by Unknown
“I presume he finds sleight of hand a useful skill in your profession.”
“Quite.” He gave something between a laugh and a dry cough.
Thunder rumbled again nearby and what sounded like hail was bouncing off the carriage roof with a clatter like loud applause.
“Did you come with Mr. Wilkie from Washington?” I asked because the silence was making me uneasy.
“No, I was already here,” he said. “I met him at the station.”
Ah, so it was later than I thought. I stole another glance at him. It was dark in the carriage and his hair and face looked like one of those floating heads that spiritualists can conjure up. The carriage slowed, and the rain abated for a moment so that I could hear the clip-clopping of other horses’ hooves and the chime of a large clock. One, two, three, four. I counted the strokes. Then I sat up, suddenly alert. I hadn’t misjudged the time. It was four o’clock. Mr. Wilkie couldn’t possibly have arrived in New York yet. And at the same time several unconnected thoughts raced through my mind. The passage that Mr. Wilkie had circled in the magazine: something about the problem with illusionists is that you think they are working on one side of the stage when really they are on the other. “I’m a keen amateur magician,” Smith had just said.
And that advertisement for the deception cabinet. Light wood on top, ebony underneath. Works both sides. Used for the most dangerous tricks. And made in Germany. Houdini had been describing Anthony Smith. He even had a Germanic look to him. There were faces like his in those photographs of the German royal court—proud, haughty young officers with light hair. And I knew why I had been uneasy ever since I stepped into the carriage. Anthony Smith was a double agent. That was why Houdini insisted on meeting Mr. Wilkie in person, why he could send nothing by mail. He knew that among Mr. Wilkie’s team of men there was one that couldn’t be trusted.
And now I was alone in a carriage with him. I stole a quick glance in his direction and noticed that the blind on his window was down. Also that he had locked my door behind me. I had no idea where he intended to take me but it certainly wasn’t to meet Mr. Wilkie. My one chance was to show no alarm, to act naturally, and wait for an opportunity to jump out. It was, after all, still daylight and the streets would still be full of people. There would be constables on every corner. I put my bag on my knee, pretending to brush it down with the now-sodden handkerchief, but in reality to hide the door latch. I then leaned across, waited for the noise of the rain to pick up again, and flipped the lock open. Now one swift turn and I could jump out.
It did go through my mind that I would have no proof of my suspicions if I left the carriage now, but I wouldn’t be much use trying to testify as a corpse either, and I had seen what Smith and his kind had done to those who stood in their way. I looked out of the window, trying to see where we might be going but it was still raining too hard to recognize in which direction we were heading. The carriage was not rattling too much so we were not going over cobbles. That meant a major thoroughfare—probably one of the avenues. It would be helpful to know where to run if I made it safely to the street. Surely he wouldn’t have the nerve to chase me in broad daylight, especially if I screamed for help?
I would like to have hitched up my skirt as it would be a long jump down from the carriage, but I couldn’t do that without his noticing and I worried about taking the bag of scrapbooks with me. I didn’t want to leave it behind. It might even show a snapshot of Anthony Smith in Germany, but it was definitely going to be an encumbrance when I tried to jump out.
We clipped on for a good while at a steady pace. My brain raced desperately for something to say.
“So what kind of tricks do you like to perform, Mr. Smith?” I asked.
“Me? Only the small stuff—cards, linking rings, that kind of thing.”
“So none of the more impressive tricks that illusionists are doing these days?” I said gaily. At least I was attempting to sound gay and girlish. “Of course they are terribly dangerous, aren’t they? Do you know I was actually in the theater when that poor girl was sliced open with the saw. It was all I could do not to faint.”
“Yes, I heard about that,” he said. “No, I don’t think I’d ever attempt to saw someone in half.”
“And what kind of tricks does Mr. Wilkie like to perform?” I prattled on.
“I really couldn’t say.” He snapped the words out and I realized that he too was feeling the tension now.
“Then I’ll have to insist that he give me a demonstration when we’re together,” I said. “Are we nearly there?”
“Who knows, in this infernal downpour,” he said.
The carriage came abruptly to a halt and I thought I heard the driver shouting a curse. I didn’t wait for a second. My hand turned the door handle and pushed it open. Rain came flying into my face. I grabbed the bag, stood up, and—was just conscious of a swift movement behind me.
Thirty-three
I opened my eyes to pitch darkness. By the way my head was throbbing, I surmised that I had been struck on the back of the head as I . . . as I what? I tried to remember. Rain in face. Jumping . . . and then it came back to me. I lay still, hardly daring to breathe. At least I’m still alive, I thought. They must be keeping me alive for a reason. I tried to find that reassuring. Where was I? The floor beneath me was rough and cold and the place smelled damp and musty with a hint of sawdust and turpentine that made me want to sneeze. Then I remembered where I had been recently with a similar sort of smell. I was in the basement of the theater.
