Magician's Fire

by Simon Nicholson

  “He only just got away with it, Mr. Lemster!” Arthur said. “The crowd went totally wild!”

  “Ah yes, the threat of genuine danger…” Herbie nodded, his cane tapping ahead of him. “Mind you, danger can enter a magician’s life in so many ways.”

  Something was definitely up. The old man’s fingers were trembling again, and more perspiration gleamed on his skin. These signs seemed to become even more pronounced, Harry observed, the further Herbie shuffled along the street. Glancing across at Billie and Arthur, he saw that they had noticed Herbie’s distress too, because they had fallen silent and were staring at the old man closely. Reaching the end of the street and turning the corner, Herbie covered the last few yards toward the rickety old building looming across the street.

  The Wesley Jones Theater. Its walls were crumbling, its windows lopsided, and faded posters hung on its signboards advertising its regular acts, one of which was a certain Herbie Lemster, Magician. An excited crowd was already gathered outside, forming a line to buy tickets, as Harry watched his elderly friend heading off toward the theater’s stage door.

  “Mr. Lemster?” Billie called out after him. “Are you feeling all right?”

  Herbie swung around to face them. No question that something was up now. His clothes shuddered, drops of sweat gathered in those complicated wrinkles, and Herbie’s face had turned strangely pale. And yet, obvious though those signs were, the words the old magician said next did nothing to explain them or even acknowledge that they existed.

  “Good luck… Good luck with the world of magic…” he stammered, eyes wide and shimmering. “And all that it can be.”

  And with that, the old man turned and disappeared into the Wesley Jones Theater.

  Chapter 4

  Harry sat down in the theater. The insides were dilapidated, the seats broken, the curtain grubby and moth-eaten, but the audience was bustling and excited, waiting to see their favorite acts. Harry dropped his shoeshine box by his feet and prepared to go to work which, given what had just happened, wasn’t going to be easy.

  “So what do you think is up with him?” Billie dropped into the next seat and kicked her boots up onto the back of the one in front. “He looked really odd.”

  “I hope he’s all right.” Arthur settled himself too. “Herbie got you started, Harry. If he hadn’t done that, maybe none of us would have met.”

  “It’s true.” Billie turned to Harry. “You might never have practiced tightrope-walking on that park bench, and I’d never have picked you out.”

  “Same for me and the streetcar-jumping stuff.” Arthur nodded.

  “It could all be part of the act. Herbie could be doing it deliberately as a distraction.” Harry had cobbled this explanation together on the way in, and he was trying to get used to it. “He thinks that I’ll worry about how he’s acting and miss any little clue that might give his tricks away. It’s pretty clever of ol’ Herbie if you think about it.”

  His friends looked at him. Billie’s eyebrows were raised rather high and Arthur was frowning, but at least they weren’t saying he was completely wrong. Maybe his explanation wasn’t a bad one after all, and Harry decided to act as if that was the case. The game. Adjusting his position, he prepared to observe the old man’s act.

  “By the way, Artie, have you thought any more about what you said yesterday? About my new name?”

  “Ah, yes.” Still looking worried, Arthur adjusted his tie as the lights sputtered out. “A fair number of magicians invent a new one. Something that catches the attention…”

  “Had any more ideas?”

  “I was doing some research earlier today, actually,” Arthur continued. “Magicians sometimes name themselves after really famous magicians from long ago—that way they grab some of their reputation. Now there’s this old French magician, very famous when he was alive, called Jean Robert-Houdin—”

  “Quite a mouthful,” Billie commented. “And Harry doesn’t speak a word of French.”

  “Yes, but you could make it shorter. And change it a bit, so it’s more like a name in Hungarian, which Harry obviously does speak. So Houdin. Stick an i on the end—Houdini.”

  “Interesting—” Harry began, but by then the curtain was rising. Prettily dressed ladies sang songs, acrobats tumbled, and Harry sat with his friends, watching the show. A new act followed, in which dancers pretended to be pearl divers, floating in front of a rippling blue backcloth as if under the sea. Harry enjoyed that too, even though he immediately spotted the wires that held the dancers up and saw that the huge shark was just a shadow.

