“But he was alone up here with Miss Moore? Just before she fell?”
“Yes, but only because he wasn’t needed on stage just then. It could just as easily have been me or Harry.”
Collins poked his head back through the hatchway. “Is there a problem, gentlemen?”
“No,” said the lieutenant with an airy nonchalance. “I was just admiring the view.” He ducked his head and climbed back onto the staircase.
We followed Collins past the office suites until we were once again in the theater lobby. While Harry went off to find Bess, Lieutenant Murray pushed through the studded leather doors that opened into the house and strolled down the center aisle, his hands in the pockets of his suit. He looked very much like a man who had concluded his work. “Mr. Kellar?” he called when he had reached the stage steps. “Might I have a word?”
“Mr. Kellar has no statement at this time,” said McAdow stiffly. “He will answer all inquiries through his attorneys.”
“Dudley,” said Kellar wearily, “don’t be ridiculous. I intend to cooperate with the police in every way I possibly can. How can I help you, young man?”
Lieutenant Murray mounted the steps and pulled out his notebook. I listened as he posed the same set of questions he had asked me, taking careful note of where Kellar had been standing, and whether he had noticed anything unusual in the moments leading up to the accident. After marking down Kellar’s replies, the lieutenant turned to McAdow. “Your overcoat is covered with snow,” the lieutenant noted. “You weren’t here for the performance this evening, sir?”
“I was not,” McAdow answered. “What possible difference would that have made?”
“None, I’m sure, but—”
“I have had the honor of serving as Mr. Kellar’s business manager for nearly seventeen years. In that time I have had the pleasure of watching him perform many thousands of times. You cannot imagine that I am present at each and every—”
“Tonight was a big night, wasn’t it?” Lieutenant Murray interrupted. “I mean, unveiling this big new trick, right? But I guess you had some urgent business elsewhere.”
“If you are suggesting—”
“Mr. McAdow generally leaves the magic side of things to me,” said Kellar. “And I leave the business end to him. So you would do well to direct all questions about tonight’s misfortune to me. I bear sole responsibility for this tragedy.”
Lieutenant Murray scratched lazily at the back of his head. “It’s funny. People are just about tripping over themselves in the rush to take the blame for this thing. Houdini. Collins. Hardeen, here. You, Mr. Kellar. Isn’t it possible that nobody’s to blame?”
“Miss Moore came to harm under my care,” Kellar said. “It was I who placed her in harm’s way, and it is I who must bear the burden.”
Lieutenant Murray snapped his notebook shut. “Have it your way,” he said. “Naturally I’ll want to hear what the doc has to say in his final report, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he points me toward death by misadventure.”
“Death by misadventure?” I asked.
“An accident,” he clarified.
“But the safety harness?”
“Maybe it came loose. Or maybe she never fastened it in the first place.”
“Collins says she did.”
“Maybe so, maybe not.” He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “Say, Hardeen, do you happen to know if Collins and this Miss Moore, by any chance were they, uh, were they—”
“Not that I’ve heard, Lieutenant.”
“And what about your brother? He seems to be taking this awfully hard. Were he and Miss Moore—”
“Certainly not.”
“I suppose not,” the lieutenant said. “Not with the wife watching over him morning, noon and night. All right,” he turned back to Kellar. “I’ll be in touch in the morning to wrap up the details. I would ask you not to speak to the press until then.”
“I will not be speaking to the press at all,” said Kellar listlessly. “Perhaps never again.”
“Just don’t speak to them tonight or tomorrow. I take it I can reach you at your hotel?”
Kellar nodded.
“Fine. Hardeen, I suggest that you take your brother home and pour him a stiff drink.”
“If only he would drink it,” I replied.
“Well, maybe you should have it for him, then.” The lieutenant moved off to see how Dr. Peterson was proceeding.
“Dudley,” said Kellar after a moment, “dismiss the company. Mr. Hardeen, may I presume upon you and your brother to join me in my dressing room?”
