The audience began talking excitedly. The man to Carter’s left was holding a watch. “It has been two minutes since he held his breath,” he said quietly.
“That long already?”
“Yes. Do you think there was air between the surface of the boiler and the cap?”
“I think so, but not much.”
“The cap looked concave.” The man stared at his watch.
Behind Carter, women were discussing with their husbands how they had seen Houdini escape from nested automobile tires and snow chains.
“I hear he can undo locks with his toes,” one woman said.
“He keeps a full set of tools down his throat. He can bring them up at will,” her husband answered with the authority of one who has heard a rumor.
“It’s been four minutes,” the man with the watch said.
“He escaped from a paddy wagon in Russia, and he was nude then, so the only way was if he had the keys down his throat.”
At five minutes, the orchestra finished playing “Asleep in the Deep.” There was brief consulting between the conductor and a stagehand, then they struck the song up again, from the beginning. Carter sensed that something had gone wrong.
Conversations dried up as the rest of the audience began to catch the same sense, the sense that the disaster awaiting Houdini, the one he tempted with every escape, might have finally caught up with him.
Carter thought Houdini must be taking precautions—there was no way he could actually be risking death—and yet, as the seconds ticked away, his concern grew and he rolled and rerolled his program between his hands. He consulted his watch. He thought about the date. He could tell his grandchildren that he was in the audience the night Houdini failed to escape. How long could someone hold his breath? Three minutes? Four? It had been eight minutes—the musicians in the orchestra looked worried.
A tremble of red velvet, the curtain parted slightly, and Houdini, soaking wet, his shirt torn, staggered toward the footlights. His hands were bloody. The crowd burst into applause and cheers as the orchestra shifted into “My Country ’Tis of Thee.”
“Eight minutes, forty seconds.” The man put his watch away.
Houdini held his arms up for a moment, as if about to speak, but then he shuddered and sank to one knee. With the audience gasping, nurses draped a blanket over Houdini’s shoulders. They helped him to his feet. The rounds of applause were overpowering. Carter, shaking his head, clapped till his hands stung as a hunched-over Houdini made a supreme effort, threw the blanket off, and raised his arms in victory. And the whole house, as if with one voice, screamed his name, “Houdini!” Houdini’s hand went to his brow, and the nurses came to his aid, taking him into the wings.
The curtain was raised and the boiler was shown still to be riveted shut. Applause continued throughout the demonstration, with calls for Houdini finally answered when the manager announced that Houdini had been taken to the hospital due to the exertions of the escape. If people wanted to see him again, he would be escaping from a giant lightbulb, provided by the Edison Power Company, at noon the next day.
Carter left the theatre feeling exhilarated, caught in the great flood of people who all chattered about the spectacle, the suffering, the triumph. Houdini had escaped, somehow, at great personal sacrifice. As Carter filed through the double glass doors, he felt a hand at his elbow.
“You were very impressed, Carter.”
That voice. He stopped, regarded the fingers locked around his elbow, and then looked up into a grinning, unpleasant face. Mysterioso wore a black silk suit, wool overcoat, and black silk scarf. He was about six inches taller than Carter. He stood so close that Carter had to turn his head back uncomfortably to meet his eyes. “You were applauding.” It was a condemnation.
Carter freed his elbow. “It was a fine show.”
“The man risked nothing. He is the worst sort of charlatan,” Mysterioso boomed, ignoring the dirty looks of patrons, “getting a houseful of people to pay for his bleating like an egomaniac before that phony stunt with the boiler.”
“I respect the serious danger—”
“Oh, please: those men fired phony rivets—”
Carter, whose cheeks were burning, tried to hush him. “You know the walls have ears.”
“I don’t care who hears this—Houdini is a fake.” Mysterioso looked down on the hats of other patrons as they filed around him, and announced, “He got out of that nice bathtub in five seconds, and sat backstage reading a newspaper while children like you sweated and prayed and felt tremendous sympathy for the third-most-famous man in the world as he painted up his hands with fake blood and counted up the house receipts.”
