The Illusionist's Apprentice

by Kristy Cambron

  Both he and Connor had been assigned to the case as silent observers—proof that the federal government would investigate claims of fraud into characters who would mislead the public. But they were on strict orders not to get involved—unless, of course, they had to keep the peace.

  If he had his way, Elliot would cuff Stapleton and haul him before a judge on principle alone. To manipulate the hearts of hurting people was beyond dastardly, but this man seemed to be almost enjoying it.

  “So what is truth? I seek to enlighten you. With no trickery. No illusions . . .” Stapleton punched a fist in the air, professing, “Just plain and simple power from the other side. Power to give you back what you’ve lost . . . And I shall put this power on display today, right before you.”

  Elliot’s brows tipped up. Well, Houdini may have dealt a blow to this man’s career once, but Stapleton certainly has no confidence problem now.

  “That’s right. My dear members of the press,” Stapleton shouted, looking down at the crowd with a thick layer of sympathy. “Many of you have stood watch all night, in the deteriorating weather, inspecting each shovelful of dirt and every swing of the pickax as it was brought down to cut the earth before me. We have representatives here and a medical doctor selected by our distinguished Mayor Nichols’s office, as well as both state and federal law enforcement and a few choice guests to whom I have extended personal invitations—all to lend credence to what you are about to witness.

  “You’ve been shown the authentication of the plot by which we now stand, for a Mr. Victor Peale, who has been confined to the grave these twenty years. And yes—you’ve doubted, even as you watched with your own eyes . . .”

  Stapleton pointed a bony finger at the crowd, singling out the presence of disbelievers like a plague among them. “But I submit before you, humble as I may, that death is not the final chapter.”

  Connor groaned, making Elliot crack an unwanted smile. He glanced away from Stapleton’s onstage antics, opting to scan the faces of the people packed in before them. Watching. Willing them to see truth. To turn around and go back home. Didn’t they realize it was an outlandish claim from a career illusionist? That it was not possible to bring a man back from the grave after that much time? Yet they stood on. Transfixed. Their mouths gaping and confidence clinging to his words.

  A shame. The man is just beating his gums, but they’re still eating it up.

  Stapleton’s spell fell to blanket the gathering like snow. Who would be bought in after the show? Who would eventually fork out money—and worse, their hope—to this character in the days and weeks to follow?

  Elliot shook his head for the poor souls. The man’s claims were clearly too sensational to be true. He couldn’t help but pity the lot of them. Then something odd caught his eye, drawing his attention away: a flash of fiery crimson buried behind a sea of black woolen coats and hats.

  A figure stood off to the side of the crowd, alone.

  Sheltered by the haven of a great oak, she was hidden beneath a crimson hood and cape that spilled down to dust the frozen ground at her feet. The garment hid fragments of dress quite eccentric for a woman: a high-collared man’s shirt peeking out at the neck, a gold bow tie, black trousers, and matching over-the-knee riding boots. And while the dress piqued Elliot’s notice, it was the woman’s reaction to Stapleton’s words that would not allow him to look away.

  Hers was an aura of contradiction.

  She owned flaming-red hair with blunt-cut bangs and waves that just peeked out from the hood. And though she projected the illusion of poise, the tips of her hair had caught on the wind and brushed the side of her face, seemingly without her care. Her lips were pursed and her glare pierced the stage, as if she possessed emotion barely held at bay. She clutched at the front of her cape with one gloved hand and held a gleaming black walking stick in the other. She leaned on it, like a stake she was attempting to drive into the ground.

  Elliot tipped his head to one side. It’s a disguise.

  A good one, no doubt.

  Anyone looking at her would notice the peculiar clothing first. But the woman’s mannerisms were decidedly forced. Something had infuriated her, and Elliot wanted to know what it was.

  “Connor,” he asked, dropping his voice low. Elliot tipped his chin toward the cloaked figure. “Have you ever seen her before?”

  Connor tossed a glance in the woman’s direction, then turned back to Stapleton’s onstage flailings. “She’s one of that lot.”

  “What lot?”