Harry and I put Bess in a cab as the rest of the crew dispersed. Collins and Valletin invited us to join them at the hotel bar, but we begged off with an excuse about answering further questions for the lieutenant. I couldn’t be certain what Mr. Kellar wished to see us about, but it seemed pointless to excite further speculation among the other members of the company.
Harry and I circled around to the back of the theater and made our way to Mr. Kellar’s spacious dressing room. We found the magician seated on a wicker stool, removing his make-up with the help of a large lighted mirror. McAdow was hovering at his shoulder as we entered, speaking in insistent tones. “But there’s no reason for that, Henry!” McAdow was saying. “No reason at all! You’re being too hasty!”
“My mind is set upon the matter,” Kellar said as he caught sight of us in the mirror. “Gentlemen, do sit down.”
Harry and I perched on a leather chaise longue. Naturally I felt curious to hear whatever Kellar might say. My brother, on the other hand, might just as well have been locked away in his substitution trunk. His features were still pale and grim, and he stared at the opposite wall as though hoping it might fall on him.
“Harry,” McAdow continued as if we weren’t there, “think of the enormous sums of money involved! I’ve made deposits on theaters! I’ve signed contracts in seven languages! We must go on! We must!”
Mr. Kellar wiped his face with a towel and turned away from the mirror. “Dudley, I am resolved. Mr. Houdini, Mr. Hardeen, as you may have gathered, I have elected to cancel the remainder of the tour.”
Harry nodded slowly, but did not speak. “Mr. Kellar,” I said, “Lieutenant Murray seems to feel that tonight’s tragedy may have been an accident. I know that we are all shocked beyond expression, but I think it would be unwise to make such a decision until we have all had a chance to recover our senses. You are far too upset.”
“Listen to the boy,” said McAdow. “He’s talking sense. Certainly we must go dark for at least a week, out of respect for Miss Moore. But what you’re suggesting is nothing short of—”
“I am retiring from the stage,” said Kellar. “I have given my final performance.”
“Henry!” cried McAdow. “You can’t! You’ll be ruined!”
“I am already ruined,” said Kellar. “This disaster will haunt me until the end of my days. My glories as a performer will be forgotten, and I will be relegated to a grim footnote in history as the man who killed the Floating Lady.”
“Ludicrous!” cried McAdow. “You will see reason in the morning, I assure you!”
“It is only now that I have come to my senses,” Kellar insisted. “I should have known enough to call a halt the other day—after Boris escaped. Miss Moore would still be alive, and I might have preserved something of my professional dignity.”
I leaned forward. “Sir,” I began, “when we spoke aboard the train the other day, you mentioned a series of accidents that had plagued the show. You seemed to feel that some member of the company had contrived to set these accidents in motion, possibly to force you to close the show before you were able to perfect the Floating Lady illusion. Do you believe that this same person—whomever it might have been—was responsible for tonight’s tragedy?”
“In a sense, Mr. Hardeen.” Kellar stood and walked to an occasional table where a number of wooden boxes were arranged. “I’m afraid I was not entirely candid wi
th you the other day.”
“How do you mean?”
“The truth is that I should have been able to predict every last thing that happened here tonight. I suppose I hoped that you and your brother might help to forestall the inevitable.”
McAdow wrinkled his forehead. “You’re speaking in circles, Henry.”
“You don’t understand, Dudley. You couldn’t possibly understand. You see, this has happened before. Every last bit of it.”
“What can you mean?”
Kellar picked up a silver memory frame and snapped it open. For a moment his eyes rested on the daguerreotype inside. “My mentor. The Wizard of Kalliffa. Duncan McGregor. This was made during his prime, but already one senses an air of gathering doom.” He turned the frame towards us. Although I had seen an oil portrait of the man in Mr. Kellar’s parlor car, the daguerreotype seemed to capture some quality of inexpressible sadness that I had not noticed before.
“I told you that it was his lifelong dream to perform the Floating Lady illusion,” Kellar continued, “but it would perhaps have been more accurate to say that it became his obsession. His life had been a very comfortable one. His services were in demand. His home life was contented. His reputation with the public was of the very highest order. All of this changed, however, as his preoccupation with the levitation took hold. The quality of his performances began to slip. He let things run down. He could scarcely wait to get off stage each night to resume his work on the levitation.”