The angrier Carter became, the calmer and more observant he was. He noticed Mysterioso had a fresh bruise just under his eye.
Carter had learned the signs of Annabelle’s presence on the tour: Leonard, Minnie Palmer’s eldest son, had been found knocked unconscious backstage; Walter Huston, who usually did a soft-shoe and sang “I Ain’t Got the Do-Re-Mi,” was, after making a play for Annabelle, reduced for a week to shuffling across stage on his one good foot. It was astonishing to Carter that men didn’t know some women just didn’t like them. The bruise on Mysterioso’s face was exactly the size of Annabelle Bernhardt’s fist.
“You know,” Carter murmured, “raw beefsteak is a wonder—”
“You mind your business,” Mysterioso hissed. He narrowed his eyes, rubbing the lapel of Carter’s topcoat between his fingertips. “Did your father buy you this coat?”
“I’ve been buying my own clothes for several years now.” Carter knocked the fingertips away, wishing for a baseball bat to do the job effectively. “As for Houdini, it happened as you say. He had all of us feeling pleased with ourselves, just because he fooled us. If I think about it, I suppose he’s well enough to escape from a lightbulb tomorrow. But I don’t want to think about it.” Mysterioso smirked and Carter continued. “That’s right, that’s right—that’s the magic of it.”
“Oh,” Mysterioso moaned, clutching at his heart as if Carter had shot him there. “Magic. Of course,” He shook his head. “I’d been wondering exactly what kind of idiot you are, rich boy.”
The crowd had tapered a bit. Mysterioso gave one last sad shake of his head and walked away.
Carter called after him, “Mysterioso,” but got no response, so he continued, “how do you make the lion roar?”
Mysterioso called over his shoulder, “Magic, you moron,” as he turned his collar up and merged with the crowd.
CHAPTER 10
The tour looped the northeastern states in early spring. The New England crowds, as if leaving their houses for the first time since fall, seemed the most grateful in the country. The circuit traveled west along the Highline, crossing back and forth into Canada, where the crowds were reserved and polite, which was never a good combination for a magician. Far better to tour the northern climes in winter, when the audience applauded anything and everything just to stay warm. As they entered rougher territories—Montana, the Dakotas—Carter noticed a change in Mysterioso’s behavior.
When they set up in a new town, acts from the program would give a free demonstration, a ballyhoo, in the largest public square. Mysterioso would give a brief speech decrying his skills, passing behind a curtain to show how quickly he could change uniforms—a fifth of a second! This, followed by throwing handfuls of his copper “Mysterioso” tokens into the mob. In Butte, an astonishing thing happened. After Mysterioso changed from buck private to colonel, there was a unified call from a group of cowpokes: “Annabelle!”
Carter watched as Colonel Mysterioso stared daggers at them. “Yes,” he said “Annabelle Bernhardt will be at the theatre tonight. She is the most fantastic furious female fighter ever to be tamed. Bring your wives!”
The men, who were leaning against a gate at the edge of the square, called again, “Annabelle!”
Whenever Carter thought of this moment, and he thought about it often, he put
himself in Mysterioso’s place. Carter would have encouraged the calls for another member of his company. But, instead, Mysterioso ignored the men and barked out an order to an assistant. A moment later, a pile of chains and handcuffs clanked onto the stage.
“Watch,” Mysterioso cried, “and learn!” This was a new moment in Mysterioso’s public repertoire. He was bound with a dozen pairs of handcuffs, inviting as many people to examine him as the stage could hold. When he shrugged once, twice, three times, the cuffs fell off of him.
The crowd cheered. Mysterioso, surveying his subjects, called out: “I am the master!” There were hollers for more, and Carter could almost see the magician weighing his words as he said them. “I am the king of escapes!”
The crowd continued their clapping, someone yelling, “Down with Houdini,” and Mysterioso, pumping his hands in the air, seemed to realize the heavens had not darkened. He laughed. “Yes, down with Houdini!”
This was suicidal behavior, akin to spitting on the Cross, but with the threat of more immediate retribution.
