Saving Houdini

by Michael Redhill

  “Yes, ma’am,” Walter said awkwardly.

  “That means you must have a quarter, boy. Give it here.” She moved the window block aside and stuck her long, thin hand through the opening. Walter put a quarter into her palm.

  “Sorry,” he said to Dash.

  “That’s still seventy-five cents you owe me!” She got up and flipped a sign in the window that read SOLD OUT. People behind them groaned. “Bring a dollar twenty-five if you two want to get in next week!”

  She stood up and exited the little box office through a door in the back. Walter’s shoulders sank. “I forgot she worked here.”

  “You’re pretty famous in these parts.”

  “A buck for a window! I paid some of it … jeepers.”

  “We can’t give up.”

  “Whadder we gonna do?”

  “Follow me.”

  There was an open alleyway on the east side of the Century and Dash nipped into it. It was dark, but at the mouth there was a sign that said THE FINEST IN CINEMA PROJECTION and beside that were a couple of painted faces. Dash recognized one of them as Charlie Chaplin’s.

  Behind the cinema was a gravel service road. Two young men were unloading ferns in pots and a couple pieces of painted scenery from a horse-drawn cart. They shuttled back and forth between the truck and a door in the back of the theatre.

  “Grab a fern!” Walter said. When the coast was clear, they both ducked into the back of the cart and grabbed a plant.

  “I saw this in a movie once, I’m sure of it,” Dash said.

  They walked the two heavy pots into the back of the theatre and put them down. Dash grabbed Walt’s sleeve and pulled him aside. “In here,” he said. He went through a door into a stairwell.

  “What’re we gonna do?” Walt asked.

  “Come up with a plan.”

  Light filtered under the door and a bulb burned on a landing above. They heard another door open on an upper level, and footsteps came down.

  “Follow me,” Walter said, and he led Dash behind and under the stairs. It was darker there, and it smelled of mould. “Shh.”

  They sat there in the dark and waited. After a while, Walter gave a single glurk of laughter, and then he did it again, and Dash elbowed him.

  “You want us to get found?”

  “No,” Walter said, but even in the dark, Dash could hear him smiling.

  The rest of the time until curtain passed slowly, and every few minutes a small snort, followed by an urgently whispered sorry, came from Walter Gibson. Dash pressed his lips together and tried to remind himself that he was probably in mortal danger.

  Finally, they heard some applause and then the sound of a voice. They couldn’t make out what it was saying.

  “I don’t know if the program outside is the real order of the evening,” Dash whispered. “If it isn’t, Blumenthal could be on first.”

  “So let’s try to get in.”

  “What if we get caught?”

  “We’ll say we’re unloading ferns.”

  Dash thought about it. “Let’s wait until we hear applause. You know, between acts. Then maybe there’ll be a lot of people moving around and we’ll blend in.”

  “Good thinking,” Walter said.

  They heard singing through the wall. Horrible, shrieky lady-singing. Then a man replied to her, singing in a rumbly, vibrating voice. Someone was playing a tinkly piano. At the next explosion of applause, the two boys slid out from their hiding place and walked through the door. Backstage swarmed with activity. The ferns were being moved deeper into the interior of the building and pieces of set were coming out. A large woman in a dress plastered with feathers came hurrying back, peeling her eyelashes off. “Thenk you, thenk you very much,” she said in a plummy British accent to everyone who passed her, including those who had said nothing to her at all.

  “Excellent rendition,” Walter said to her.

  “My deepest grrratitude,” she said, rolling her rs. “I am always moved by the musical sensibility one finds in the Colonies. Now come along, Roland,” she called to a tall, thin man in a tuxedo. He was mopping the sweat from his brow.

  Dash and Walt carried on. Soon they were standing close to the wings where some other performers were waiting to go on. “Here,” Dash whispered. “We can stand back here by the ropes and wait until it’s his turn.”