Kellar dabbed at a patch of rouge on his cheek. “I did what I could to keep the show on its feet, but Mr. McGregor’s neglect began to take its toll. Soon, every performance was marked by some minor mishap. A trained bird would die. A prop would break during a performance. A costume would go missing. At first, it all seemed very much a matter of routine, the sorts of things that will bedevil any large enterprise. Over time, however, the mishaps became more grave. An assistant suffered a terrible broken leg. A sandbag came down during a performance, nearly striking a spectator. We began to acquire a reputation for calamity. At first there was only a half-seriousness to it, a sort of gallows humor in which we all shared. ‘Beware the curse of Kalliffa,’ we would say. Soon there came a time when we could no longer afford to be so cavalier. Theatrical managers began to fight shy of us. Our receipts dropped off. Mr. McGregor, who had been an abstemious man, began to console himself with alcohol, and from that point forward our decline grew even more precipitous.”
Kellar drew back and regarded himself in the dressing room mirror, as though searching for signs of his own incipient dissolution. “Then one night, after an especially ill-favored performance in Missouri, Mr. McGregor gathered the remaining members of the company into the darkened theater to make an announcement. At last he had perfected the Floating Lady illusion, he told us. The decline of our fortunes would be halted, and we would ascend to heights of glory we had never dreamed possible.”
Kellar drew a deep breath, apparently steeling himself to continue. “I allowed myself to believe that it might be true,” he said, “but the apparatus that Mr. McGregor unveiled that night did not inspire confidence. It was little more than a crude swing, supported by an intricate lattice-work of thin wire. Individually, the wires were too thin to be seen from below. Together, they would support the assistant’s weight as she swung from the stage to the top of the theater and back again.” Kellar winced at the memory. “I had no faith in the contrivance, and I tried to stop him from proceeding. Mr. McGregor would not be dissuaded. I appealed to Mrs. McGregor, but she wanted only to please her husband. She cheerfully climbed onto the contraption and waited for McGregor to set it in motion.” Kellar sighed heavily and closed his eyes before continuing.
“For a few moments, it appeared as if all might be well. Mrs. McGregor sailed high over our heads, with the swing device concealed beneath a flowing robe. The motion was a bit too fast, and perhaps too unnatural, but we might have worked out those difficulties. But then, as she began to descend, the wires started to snap, one by one. She did not fall so much as tumble, as though pitching down a flight of stairs. She plunged headlong into the footlights.” Kellar’s hands clenched. “There was a ball of fire, and a spray of glass and hot oil. We rushed forward with blankets, but—but we were not in time.” Kellar’s eyes were moist, but his voice was firm. “That was twenty-five years ago, gentlemen. Twenty-five years ago this very evening. I suppose I hoped that if I were able to achieve the effect successfully, it would lay the memory to rest. But now the curse of Kalliffa has claimed another victim.”
“Henry,” said McAdow gently. “It was a terrible thing, I won’t deny it. But you cannot begin to compare the McGregor tragedy to our own. By your own admission he was reckless and foolhardy. You were not. We took every precaution that could be imagined. It was an accident. A terrible one, surely. But an accident all the same.”
“A tragic accident,” Kellar repeated. “Do you imagine that I did not try to console Mr. McGregor in exactly the same fashion? But he knew better. He caused his wife’s death, and he took the full measure of blame. The Wizard of Kalliffa never performed again. I can do no less. I am responsible for the death of Miss Moore. It would be best if I withdrew from public life.”
“You did not kill Miss Moore,” said Harry, speaking for the first time since we entered the room. I turned to him in some alarm, hearing a strange note in his voice. His entire aspect was flat and enervated, as though he could scarcely rouse himself to speech. “At worst you are the general who ordered his troops into battle, but you are not the one who killed her.” He sighed and looked down at his empty hands. “I am.”
“Harry...”
“Dash, you know as well as I do that Miss Moore would still be alive if I had not suggested that particular method of performing the effect.”