  The other acts trooped on—some Cossack dancers, a man who told jokes while dressed as a parrot, the pearl divers again, and then a leopard-skin-wearing strongman named Bruno, who made three of the prettily dressed ladies sit on a chair and then lifted it. Another wire, Harry observed. But then Herbie appeared and Harry leaned forward, concentrating.

  The tiniest twitch of Herbie’s trouser pocket, the faintest bulge of a sleeve, or the tilt of a shoe could give something away. Harry glanced down at his own hands, at his knees, at his whole body. Any minute now, bits of it would start twitching to life, practicing and mimicking whatever intriguing new move was about to be discovered.

  “Ladies and gentlemen…” The old man bowed before the crowd. “Observe…”

  From out of his jacket, he took a large knife. He quickly peeled a potato with it, proving the blade was razor-sharp. Then he tossed the knife high in the air, and as it plummeted back down, he held out a bare hand and caught it blade first between thumb and finger. No blood on the stage, no injury of any kind.

  Dazzling enough, but then other knives started hurtling toward the old magician from the back of the theater, from the boxes, from the wings of the stage, only for Herbie to catch them, one by one, in his frail, bare hands. The audience gasped, and he held the knives aloft, looking up at their glinting steel. Harry leaned even further forward in his seat, searching for a clue.

  But all he could see was that Herbie was trembling again. The old man had held it together during the trick, but now that the applause was thundering around him, he was giving way, his clothes shuddering, his wrinkles glittering in the light as perspiration coursed along them. Harry glanced at his friends and saw that they also had noticed, their faces staring worriedly in the dark.

  It was like that for the rest of the act. Herbie performed his flower trick, in which not only did a flower grow out of his open hand, but a huge tropical spider scampered out, danced around the flower, and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Impossible to work out, but Harry wasn’t even trying now, too distracted by the return of the trembling. Next the old man shut himself in a large crate. Although a large sack of stage weights plummeted onto the crate, crushing it flat, Herbie shuffled in from the wings unharmed.

  Normally he walked in quite confidently, but there was no sign of that tonight. He seemed hardly able to walk at all, staying right at the edge of the stage and clinging to the proscenium arch for support. Finally, Herbie performed his floating trick, rising into the air and drifting off over a bed of vicious-looking spikes, while moving his legs as if he were pedaling a bicycle. But still Harry found it impossible to concentrate, too troubled by the terrible paleness of the old man’s face as he cycled off into the gloom.

  The curtain flew down. The audience clapped, hooted, and stamped. The curtain rose again, with the performers taking a bow, and then it lowered for good. The audience started shuffling out. But Harry remained in his seat, perfectly still, and Billie and Arthur were motionless beside him.

  “I suppose you could be right about Herbie’s behavior being a distraction, Harry,” said Arthur after a while. “But it seems unlikely.”

  “Completely unlikely,” said Billie.

  “I agree,” said Harry. What was up with Herbie? What was this strange weakness that seemed to be taking him over? Harry’s finger
s drummed on the rickety arms of the theater seat.

  “Come on, we’ll find him outside. He’ll be leaving by the stage door.”

  “But that’s against our agreement.” Arthur looked uncertain. “He doesn’t want us to meet him there. He’s always said—”

  “That’s about us discovering his tricks! This is different—we’re making sure he’s all right! Come on!”

  Harry sprang up, his shoeshine box flying up with him. He vaulted over the back of the seats, leaving Arthur and Billie floundering behind. Marching up the aisle toward the foyer doors, the only other member of the audience who had lingered behind.

  A bulky figure, swathed in a dark cape. The man was hunched over a briefcase, an arm delving inside it. The face that glanced up at Harry had an oiled and curling red mustache, two piercing eyes, and a long, thin nose. On the collar of the cape, a silver brooch with a snake spiraled around a silver sword. From the briefcase, a wisp of purple smoke.

