Magician's Fire

by Simon Nicholson

  The one who they’ll never see again.

  The water was up to his chest. He ducked back under it and reached for the cog again, but the teeth tore through his skin even faster this time. Another bubble of pain, and he shot back up out of the water, so fast that his head hit the bars at the top of the cage. He gripped them, and the vibrations shuddered through his bones.

  One last time, he saw Billie and Arthur. They were back sitting at the bottom of that fire escape, the Princess Moldo costume in ruins, the dress ripped, the bonnet squashed. Why, thanks to him, Billie had even lost the very best bit of it, the Princess Moldo spectacles, genuinely made in Peru and knocked off by his arm during the fall down the fire escape.

  The Princess Moldo spectacles.

  Harry’s hand flew under the water. He dug inside his jacket, the pocket to the left. The spectacles were still there, where he had slid them, as he rattled away on the streetcar. He hadn’t thought about them much then, apart from deciding he would give them back to his friends when he could. But he was thinking about them now. He had never thought about anything so intently in his life.

  He lifted them up. The dark lenses were smashed; the frames were bent. But the thin arms were still intact.

  Arms with curved, bendable metal ends.

  Harry sucked in another gulp of air and dove under the water. He tore off one of the spectacle arms and sank toward the iron cog. With his still-bleeding hand, he angled the curved length of metal between the teeth and watched it catch hold. The cage shuddered to halt, although the spectacle arm wouldn’t hold long and the water was still rising. But he had won himself a few more seconds, and he shot to the surface, grabbed another gasp of air, and sank back down to the lock. In his hands, Harry was already testing the strength of the remaining spectacle arm to see how easily it would bend.

  Could it work? For the Great Train Escape, he had picked the padlock with a nail held between his teeth. He had picked the lock on the library door with a paper clip, and he had picked his way into the hotel manager’s office with a fork. But what if the lock on the cage door was unusually difficult? What if the made-in-Peru spectacle arm was too weak to hold the shape? Even worse, it was almost impossible to see in the watery gloom, and Harry could hardly make out the lock’s insides.

  Using a little guesswork, he twisted the spectacle arm into a new curve. It slid in, and he probed the lock’s levers but gave up because his hand was trembling too much. His breath was out, and his heart was making his whole body shake. Grab another breath and try again, he decided, and he pushed for the water’s surface.

  Too late. The water had risen too high, and his face slammed against the cage bars. His lips strained upwards, but the rippling surface was too far away. He sank downward, his heart throbbing, his legs, arms, and hands losing their last traces of feeling. The water became darker, more blurry, as his eyelids flickered. The Princess Moldo spectacle arm slid from his fingers. He hung there in the water, icy and black.

  His eyes closed. He stopped moving.

  One…one…one last try…

  An eye opened. He peered down and saw the spectacle arm just vanishing into the gloom. His fingers twitched after it, but it was already gone. With a last quiver of strength, he turned himself in the water, reaching after it. Slowly, he rotated until he was nearly upside down…

  With the tip of his fingers, he caught it.

  Still upside down, he saw the lock. It was just a few feet away. Feebly, he lifted the spectacle arm. He tried to angle it in, but it bumped against the keyhole’s edges. Then it slid in. He tilted it, twisted it. He had to concentrate on keeping his numb hands moving, stopping them from falling limply away. His eyes were wide open, unblinking, but the water was growing darker and more blurry. He could hardly see at all.

  But he could hear.

  And, muffled by water, he heard…

  …a click.

  The lock sprang open. Harry tugged the door, but it was stiff, so he had to tug again. It slid across, and he tried to squeeze through, but the gap was too narrow, and he had to wriggle. He wondered if he had already died, if the whole experience of the last few seconds had just been the final flickers of his drowning mind—then a kick sent him racing upward and he burst through the surface.

  Air raced into his lungs so fast that it was as if he had been punched, and he nearly sank back into the water with the shock. He struggled on, reached the stairs, and pulled himself up them, gasping, his hands still empty of feeling. Reaching the top, he slammed into a solid wall, the back of the mantelpiece, but he remembered the position of the switch on the other side and found the mechanism. He sprang it, toppled into Wesley’s office, thudded onto the rug, and realized what a terrible mistake he had made.