For the next week, Carter waited cautiously for reports of reaction from Houdini, who had been known to appear unannounced at a rival’s show and embarrass him onstage. Other times, Houdini, a born scrapper, simply ambushed other magicians in alleyways and beat the tar out of them.
It turned out, however, that Houdini had just undergone one of his periodic transformations, and was touring under a banner that read “No Handcuffs.” Because of their sheer number, he was no longer able to assassinate the characters of the dozens of self-proclaimed Handcuff Emperors, Kings, and Wizards one by one. So, instead, Houdini had lobbed a bomb into their midst, a book called Handcuff Secrets, which explained in detail exactly how everyone else’s tricks were accomplished. From now on, the world was welcome to the monkeys who monkeyed with shackles, he proclaimed. Houdini would escape exclusively from devices of his own creation, such as the padlocked Milk-Can and Chinese Water Torture Cabinet.
So it seemed after all that Mysterioso had risked nothing that day in Butte. But on a Monday afternoon in Vancouver, most of the performers were lazing and dozing in a park, enjoying a rare clear and cloudless day. August Schultz, who had his arm in a sling—Annabelle’s work—was playing pinochle with Leonard from Fun in Hi Skule. Carter sat on the grass a few yards away, sketching illusions and crossing them out. A signature effect, something for the public to identify a magician with, was a direct reflection of personality. He asked himself, Am I the type of magician who would like to be known for . . . pulling a rabbit out of a hat? Escaping from handcuffs? Turning into a lion?
There was just a slight breeze and then an odd sputtering sound came from above the treetops. Carter spotted an airplane on the horizon. Aware of the distance between himself and everyone else, he cleared his throat.
“Look, everyone,” he said, “an airplane.”
An airplane was such an uncommon sight that people stirred from their naps, put down backgammon boards and guitars, to stare at the strange machine. Carter knew a little about airplanes because, only months beforehand, Houdini had become the first man to fly one in all of Australia. As this one approached, a hollowed-out rectangular box for the wings and a square box for the tail with what looked like a ladder connecting them, it looked exactly like the one Houdini had flown: a Voisin, made in France, with an English engine. These were so expensive and unusual that the sight of it made Carter’s heart beat faster—could it be Houdini himself? Of course! A dramatic entrance en route to confronting Mysterioso! The engine sputtered and droned, the plane not fifty feet off the ground. August Schultz yelled, “That plane—it looks like Houdini’s.”
Carter wished he’d said that, for the whole company jumped to their feet, waving their hats, and calling out encouragement to this daring aviator. As it circled clockwise, a great, disappointed groan arose from the crowd. Painted on the rear assembly was one huge word: MYSTERIOSO! The magician continued circling long after the troupe had gotten the message, and then he disappeared over some trees.
. . .
Two weeks passed, and the company began the final leg of the tour, the trek down the West Coast. In Portland, a package arrived for Carter from the brothers Martinka: the apparatus for the aga levitation he had settled on. It was simple and almost impressive.
The tour played the Portland Galaxy, a small, dreary stone theatre that had once been a Lutheran church. Just after dawn on the morning before the first show, Carter stood onstage and unpacked the materials, consulting the instructions the Martinkas had included. Within an hour, he had levitated a waxworks Beefeater he’d taken from the property room. He swung a hoop down from its tall black hat, over its body, to its scuffed black boots, and addressed himself to the empty seats: “You see? No wires. The rational mind exclaims—there must be strings! Wires! And I would have to agree, Ladies and Gentlemen, but . . .” He fell silent. Dreadful. Boring. He might as well shoot himself.
He took from his pocket one of Mysterioso’s throw-out tokens. Baby was on the back, and the legend below him read: “Will You Have Her As Your Bride?” He looked up, then left, then right. The backstage storage area for Mysterioso’s property was mere feet away. Every night, the lion was put back into its cage and left alone.
He made sure the theatre was absolutely empty, and to ensure privacy, he jammed the locks from the inside with some picks and putty. Mysterioso’s storage area was accessible only by one door, steel plate, with a two-key locking mechanism that would stump most thieves. Carter opened it, went inside, and closed and locked it quietly.