“We don’t know that, Harry.”
“It is foolishness to think otherwise. It appears that the curse of Kalliffa has claimed yet another victim.”
“Harry, this is not a time for—”
He silenced me with a look. “You think that I am being dramatic. I am not. You think that Mr. Kellar is a superstitious old man. He is not. He is simply accepting the consequences of his actions. So must I. Houdini is finished.”
I stared. “You can’t mean that.”
“Young man,” said Kellar, “you are at the very beginning of your career. I see great promise in you. You must not let—”
“One week,” I blurted out. “That’s all I ask.”
“What do you mean, Hardeen?”
“When you brought us into the company you spoke of these accidents as being the work of some malicious enemy. I believe this may yet be the case. Mr. McAdow has suggested that we lower the curtain for one week to honor Miss Moore. Let me use that time to uncover whatever truth may lay behind this tragedy. If I find that we are at fault, then we must all share in the consequences. But if there are other agencies at work, it would be well to discover them.”
Mr. Kellar looked again at the daguerreotype in his hand. “One week,” he said, snapping the case shut. “But no longer. You are very persistent, Mr. Hardeen. I hope that this is not merely wishful thinking on your part.”
“So do I, sir.”
“Who knows? If you are right, perhaps I can still avoid the remainder of the curse.”
“The remainder?” Harry asked.
Kellar fingered the memory frame. “I said that the Wizard of Kalliffa never performed again. But Mr. McGregor did not have enough money to allow him simply to stop working. He began to appear in dirt shows and carny calls. I saw him once more, performing on a haywagon at a county fair. He was calling himself John Henry Anderson IV, pretending to be the nephew of the Wizard of the North. The lavish props were gone, sold to support his drinking. He had become a shadow of his former greatness. His hands shook so badly that he dropped a Chinese rice bowl. The crowd jeered at him. When it was over I tried to speak with him. I had begun to have some success on my own by that time
, and I tried to give him money, but he wouldn’t accept. He pretended not to recognize me.”
Kellar stood up and reached for the frockcoat hanging on a nearby peg. “I have always been haunted by it. I know that I could have done more. I should have pressed the money on him for the sake of his children. Perhaps I never should have left him in the first place, but I was young and I wanted to make my own way.”
“What are you suggesting?” asked McAdow. “Do you really think that Harry Kellar is going to end up in some backwater tent show? You’re the most famous magician in the world!”
Kellar turned toward us as he slipped into his frockcoat. His eyes, it seemed to me, were now touched by the same sadness that I had noted in the daguerreotype. “I am grateful for your reassurances,” he said, “but I said much the same thing to Mr. McGregor.”
9
THE MARK OF KENDALL
“THE CURSE OF KALLIFFA,” SAID BESS AT BREAKFAST THE FOLLOWING morning. “It sounds like the latest novel by H. Rider Haggard.”
“It does,” I agreed. “All it requires is a hidden treasure.”
“But there is a hidden treasure,” she answered. “If Mr. Kellar is to be believed, the secret of the Floating Lady is worth one million dollars.”
“Last night I believe he would have cheerfully surrendered that much and more never to have heard of the Floating Lady illusion. He believes that it is the source of this ludicrous curse.”
“That is not precisely what he said,” Harry insisted. “He merely pointed out that the Floating Lady had been the ruin of his mentor, and that now it was threatening to bring ruin upon him as well. Besides, you know perfectly well that many entertainers are superstitious. I have known actors to be so leery of the Scottish tragedy that they will not even speak the title in a theater.”
“Macbeth, you mean?” said Bess.
“Well, yes,” said Harry uneasily. “Macbeth.”
We were not in a theater. We were again gathered around the breakfast table in my mother’s flat on East 69th Street. Although Mr. Kellar had arranged for the company to stay at the Tilden, Harry and Bess had decided to lodge at home during the New York run, in anticipation of the lengthy tour to come. For my own part, I had opted for the relative luxury of the hotel, with its modern shower-baths and fresh bedding.
The Floating Lady Murder Page 13