr. Wilkie, or are you just visiting?” I asked.

  “I’m up from our nation’s capital,” he said. “Captain Sullivan is aiding me in a little matter of forged banknotes. You’ve heard about it, maybe?”

  I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to have heard about it or not. “I believe I read about it in the papers,” I said cautiously.

  Wilkie threw back his head and laughed. “She’ll make you an ideal mate, Sullivan. Not going to divulge a thing. Well done, my dear.”

  “In truth Daniel really doesn’t mention many details of his work to me,” I said. “Just as I don’t confide details of my work to him.”

  I saw a flash of annoyance or warning cross Daniel’s face.

  “You are a working woman then?” Wilkie asked.

  “Yes, I run a small detective agency,” I said.

/>   The smile faded. “Good God—pardon the profanity—but you have to admit that yours is not a usual occupation for a young woman.”

  “Nor one I fully approve of,” Daniel said before I could answer. “She has put herself in harm’s way too many times. I, for one, shall be glad when we are married and she can settle to more normal female pursuits.”

  “Please take a seat, Miss Murphy.” Mr. Wilkie offered me the armchair and perched on an upright chair himself. “I find this most intriguing. Sullivan, I wouldn’t say no to another cup of your good coffee.”

  “With pleasure, sir.” Daniel shot me another warning glance as he retreated to the kitchen. “Don’t say anything that might prove embarrassing to me.” I heard the words as clearly as if he’d spoken them out loud.

  “So what kind of cases do you handle, Miss Murphy? Or do you just do the paperwork and have men out on the streets doing the actual detection?”

  “No, I’m actually an agency of one at the moment,” I said. “And I handle all kinds of cases. Nothing criminal, of course,” I added hastily, even though this wasn’t quite true. “Anything from locating missing persons to proving a claim to an inheritance. And sometimes divorces, of course; although I find the whole idea rather repugnant.”

  “Fascinating.” He nodded. “And how do people react to a female detective?”

  “Not very well, on the whole,” I said. “Men are loath to confide in me. Women are always suspicious of one of their gender who does a man’s job. And there are many places to which I can’t gain entry—saloons, gentlemens’ clubs. On the other hand, a woman is better suited to detective work in some ways.”

  “Such as?”

  “Women are more observant. They pick up on tiny, insignificant details—why a woman is wearing a particular pair of gloves that don’t really go with her dress. That kind of thing. And they also are better at sensing interaction between people. They can sense tension better than men. And they can blend into a crowd more easily. The only thing we can’t do is fight or make a hasty retreat. Skirts and petticoats are a confounded nuisance, especially when being chased or trying to climb a wall.”