  Footsteps. Uneven footsteps, echoing up the corridor outside the office.

  Harry tried to get up. His fingers arched on the rug, trying to push, but his strength was gone. The footsteps were closer now. What a fool, he thought, not to realize that Wesley or Arnold might return to the office. His escape had been for nothing, even with the help of his friends…

  His friends.

  “Harry!”

  Arthur had slid out from behind the office door. Billie had thrown aside a curtain. They stared at him, but then they swung around in the direction of the footsteps. Arthur sprang toward the mantelpiece, and Harry heard the grind as it slid shut. He felt Billie’s hands under his arms, tugging him up, and Arthur was helping her too, dragging him out through the office door. The footsteps were even louder, and Arnold’s shadow slanted into view, but Billie flung open another door, bundled them into a cobweb-strewn dressing room, and silently closed the door behind them.

  More footsteps. The sound of papers fluttering on Wesley’s desk. Billie tweaked the dressing door open just a crack, and Harry saw the shape of Arnold, papers under his arm, standing in the doorway to Wesley’s office. He was staring in the direction of the mantelpiece. A satisfied nod, the faintest waft of a chuckle, and the stage manager swung back off down the corridor. Harry waited until the shuffling footsteps were gone, completely gone. Then, he sputtered out the words that, from the moment he had seen his friends, had been trying to force their way out through his lips.

  “I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

  Immediately, his voice gave out. His lungs still ached, his heart still pounded, and the effort of speaking nearly choked him. But nothing was going to hold him back. Gripping the dusty edge of the dressing-room counter, he gathered his breath, all the time aware of his two friends staring at him.

  “Pardon?” said Arthur.

  “I’m sorry about not listening to you earlier, Artie…” His breath was back, and he struggled on, in between gasps. “When you were trying to tell me all about the Princess Moldo plan…I should have listened. I know that now! Apart from anything else, you were right about having enough of that sort of thing in your life already…” He was still gasping, and he was dripping wet, but he forced himself to meet Arthur’s eyes. “Last thing you want is a friend who ignores you too. So I’m sorry, Artie. I really am…”

  His voice gave out again. And for a while, nothing more was said. Arthur just stared at Harry across the dilapidated dressing room. But then the younger boy nodded, adjusted his tie, and looked away.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  “What about me?” said Billie, drumming her fingers on the counter.

  “Well, obviously, I’m really sorry about that too.” Another gasp, but Harry found that his breath came back faster this time. That was fortunate, because Billie was looking straight at him. “You’re right. I should have gone along with the Princess Moldo business without interfering. In fact, I should have paid a lot more attention to you and Artie generally, I reckon.” He swallowed.

  “You were right earlier, Billie. Each of us, we’re not so much, not on our own. Arthur’s a rich boy who gets ignored. You
’re just a penniless street kid, and as for me, well, no one was paying me and my tricks any attention until you two came along. But once we joined together…”

  “Exactly,” said Billie.

  “Besides, why wouldn’t I want to listen to you? You’re just as good at thinking up plans as I am! All those stories of the stuff you’ve got up to, Billie—that proves it, doesn’t it? And you’re good too, Artie—how could you not be, with all those books you’ve read! Come to think of it, both of you being here at the Wesley Jones Theater proves just how good you are. I didn’t say where I was going—how’d you work it out?”

  “If you’d just stop talking, we might tell you.” Billie dropped into a rickety chair and swung her boots onto the dressing room counter. “It was a pretty smart business—eh, Artie?”

  “Absolutely.” Artie dropped into a chair too, a tiny smile beginning to curve on his lips. “It wasn’t that hard, to be honest. Number 47, that was the streetcar you jumped onto.”

  “And we remembered you jumping onto the same number streetcar before, so we just looked up where the Number 47 went and saw it was the Wesley Jones Theater.” Billie’s boots swapped places. “Pretty clever, yeah?”

  “Brilliant.” There was no third chair, so Harry just stayed where he was, clinging to the wall. “Just brilliant.”

  “So we came right here and managed to break in easy enough. Sneaking up just now, we heard Wesley Jones, owner of this place, chatting to some thin guy about—”

  “About a boy!” Arthur leaned back in his chair. “About how they’d ‘dealt with him’ and how he ‘wouldn’t be trouble no longer.’ It didn’t sound good, Harry!”