  Odd. Harry’s pace slowed. But Billie and Arthur were hurrying up the aisle behind him and slammed into his back. Need to find Herbie, Harry thought as he snatched his gaze away from the strange figure and swept on, out of the theater.

  Chapter 5

  “Follow me!” Harry called back.

  “We’re trying!” Billie sputtered.

  “Ow!” Arthur gasped.

  Harry ducked between people’s legs in the crowd. A fair chunk of the audience was already bustling around the stage door. There was no chance of him being able to push his way through, so he had dropped to the ground and was crawling instead. Angling his shoeshine box through with him, he saw, farther back, his friends trying to follow. Arthur was tangled up in a lady’s dress, while Billie was squashed between two heavy-looking suitcases.

  “Stuck! This is like the Tennessee Stagecoach Squeeze! Bumped the whole journey on the stagecoach roof, jammed between two suitcases.” Billie tried to pull herself loose. “I thought that was bad but—”

  “Hurry, Billie!” Harry reached back, grabbed her hand, and tugged. She lurched forward but then snagged her smock on a nearby boot’s riding spur and got stuck again, while Arthur was still trying to free himself from the dress.

  They’ll catch up, thought Harry, and he wriggled onward until, at last, he popped out of the crowd, right by the stage door.

  “The performers will be emerging soon! Autographs will be available—all included in the price of your ticket, naturally!” A plump gentleman with a flamboyant pink top hat squashed onto his head was bustling around in front of the crowd. Harry recognized him from his previous visits to the theater, when he had seen the man in the foyer welcoming the audience as they arrived—Mr. Wesley Jones himself. “What a show we had tonight—wouldn’t you say, Arnold?”

  “It was a swell ’un all right, Mr. Jones!” Loping after Wesley was a tall, gangly, wide-eyed young man, whose left leg dragged slightly behind him. Papers spilled out of a folder stuffed under his arm. “Herbie was powerful spectacular, I thought!”

  “Ah, but he always is.” Wesley snatched off the pink top hat. “Regarding Herbie, I’d pay close attention to Arnold if I were you, folks! He’s my stage manager and he’s seen the acts a thousand times. Why, he might have picked up a few clues about how old Herbie does his tricks!” The pink hat twirled between two thumbs. “Well, Arnold?”

  “I don’t know about that, Mr. Jones.” The young man rearranged his papers, adjusted his left leg, and stood at attention as best he could. “Anyway, Herbie’ll be down here soon enough. He’s just up in his dressing room, taking a rest.”

  “Ah—but is he?” Another twirl of the hat, and Wesley winked over its rim. “Maybe, right at this very moment, he’s up there carrying out preparation work for his next incredible trick. He never stops, y’know. He works on them endlessly…”

  Intrigued cooing came from the crowd. Harry swung around and peered up at the rickety theater building. Seeing brightly lit windows running up the theater gave him an idea. He began wriggling back between the shoes, trouser legs, boots, and riding spurs, and nearly collided with Billie and Arthur, who were still only halfway through the crowd.

  “Where are you going now?” Billie disentangled herself from an umbrella.

  “Maybe it’ll be easier, Billie!” Arthur was already trying to swivel around. “Going in the other direction, I mean.”

  It wasn’t. It was much harder because the crowd was pushing toward the stage door, not away from it, and even Harry needed to wriggle with all his skill before he managed to tumble out onto the cobblestones. He sprang to his feet, crossed the street, and peered back up at the theater. And he saw exactly what he had hoped for.

  In each of the theater windows, silhouettes of the various performers flitted as they changed out of their costumes. Two stories up, neatly framed in its window, was a silhouette that looked recognizably frail. Herbie. The old man was moving about, the shadows of his spindly arms fluttering in the light. Spotting a drainpipe running up the side of the theater, Harry ran across and started shimmying up.

  “Harry? What are you doing?”

  It was Arthur. He was staggering across the street, his tie crooked, his tweed suit a mess. Behind him, Billie scrambled up from the cobblestones with a puzzled expression on her face. They stumbled toward Harry, staring up at the window.

  “There’s Herbie!”