For long moments, he let his eyes adjust to the dark. There was a single window about twenty feet up, with bars over it. All of Mysterioso’s props were stored in crates stacked chest high to make aisles one could walk up and down. The lion’s cage was straight ahead, but crates obscured Carter’s vision as he approached on tiptoe. He didn’t want to startle the animal, though he suspected it was difficult to sneak up on a lion.
When he was but five feet from the cage there was no time for him to process the ramifications of an unassailable fact: the cage was empty and the door stood open. He did, however, have enough time to think, They must keep the lion somewhere else at night, before he heard a cough behind him. It wasn’t a human cough.
The door to the storage unit was fifteen feet away, three or four strides. In theory, it was possible to make it that far, but Carter had locked himself in. He had heard that lions could smell fear. He had heard that if a lion charges you, you should punch him in the nose as hard as you can. Make sure you don’t accidentally find your hand in his mouth.
He couldn’t see the lion, which was no doubt crouching somewhere in one of the aisles made by all the boxes. There was a light whipping sound, which was probably his tail flicking against a crate. He measured his heartbeat: eighty, no, ninety, no, one hundred twenty beats a minute. He thought, Puisque toutes les créatures sont au fond des frères . . . knowing that nothing in that friendly thought guaranteed the lion would respond in kind. He turned from the waist to look 360 degrees for a sign of him. He took one step backward.
He’s seen something on the floor, poking out of the aisle closest to him: a pair of feet. Someone lying on the ground? Yes, there were legs, and beside them, a pair of shoes. He leaned forward to look farther down the aisle. Annabelle, on her side, lying half up against the wall among scattered packing materials.
The lion was crouched by her head. Carter recognized the posture: his father had once owned a hunting dog that didn’t like to be approached when it was about to gnaw on a soupbone. He took one step back, and the lion followed with one step forward, huge ropes of muscle trembling and flexing under his gold coat.
As the lion stepped over her body, paws the width of her face, the punching-the-lion-in-the-nose advice struck Carter as woefully inadequate.
“Annabelle?” hissed Carter. She didn’t stir. “Annabelle?” In his life, he had heard few noises so low and deep they were felt before they were heard: t
he first rumbles of an earthquake, the full throttle of an express train, and now the roar of the lion, a raw bellow with an underlying ticking sound, like a metronome counting down seconds. The lion was going to kill him. The lion crouched, gathered on his haunches, and propelled himself forward, up, in a perfect parabola, falling toward Carter, jolting strangely in midair. Annabelle stood behind the lion, holding his tail with both hands and delivering with all the force in her body a hard, swift jerk so that the lion’s momentum carried him to the floor, where he toppled a stack of crates.
There was a moment of quiet while the three of them gathered their wits.
“Miss Bernhardt!” Carter exclaimed. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” she swallowed. “You aren’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t move.”
The lion’s eyes were fixed on Carter’s throat, and his shoulders were rapidly falling toward the floor.
“Oh, for godsake,” Annabelle muttered. She barked, “Baby!”
Carter looked toward her; the lion did not.
With an air of disgust, Annabelle hissed, “Don’t make me come after you.” The lion’s tail thumped against the floor. Then Annabelle made one simple motion: she put her hands on her hips. At once, all tension seemed to drain out of the lion, who licked his lips. “That’s better. You know it ain’t worth it.” She put a hand under his collar and towed him to his cage.
When she returned to where Carter was still frozen, she gave him the once-over. “What the hell you doing here?”
“I could ask the same of you.”
“I was sleeping.”
“Why aren’t you at the hotel with Mysterioso?”
“You sleep at the hotel with Mysterioso.” She took out a cigarette. “What time is it?”
“Maybe seven-thirty.”
She put the cigarette back. “What are you doing here at the crack of dawn, anyway?”
“I’m . . . trespassing.” Carter felt a bit ill. When he realized he could move, he righted a crate that Baby had knocked over. “I was hoping to find out how the lion roars on command.”
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