  They settled back against the side wall where some thick ropes hung. The next act was a little playlet that the audience found uproarious, about a man who comes home to find his wife being “wooed” by another man, whatever that meant. All three of them chased each other around the stage, except for when they suddenly stopped and sang about their problems. Then more chasing. They came off as hot and sweaty as Roland had.

  After that, there was a shooting demonstration by a couple of tall fellows in spurs and leather pants. Boone Helm and Liberty Sleppo: expert shootists. Their thing was keeping a tin plate airborne by shooting pellets at it. Helm shouted, “I et my old pardna, Liberty, don’ make me etcha too!” They danced around each other going bang bang.

  Walter was becoming exasperated. “Are you sure your magician is playing tonight?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “At least this hasn’t cost you anything,” Walt said.

  “I told you— Hey, look.”

  The emcee was coming back on. He gave a little cough into the microphone.

  “And now, it is the Century’s distinctive pleasure to be able to offer to you next a magic act of such prosaic peculiarity, such paucity of pomp, indeed of such prestidigitory imPROBability, that I think you will agree it is one of the most impressive spectacles of its kind.”

  A muscular man in a soiled undershirt jostled Dash and Walter out of the way. “You two shouldn’t be ‘ere,” he said, reaching to loosen a rope. A length of it zipped upwards, making a high zinging sound. Then, without another word, he moved on to his next task.

  “To be sure,” continued the emcee, “you have never seen such stylings as those of our next performer, the one, the only—please hold your applause!—Blumenthal and Wolfgang!”

  He swept his arm off to his right—toward the other side of the stage—and a thin man emerged from the wings. He was a ragged-looking person of about thirty, with black hair down to his shoulders. He held a hand up to greet the crowd and a ripple of laughter went through it. He was rather handsome, but slight, and his sole apparatuses were a beat-up pasteboard suitcase and a folding table. He was the only person onstage. Dash didn’t know if he was Blumenthal or Wolfgang.

  The man came to centre stage and flicked the table open. One of its four legs had been repaired with rope and a tree branch. The table wobbled, and he had to put the suitcase to one side to steady it. It was something of a balancing act, but after a moment or so he had it settled and he stood back, his hands open to catch it if it suddenly collapsed. Finally, he assumed the pose—somewhat—of a professional magician: his head held high, his hands out to his sides. The audience laughed again.

  “Good evening,” he muttered. He brought one of his arms sharply forward and made a fist. Nothing happened. He gestured with the other hand, and a tiny spark of red appeared atop his fist. It spread. It was a petal. Another appeared.

  Of course, Dash thought, the magic rose.

  Blumenthal circled his fingers over his fist and the whole bud showed on top of it. Then the stem appeared, and he winced comically as the thorns poked out one by one. At last he held a single, long-stemmed red rose in his hand. He passed it to a woman in the front row, but to just a smattering of applause. Disappointment flickered across the magician’s face.

  Now he gestured broadly at his suitcase and made a sort of bow. He raised the suitcase’s lid, propped it up, and removed a cheap-looking magic wand. He began to wave it but became distracted by something in the case and reached forward and stirred the air. The wand flew out of his hand and vanished into the suitcase. The lid slammed shut and the makeshift table collapsed.

  Walt
looked at Dash. This is the guy who’s supposed to send you home?

  The magician muttered and set up his equipment again. When he opened the suitcase a second time, the wand suddenly poked out of it and he took hold of its end. But something in the suitcase had the other side. The man struggled with the wand, wiggling it back and forth, and then a grey squirrel’s head popped out of the case. It had the other end of the wand in its mouth. They heard it chittering angrily, yanking hard on one end of the wand as the magician held the other. They were having a tug of war.

  “No, Wolfgang!” the man shouted. “Hey! Hergekommen!” The audience was shrieking with cruel delight. He rapped his knuckles on the open half of the lid to scare the squirrel into dropping the wand.

  Dash put his head in his hands. It wasn’t supposed to be funny, he could see that. Blumenthal was hopeless.