I moved my hands and feet experimentally. I didn’t appear to be tied up and I wondered if I was alone and had just been dumped here while the German agents made their escape. But why then had they bothered to take the time to capture me? I had obviously been brought here for a purpose, and given their past behavior, the outcome was not likely to be good. I attempted to sit up and the whole world swung around as nausea overcame me. My head was throbbing violently. I would have to wait a while before making a dash for freedom then.
As I lay back down again I heard voices coming toward me in the darkness.
“Why didn’t you get rid of her immediately?” It was a woman’s voice with a trace of foreign accent, possibly German. “What on earth made you bring her here of all places?”
“We have to find out what she knows and what she has already told Wilkie. She was living with Houdini, after all. He may have confided in her.” This voice sounded like Anthony Smith—clipped, well-bred, and arrogant. They came toward me, bearing a small lamp. I lay back and closed my eyes.
“You must have given her a good whack for her to be out this long,” the woman said. “Are you sure you haven’t killed her?”
I felt my arm being lifted, then roughly dropped. “The pulse is steady.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” the woman said, and she laughed. So Lily and Summer were present.
I wondered if I played dead any longer, they would leave me again and I’d have a chance to escape or at least hide. If I could hide for long enough the theater would come to life for the evening performance and any noise I made would attract attention. Then I remembered that the man in the trunk had presumably been killed and Houdini spirited away while a full theater watched the show go on.
“Wake her up,” the woman said. “We haven’t got all day.”
Then suddenly I was hit in the face with cold water. I sat up, spluttering.
“What’s happening?” I asked, looking around me in bewildered fashion. “Did I faint?” Then I looked around, pretended to study each of their faces in turn, and asked, “Where am I? Is this where Mr. Wilkie is going to meet me?”
“I think that’s hardly likely,” Anthony Smith said with something like a smirk.
“Then who are these people?”
“That is irrelevant,” Lily said. She held the lamp up to my face. Close-up I could see that she had light eyes that didn’t go with her dark complexion. That was why she wore the cat mask on stage. “What we need to know
is how much you told Wilkie.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
She slapped me hard across the face. “Don’t be foolish. Of course you know. Wilkie is coming to New York to meet with you. You and he had a long, private conversation on a train and let’s just say that Mr. Wilkie doesn’t waste his time in idle chat. You have information he wants and obviously you haven’t given it to him yet or he wouldn’t be coming here.”
“So what exactly have you discovered?” Summer asked in a gentler tone. “We have no quarrel with you. If you tell us what you know then you can go free.”
“I hardly think that’s likely,” I said, “since you’ve already killed one, possibly two men who were on your trail.”
He laughed. “The young lady has a keen wit. I like that.”
I was trying desperately to come up with something to tell them. If I mentioned the design for the submarine device, there was nothing to stop them from going to Houdini’s house to retrieve it. As that thought crossed my mind I realized something else. They were the two so-called spiritualists who had come to Houdini’s house. No wonder my instincts had prevented them from entering. But what could I give them that might satisfy them yet not aid their cause?
“All right,” I said slowly. “For one thing, I discovered that Scarpelli has probably gone up to Boston, and that he’s somehow involved in forged money.”
This made all three of them laugh. “I’m sure that is important news,” Lily said, “but nothing to do with us.”
“He is not working with you?” I asked, my mind going to the forged banknotes.
“Not on this particular assignment.”
“He really believed he had killed you?” I asked.
“Of course not. Lily needed to cease to exist and Scarpelli—well, it was wise for him to vanish too at this moment. He’s on a boat bound for Germany right now, having sailed out of Boston as you so cleverly deduced. He has been most useful to us. His career will get a boost as a reward for services rendered.”
“A boost?” I blurted out.
Summer looked at Lily and laughed. “He’s guaranteed packed houses for the rest of his career, isn’t he? The illusionist who accidentally sliced a woman in half. They’ll all want to see if it’s going to happen again.”
“Enough of Scarpelli,” Lily snapped. “You found out that Smith was working with us, didn’t you?”
“No, I—”
“Why else would you have tried to escape from the carriage?”
“I—didn’t think that Mr. Wilkie would have sent someone to pick me up,” I said cautiously. “I was uneasy.”
I thought Lily was going to press me on that one but Smith cut me off. “More to the point, what exactly did Houdini tell you?”
“Houdini told me nothing,” I said firmly. Lily raised her hand again, and I put up my arm to shield myself. “I swear I’m telling the truth. He told me nothing.”
“So you’re bringing Wilkie up here just to tell him that Smith is working for both sides?”
“Isn’t that rather important?” I asked. “I’d like to know which of my staff I could trust.”
There was a pause.
“See, I told you she was a waste of time,” Lily said. “You should have dispatched her while you could, in the carriage. Now we’ll have the bother of getting rid of the body.”
“Nonsense. Plenty of places to leave a body down here,” Smith said, “and your little helpmate Ernest can put her in a sack and get rid of her like the other one.”
“Hello?” A voice echoed through the theater above us. An electric light must have been turned on because I could see chinks of brightness shining through the cracks in the floorboards above us. “Hello down there,” the voice repeated. “Can you help me? I’m looking for something.”