  “You know. The vaude performers. Like Stapleton. Though she’s one of the more infamous ones on the circuit.”

  Elliot watched her, the curiosity of her presence holding his attention fast. “A vaude performer, hmm?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never been to one of those seedy song-and-dance halls before. Or with your father’s money, at least one of the more well-to-do theaters?” Connor failed to veil the mocking in his tone. “If I didn’t know of your years at the Bureau, I’d have guessed you were the rookie instead of me. It’s vaudeville, Elliot. And Wren Lockhart is her name.”

  Elliot gritted his teeth each time his family’s money was brought into a similar conversation, as if that assured his position in society without any merit to his own choices. But Connor was young and just shy of tactless, so Elliot let it slide. “That’s her real name?” Elliot paused. “Or stage name?”

  “What does it matter, really? She’s one of them. But if it’s stems you’re looking to gaze at, please don’t let it be the type in trousers. I’d think you’d have a swankier view with the dancers. I know I’d much prefer it.”

  “I’m not gazing at anything,” Elliot snapped, keenly feeling the dig at his clumsy understanding of entertainment trends. “It’s just . . .”

  “What?”

  Elliot shook his head, still watching the woman. “Something. I’m not quite sure yet.”

  “Well, you’d better get sure.” Connor took a cigarette out of his inside pocket. He struck a match against his thumb and cupped his hand to tender the end with a deep inhale. “Because here we go.”

  Stapleton had moved on from the theatrics of his grand entrance to the marvel of the main act. He stood with his shoulders back and chin notched high. A rich, almost grandfatherly warmth spread over his face as he smiled. “And now? It begins.”

  The sudden roar of an engine ripped through the air.

  An auto chugged forward, taking the slack out of a length of chain against a pulley hoisted to the side of the stage. Metal popped and tightened and the crowd jumped.

  “He’s not . . . ,” Connor whispered, the cigarette dangling off his bottom lip, threatening to flutter to the ground.

  “Oh, but I believe he is,” Elliot said, just as the corner of a coffin appeared at the inside edge of the grave, rising up, up, up. The chains creaked with the tension of metal-to-metal friction.

  Connor swore under his breath and spat the cigarette from his lips to grind it out beneath the sole of his shoe. He grumbled about not getting paid enough for something or another.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen”—Stapleton’s voice slithered through the trees—“the moment you have all been waiting for. The power no one before has harnessed! I shall defy the laws of nature . . .”

  The auto slowed, then kicked into reverse, lowering the coffin into the gravediggers’ waiting arms. They steered it to the platform with a soft thud, then backed away from it.

  The crowd let out a collective gasp.

  “It is quite alright, I assure you. But who among you can claim the fortitude to stare death in the face?” Stapleton scanned the mass of onlookers with a raised eyebrow. “Who dares to open this crypt and give a man back his life? Who will aid me in summoning his soul from the depths of the hereafter to life among us once again?”

  The crowd pulsed with energy. Women edged back, abhorred by the thought of being chosen to resurrect a decayed corpse. Members of the press leaned in, craning their necks to see
, though none proved bold enough to volunteer. So all waited. Looking left to right. Watching. Expecting something—they just didn’t know what.

  Elliot kept his feet firm, only migrating his glance from Stapleton, to the crowd, and back to the cloaked woman perched at the fringe of the action. She hadn’t moved a muscle, just stood there, haunting the shadowed outline of the oak.

  “What’s this?” Stapleton bellowed. “Women, have you no husbands who can stand up to the confines of a mere wooden box? We’ve already opened the grave for you. You have but to urge your man forward to lift the coffin lid and marvel at the wonders inside! Can no one help me?”

  “I’ll do it.” A female voice sliced through the tension.

  All heads turned at once, eyes fixated on the woman weaving from the back of the gathering to the front of the crowd.

  She was impeccably dressed, made noticeable by a saucy walk. Her heels barely touched the frozen grass as she sauntered by in her fox-trimmed coat. She tossed a coy grin to a few members of the press and rubbed gloved hands against her shoulders, theatrically playing out a mock shiver in comment to the cold. “I’d hate to make this crowd endure another moment in the glacial elements while they wait for one of our courageous men to step forward. I will take up your challenge, good sir.”