  “I know! I’ll climb up and see him. Who knows how long it’ll be till he makes it down to the stage door? I know he doesn’t want us inside the theater, but this isn’t about tricks anymore!” Harry’s arm shot up and pointed at various other drainpipes, windowsills, and gutters, a more-or-less possible route up the side of the theater. “Come on!”

  They didn’t look convinced. Perhaps that’s for the best, thought Harry. A fair number of passersby were drifting along the street, so someone would be sure to notice three children clambering up the side of a theater. But alone and climbing with skill, he might make the journey undetected. Gripping one of the drainpipe’s brackets, he continued shimmying up through the shadows.

  “Harry! Look!”

  “What’s happening?”

  Harry swung around. He saw Billie and Arthur, their arms pointing up at the window. Farther down the street, some of the passersby had stopped and also were staring up. Harry leaned out from the drainpipe, gazed up, and saw why.

  The silhouette in Herbie’s window was no longer just moving about. It was tripping, staggering. Not only that, but someone else seemed to have entered the dressing room. A shadow lurched into view, a thick, burly one, with arms lunging. Whoever it was, Herbie Lemster clearly wasn’t happy to see them. The old man’s spindly shape was flailing, trying to fend off the shadow, and Harry heard feeble muffled cries, followed by a louder, gruffer shout.

  “What’s yours is mine and always shall be! You remember that, Herbie Lemster!”

  A flash of light. Harry’s eyes throbbed with pain. An explosion thundered through the night, the drainpipe shuddered, and he lost his hold. He was falling, the explosion still shuddering as he plummeted. His arms and legs scrabbled about, thrashing at the air, and he slammed into the sidewalk, his body crumpling.

  “Harry?”

  He lay there. He felt the sting of the sidewalk’s grit cutting deep into his hands, his knees, and the side of his head. He lurched to his feet. Stumbling forward, he found a lamppost and grabbed hold.

  “Harry? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine…”

  It was Billie. Her face peered at him. He saw Arthur coming toward him too. Harry stared at them, blinked, and then swung back to look at the window.

  Its glass had been shattered. And corkscrewing out into the night sky…

  …were plumes of thick, purple smoke.

  Chapter 6

  Purple wisps drifted down from the window and Harry choked on them, tasting chemicals in his spit.
His eyes still throbbed and his body ached from the fall, but he kept stumbling on through the plumes of smog, his gaze fixed on the crowd around the stage door.

  “Harry!” Arthur’s voice was beside him. “Did you see it?”

  “Whole window blew out!” Billie appeared out of the smoke, flapping at the fumes. “And look at all this smoke! What the heck’s going on, Harry—Harry?”

  Help Herbie. Harry plunged into the crowd. It was hysterical now, bodies shoving, legs intertwining. He thought of Herbie’s strangely pale face before the show. And now, a thundering explosion, a shattered window, a load of billowing purple smoke. The thoughts made him pick up speed, crawling, diving through. Glancing back, he saw his friends, already hopelessly entangled. They’ll catch up, he told himself again.

  “Tell us what happened, Arnold! Speak to me!”

  It was Wesley Jones. Harry toppled out between two boots and saw the theater owner, his pink top hat battered, crouching over the slumped shape of the stage manager. He was trying to sit the gangly young man up on the cobblestones, but Arnold’s head kept lolling forward, and Harry saw that the stage manager had hit his head, blood trickling all the way down onto his shirt.

  “I’d just gone inside, Mr. Jones, sir.” Arnold was gasping. “Herbie was takin’ so long, y’see.”

  “I know! I sent you!” Wesley swung around to face the crowd. “You all wanted to see Herbie. I couldn’t keep you waiting any longer, could I?”

  “So I went in, made my way up the stairs…” Arnold choked. “Then it happened, Mr. Jones. The flash of light! The smoke! I lost my balance, see…fell down the stairs…”

  “And that’s where I found him, ladies and gentlemen! At the foot of the stairs!” Wesley butted in. “He’s always a little unsteady on his feet, poor guy. How on earth could he climb the stairs straight into a terrible explosion? To think of such a thing happening, in my theater of all places—”