Then a door opened above us and someone started coming down the steps from the side of the stage. I stared at him in wonder—the last person I expected to see here. He was dressed, as I had seen him this morning, in an immaculate frock coat with a neatly trimmed beard and round wire-framed eyeglasses.
“Who the hell are you?” Summer asked, getting to his feet.
“I am Dr. Leopold Weiss,” he said. “I am the brother of the man you call Houdini. I have been sent by his family to retrieve his possessions. I understand he left his props and other personal items at the theater. The family would not wish them to fall into unfriendly hands, so I have been sent to collect them. If one of you would be good enough to show me where they can be found—”
“We’re busy at the moment,” Summer said. “You’ll have to come back at another time.”
“But I have a carriage waiting outside for this purpose, and a man to assist me,” Dr. Weiss said. “And the theater manager received my telephone call earlier today. But it seems there is nobody in the theater but you at the moment.”
He started to walk forward and an absurd thought crossed my mind as I watched him. I was probably quite wrong, but at the very least it was worth a try. “Dr. Weiss,” I said. “I worked with Houdini. I know where the props are. Maybe I can help you find them.”
As I tried to stand up I felt a warning prick of steel at my back.
“We need the young lady to help us down here at the moment,” Smith said. “If you go to the manager’s office, he should be back within the hour. And the stagehands will be arriving. They can be of assistance.”
“Dr. Weiss,” I said clearly, trying to keep my voice steady. “Will you not be needing the key? Will the key not be found at Houdini’s own house?” I brushed back my hair that was falling across my face.
His dark eyes flashed as they held mine. “Very well,” he said. “You may be right. These magicians. They keep everything locked up, don’t they?” He bowed to us. “I shall return later as you suggest, with the key.”
He turned and went. Nobody spoke as his footsteps died away.
“That was close,” Summer said with a sigh. “Of all the bad timing. And such good manners. If he only knew what we’d done with his brother.” And he chuckled.
“Kill her and let’s get out of here,” Lily said. “We must be away from the city before Wilkie can discover the girl is missing.”
I looked around for anything to use as a weapon. All I could focus on was the glint of that blade in Smith’s hand. There was an open paint pot with a brush in it, but I could hardly defend myself with that.
“Wait,” Smith said. “She may be more use to us alive. Just in case we need a hostage.”
“It’s too risky to have her with us,“ Lily said impatiently. “Give me the damned knife. I’ll do it if you’re squeamish.”
As they discussed what to do with me I had been inching closer to the wall. I picked up the paint pot and flung it into her face as she reached for the knife. At the same time I pulled down the lever on the wall. The trapdoor opened and the little platform descended onto them. Not quickly enough to harm them, unfortunately, but at least they had to jump out of the way. Lily was screaming and as I looked at her it seemed as if blood was pouring from her face. Then I realized, of course, that it was red paint.
She let out a string of German curses at me as I fled up the steps to the wings. Smith and Summer were right behind me and I didn’t think I’d get far, but at least I’d not give up without a fight. As I crossed the stage there was a click and all the stage lights came on. We froze, blinking in the brilliant glare.
“Hold it right there, gentlemen,” a voice said, and to my utter relief I watched policemen coming up the steps onto the stage.
“Stand back,” Smith said. He grabbed me and held the knife at my throat. “One step nearer and this woman dies.”
An eerie silence fell as the constables stopped moving.
“Don’t do anything stupid, sir,” one of them said. “Let the young lady go and nobody will get hurt.”
“She’s coming with me and nobody will try to stop us,” Smith said.
He started to drag me backward.
Then something strange happened. I heard a whooshing noise and was vaguely conscious of someone standing behind us. The knife tightened on my throat for a second and I felt it nick my skin. I heard Smith give something between a grunt and a gurgle. Then another hand came around Smith’s.
“Drop it,” a voice said, and slowly Smith’s hand was pulled away from my throat and his arm was twisted around until he whimpered in pain.
“I said, drop it.”
“Stop it, you’re breaking my arm!” Smith screamed.
“With pleasure,” the voice said.
I took the opportunity to struggle free. Smith’s arm was now up behind his back and his assailant had forced him to his knees. That assailant was Dr. Leopold Weiss.
“Here you are, gentlemen. He’s all yours,” Weiss said. “Please take good care of him until Chief Wilkie of the Secret Service gets here. He’s a dangerous German agent. And I suggest you stop the illusionist Summer and his assistant from leaving the theater by the back door.”
Men rushed past us. Anthony Smith was put into handcuffs and taken down from the stage.
“And the stagehand called Ernest,” I called out. “He is also one of them.”
“German spies, you mean?” a young policeman asked in surprise.
“Exactly.”
Two constables exchanged glances. “Who would have thought it—here in New York?” one of them said.
I must have swayed a little.
“Are you unharmed?” Dr. Weiss asked me.
“I think so. I was hit on the back of the head and it’s certainly throbbing like billy-o, but other than that, I think I’ll survive. Do you really have a carriage waiting? Mr. Wilkie will be arriving at Houdini’s house any moment.”
“Then let us go,” he said. He took my arm and steered me down the steps and through the theater.