  Wolfgang had bested his master. Now he was running all over the stage with the wand in his mouth, sassing him triumphantly. Blumenthal gave chase, but the squirrel was quickly up the curtain on the other side of the stage. Once at the level of the balcony, he leaped off the curtain and ran, tail twirling, along the railing.

  “Uh, my fine ladies and gentlemen, I request your attention. Here, let me propose … I— Look here, in this hat of mine. I have a length of rope here— No reason to give that badly trained creature all your attention. Look how much rope is here in this hat.”

  Five pieces of dirty rope hung from one of his fists. No one was paying attention to him. Someone had turned a spot on Wolfgang as he sprung from balustrade to chandelier, from chandelier to wall sconce, the whole time holding the wand in his mouth and chirruping.

  Blumenthal bravely soldiered on. Dash focused on him from the wings, moving a little closer to the stage. The man was showing the five ropes of differing lengths, yanking them taut between his fists, ignoring the gales of hilarity coming from the auditorium. His hands were steady. He took the five lengths and made two of them into one, and then he made two others into one, and then he balled the whole mess up into his hands and suddenly shook out a single rope, more than ten feet long. It lay on the stage, but there was only scattered applause.

  He had done it well—usually, magicians did the rope trick with only three ropes, and it was hard enough that way—and Dash clapped for him and nudged Walt with his elbow.

  Blumenthal acknowledged them with a surprised sideways glance into the wings, and then he paused, turned, and held his hand out toward them. But the audience had had their share of Blumenthal’s act and his quarrelsome squirrel. They began to boo him.

  “Now, now,” he said. “Why don’t we do some magic with rings for you nice people?” He reached his fingers into a vest pocket and took out a small, black steel ring. But the booing only increased. Blumenthal smiled out at them, and then replaced the ring in his pocket and clapped his hands twice. Wolfgang suddenly bounded back onto the stage and went right into the suitcase. The lid closed as the table rocked beneath it and Blumenthal’s wand rolled across the stage right to his feet. He picked it up, took the handle of the suitcase, and kicked the table closed with the toe of his battered shoe.

  Then he took a low, gracious bow, and left the stage.

  There were catcalls mixed in with a little applause.

  “Did you see that?” said Dash.

  “I did,” replied Walter. “He was horrible!”

  “We gotta talk to him!”

  “He doesn’t know what he’s doing!”

  “He does. He’s a magician, he … he did the rope trick really well, don’t you think?”

  “You think this guy invented a time machine out of soap? He’s rubbish. I’m going home.” Walt started for the rear doors. “You better get me my quarter back.”

  Dash grabbed him by the elbow. “Come and see him with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re in this now.” He looked straight into Walt’s eyes. “Aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Walt. “Someone here is a bit goofy, and I think it’s you.”

  “Maybe,” Dash said. “But how will you know for sure if you don’t stick around?”

  Walt was looking highly unconvinced. “I’ll go with you. Just to see what happens. If you’re taking me for a ride, though … you’re gonna regret it. I know fisticuffs!”

  9

  A pair of small dogs had taken the stage with their trainer, and they were jumping over chairs and standing on their hind legs. The boys went into the clamorous hallways behind. There was a warren of rooms scattered along its length, and Walter hesitated, flattening himself against a wall before a corner.

  “Do you really know where to look for him?”

  “He’s gotta be back here somewhere.” Dash retreated a couple of steps to stand beside him against the wall. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, you know.”

  “I’m not afraid! Do I look afraid?”

  “So come on, then—”

  “I’m also no sucker,” he said.

  “There’s no way I can outrun you, and I couldn’t take a single punch from you, so why would I mess around? Look, he probably won’t be here for long! And I can go on my own, but …” He shrugged. “It’s, like, your loss, dude.”

  “What’s like my loss? Dude?”

  “Never mind.” Dash snuck around the corner into the dark hall alone, but he knew—he had an instinct—that Walter Gibson would be right behind him. He took a few more steps before looking over his shoulder.

  “Don’t want anyone to take advantage of ya,” Walt said. “You’re not from around here.”