  Connor chuckled and tipped his fedora back a shade from his brow.

  Elliot could read the measure of his thoughts. And they wouldn’t be far from every other man’s at the moment. If Stapleton’s intention was to wow the international press, then the surprising turn of events was quite in his favor, to the point of being downright historic.

  “I have a constitution sturdy enough to lift the lid.” The woman slipped up onstage with flashbulbs snapping at her gold-trimmed cloche hat and bobbed brunette curls framing her cheery face. She winked in the direction of the gravediggers. “If these men onstage will help me.”

  “And what is your name, miss?”

  “I am Mrs. Amberley Dover.”

  A rumble of murmurs grew out of her declaration, yet she stood on in defiance, the tips of her heels mere inches from the death box onstage.

  “Swell dame. I wonder who she is. Asking purely for the case file of course.” Connor kept his voice just low enough to be heard over the crowd’s chatter.

  “You may know your vaudes, Connor, but I know Boston’s elite. That young woman is the widow of Mr. Stanley Dover—of the Boston Dovers—and owes much to his railroad-financed inheritance.”

  “Would you look at that? She’s not afraid a bit,” Connor said, starstruck as the woman lifted the lid with dainty fingertips. He leaned in, watching as one of the gravediggers applied the muscle, and she applied smiles and winks for the crowd. “Looks as though he’s gained a high-society femme fatale as his ally. Think you can introduce me?”

  “Regardless of who’d like to be in her social circle, I’d say she’s out of everyone’s league here. That woman is rumored to be wealthier than the king of England. And no, I’m not the introducing kind. If you want to meet her, you’re on your own.”

  “Now, Elliot, don’t judge her because of her money. We ought to at least see what she has to say about all this. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”

  “She’s also a fashionable flirt, and I’d say that’s being rather kind.” Elliot noted the way Wren Lockhart straightened her stance and raised her chin higher when Mrs. Dover sauntered across the stage. “But I also have to wonder why she’s here, now that you mention it. She’s known to be a supporter of spiritualism, but under normal circumstances I don’t think she’d be caught dead on a stage like this.”

  “Nice pun.”

  “She’s an elitist, so it’s no pun.” Elliot darted his gaze back and forth between the woman in red and the action onstage. “But it is an observation. As is something else.” He edged forward into the crowd.

  “Elliot?” Connor barked out a whisper. “Where are you going?”

  The woman by the oak had begun to move. Not so much that anyone would notice, but Wren Lockhart had been withdrawing from the crowd with furtive steps the instant Mrs. Dover had appeared in the spotlight.

  Instinct told him he shouldn’t let the woman go—not without at least some inquiry as to her presence here. It could have been innocent, but his gut had taken to fierce nagging, forcing his feet to move.

  “Elliot!”

  Connor’s voice bled into the background as Elliot wove through the throngs of people, peering past men with bowlers and ladies’ fur-trimmed hats, keeping his gaze locked on Ms. Lockhart’s cape.

  The crowd surged, crying out in a marvelous gasp.

  And Elliot lost sight of the woman in red.

  He took his gaze away from where she stood for mere seconds, just in time to see that the coffin lid had been opened wide.

  “And now, the doctor chosen by our mayor’s office will examine the corpse to ensure he is, in fact, dead.” Stapleton waved his arm wide, inviting the doctor to share the stage. It took but a moment for the aged doctor with stethoscope in hand to climb the stairs and examine the corpse. He confirmed with a nod of the head as flashbulbs burst.

  “Does the man have a heartbeat, Doctor? Any breath sounds or signs of life at all?”

  The doctor shook his head. “No heartbeat. No breath. This man is most certainly dead.”

  Stapleton hesitated, then a syrupy smile eased across his lips. “We have confirmation, dear ladies and gentlemen. There is a corpse here on the stage. But I ask you . . . how can this be”—he waved his open hand out over the coffin—“when I’ve brought him back from the grave?”

  The crowd hushed.