  They walked side by side, each checking the shadows for surprises, and soon they emerged from the other end of the hall into another dimly lit corridor. There were people here; a couple of the doors were lit from behind. A woman in a ballerina costume stood in front of them, smoking a cigarette, and behind her, two acrobats were stretching their muscles.

  Dash whispered, “Look like you know what you’re doing,” and he stepped into the light. The dancer started. “Oh, excuse me, ma’am,” he said to her. “We’re just going to our dressing room.”

  “You boys frightened me,” she said, with one hand against her chest. “What time are you on?”

  “Soon,” said Dash, walking past her.

  “What’s your act?” rasped a wiry-looking acrobat.

  “Time travel,” Walt said.

  Dash began trying doors. In the distance, they heard the laughter of the crowd and then there was a drumroll.

  “If I was him, I’d have made tracks by now, before the tomatoes ripen.”

  “You better hope he’s still here,” Dash said, “or you might be bringing me boiled eggs for the rest of your life …” He was about to knock on a door, when they heard a familiar-sounding voice from across the hall.

  “Forget it! No, you are not getting an acorn right now, no. You’ve made a fool of me for the last time!”

  Dash went to that door and knocked.

  “What is it now?” came the voice, deeply aggrieved.

  “Is that Mr. Blumenthal?”

  “No one here but us sqvirrels.”

  “Please, sir,” Dash said through the door, “may I speak to you, please? It’s very important.”

  “Go away.”

  Walt pushed Dash aside. He put his mouth to the door. “Your rope trick was really … very splendid,” he said. “Sir.”

  “Oh, well, humble thanks, then. Now go away.” There was silence for a long moment, and then the door finally opened. The magician stood there in an undershirt, his suspenders hanging down on either side. “You didn’t go away.”

  “You’re a good magician. We were watching,” said Dash.

  “How old are you boys?”

  They answered in unison: “Twelve—”

  “—almost,” Walt added.

  “Well, thanks for the compliment, almost-twelve-year-old persons. Now, so long.”

  He began to close the door, but Walter put his palm against it. “
Uh, could I just get an autograph, or something? Please, sir?”

  Blumenthal stared at them through the half-closed door. “You liked the rope trick? The furshlugginer rope trick?”

  “Yes,” said Dash. “It was a very original effect. Five ropes. I’ve never seen it done with five ropes.”

  “Yeah, how’d you do it anyway?” Walt asked.

  Blumenthal stared at him through the crack in the door.

  “You don’t ask that,” Dash said. “Mr. Blumenthal, did you invent that, um, version of the trick?”

  “I did …” The door drifted open a little. He stepped back and it floated open all the way. He turned and went back to the dressing-room table, muttering to himself. “Is it too much to ask maybe a girl comes backstage and asks for an autograph? No, I get two boys who don’t have whiskers yet, fulla questions …” They considered themselves invited and entered. “In Minsk I vanished elephants,” he said, his voice strangling in theatrical anguish. “But here? They don’t care. They want to look at a fat lady sing and two geniuses shoot a plate. Oh, but what is this? A rope trick with five ropes? No thank you.”

  “Did you train Wolfgang to do all that?”

  “What train?” he said, shooting a nasty glare at the cage that sat on the floor. Wolfgang was curled up in the bottom of it. “He wants his own show! Such a big squirrel-about-town.” He stared at the animal. There was a reluctant affection in his eyes. “For this I rescued you from Han Ping?”

  “Han Ping?”

  “He was riding tricycles for Han Ping! With a little top hat. Such dignity.”

  “Mr. Blumenthal?”

  He looked back and forth between them. “What is it? Whaddya want?”

  “I’m just wondering … why you don’t do some of your … other tricks?” Dash asked.

  “For these yankels? They wouldn’t know a good magic trick if it jumped up and vanished on their nose.”

  “But you have other tricks, right?”

  “Yeah, sure I do,” the magician said, using a matchstick to pick his teeth. “I can make a ribeye disappear too.”

  “What about …?”

  “What?”