  Elliot wasn’t sure what, if anything, was in the coffin. Up to that moment, it could have all been a farce. Maybe still was. But then he saw a man, his skin ashen and hair mussed about his brow, began to rise from the depths of the wooden box.

  Elliot darted a glance back at Connor. His partner tipped his shoulders up in a shrug of total bewilderment. It was an illusion, no doubt, but a cracking good one.

  “Yes,” Stapleton shouted out with triumph. “Come back to us, sir! You are welcome here, Mr. Peale. Come back from the depths . . .”

  And to the utter shock of the crowd, the corpse-man sat up fully.

  His eyelids fluttered against the light of day, then opened.

  He looked around as if in a trance. Every twitch of muscle and tremble of what should have been rotting flesh precipitated another gasp. He shook out his arms, as if his long slumber could be shrugged off as easily as the sleeves of his suit coat.

  Mr. Peale raised shaky legs over the side of the casket and, to a reverberating chorus of shrieks and popping flashbulbs, stepped onto the stage.

  The gravediggers darted back, and one fell off the rear of the platform completely, then scurried to disappear behind the auto-and-pulley contraption.

  If this is an act, it appears the gravediggers had no knowing part in it.

  Elliot couldn’t be sure of Mrs. Amberley Dover, however.

  Her face had drained of all color but the lipstick on her open mouth. She stood frozen, her gaze following Mr. Peale’s wobbly steps as he moved across the stage. She tore her glance over to Stapleton, her eyes questioning like a lost bird. He shook his head, ever so slightly, then turned to address the crowd.

  If she’s in on this, she isn’t playing it well.

  “There is nothing to fear, friends!” Stapleton eased an arm out toward Mr. Peale. “Look at him. He is no monster. No Frankenstein creation. This is one of our own—a Bostonian. A man whose life was stolen in his prime. And now, I give it all back . . .”

  Mr. Peale had risen from the dead—at least that’s what the crowd was led to believe. Though the evidence was quite compelling, Elliot wouldn’t be so easily taken in.

  He looked away from the stage and regained a visual of the bright crimson of Ms. Lockhart’s cape, peeking out from behind the sea of dark suits. She held his gaze for a few seconds. Then, as if on cue, her attention slid
back to Stapleton, who’d taken the corpse-man by the elbow, ushering him to center stage.

  Flashbulbs burst to life as journalists shot out questions in rapid succession.

  “What have you seen?”

  “What is it like on the other side?”

  “Speak!” They raised their arms, grasping out to him.

  “Tell us what you know!”

  “Yes. Do speak to us, sir.” Stapleton nodded beneath the brim of his top hat. “Tell us why you’ve come back . . . Share the secrets of the beyond!”

  The crowd waited, eerily silent as Peale’s lips began to move.

  Elliot’s thoughts were blazing so fast through his mind, he hadn’t an instant to collect them. Connor moved in closer to the stage to his right. And as the crowd watched, the corpse became fully man and spoke.

  “I am Victor Peale,” he said in a shaky voice. “I have seen the beyond . . .”

  His voice grew stronger. He grew stronger and shook his elbow out of Stapleton’s grasp to approach the front of the stage. The ladies shrieked as the men shuffled them backward on the frozen grass.

  “I have come back from the other side . . .” Mr. Peale paused. Shook his head, ruffling hair to fall over his forehead. He tensed a chiseled jaw. “I have come back to . . .”

  Stapleton approached his side. “Yes, Mr. Peale. Dear sir.” He waved a hand out to hush the crowd again. “What is it you have come back to tell us?”

  There was no warning. Victor Peale’s eyes simply rolled back in his head and he pitched forward, diving from the stage into a heap at the foot of the crowd.

  Elliot’s suspicions were confirmed, but in the worst way. The world would not see a man raised from the dead that day, but the newspapers would certainly have their headlines. He charged forward through the chaos of screams and wilting ladies, as did Connor and several of the clothed policemen.

  “Back up. We’re federal agents.” Connor pushed his way in. He flashed his credentials to the policemen attempting to pull them back behind the press.

  And all at once, they were surrounded.