  “No, it did not,” Billie continued. “Anyway, despite everything you’ve done recently, Harry, we’re still your pals, and someone has to look after you, so we thought we’d find out more—”

  “We snuck up here to Wesley Jones’s office and started searching for clues. And we’d just started doing that when the mantelpiece swung open and you came in!”

  “Exactly. So that’s what we’ve been up to. What about you?” Billie peered at her friend and studied the water trickling from his clothes, the puddle spreading around his boots. “Been swimming?”

  Harry told them. He was still recovering, so the first part was a bit of a muddle, but he kept going, forcing out as many words as he could. He told them about Boris, about Herbie, about the terrible truth behind Wesley Jones’s theater. He must have been making some sort of sense, because his friends were saying nothing at all, taking everything in. Harry saw Arthur’s mouth fall open, and even Billie showed not the slightest sign of interrupting. She stayed that way until Harry reached the bit about stumbling back into the office and collapsing on the rug.

  “He tried to kill you? Actually, properly kill you?”

  “The Cruel Theater of Wesley Jones!” Arthur whistled. “Who would have believed it?”

  “And who’s gonna believe it even now?” Billie was up, out of the chair, pacing the room, twiddling her thumbs behind her so fast that they seemed to propel her along. “That’s the trouble, Artie!”

  She’s right. Harry was still dripping wet, but he was feeling stronger now, and he could see what Billie was saying. Yes, he had discovered the terrible truth behind Herbie’s disappearance. Yes, Wesley Jones had tried to silence him forever, not one to take chances. But that doesn’t mean telling the world the truth about this terrible theater is going to be easy, he reflected—as Billie was continuing to point out.

  “It would have been fine if you’d got Herbie out—he could back us up. But he’s still trapped here, isn’t he? He’ll be too scared to say a word! Same for all the performers! So that leaves just us, a bunch of kids—and it’s just like you said before, Harry. No one’s going to take our word for it. Not the police, not anyone else. At most, someone might ask Wesley a few questions, but do you think he’ll have any trouble thinking up something to cover his tracks? Not one bit! It’s a hard one all right…” Her thumbs twiddled even faster. “Mind you, I’m not saying it’s impossible…”

  Definitely not impossible. Leaning against the dressing room’s crumbling wall, Harry realized that little bits and pieces of a plan were flying around in his thoughts, waiting to be put together so that this business could be sorted out once and for all. They were getting clearer all the time, those bits and pieces, and yet he decided to ignore them completely, just for now.

  He felt his eyes narrow and his teeth grit with the concentration of doing so. Given everything that had happened recently, it seemed important that he approach things a bit differently this time. He let his eyes open and glanced down at his left fist to remind himself why.

  Knuckles white, it was still clutching the twisted remains of the Princess Moldo spectacles. Slowly, he turned to his friends and spoke.

  “Let’s do this together, shall we?”

  Chapter 22

  Harry hid in the backstage shadows, Billie squeezed next to him, Arthur huddled behind. Out on the stage, the evening show was underway. Bruno the Strongman had just finished his act and was loping toward the wings with a mournful expression. But all the performers look miserable, thought Harry—the pearl-diving dancers, the juggling acrobats, the man who told jokes while dressed as a parrot. Why wouldn’t they, with nothing but a desperate future of slaving at the Cruel Theater of Wesley Jones awaiting them? Screwing his eye to the tiny hole in the backstage wall, Harry peered out at the audience and listened to the excited muttering.

  “Herbie Lemster! He’s back, and no one knows how!”

  “The police never solved it. It’s a darn mystery!”

  “I was there that night. Vanished into a puff of smoke, he did!”

  “Dark forces, that’s what they say! It’s the only explanation.”

  The rumors raced about. They built in volume until they almost blotted out the applause that accompanied the next act, the juggling acrobats. The audience settled down to watch, but clearly, from their faces and the continued muttering, they were thinking only of Herbie Lemster, due to appear at any moment.

  “Wesley’s plan’s working nicely, ain’t it, Harry?” Billie peered through another hole.

  “Certainly is,” Harry muttered. “Arnold’s slapped up a few posters outside announcing Herbie’s return. Plus, I saw Wesley wandering about the audience just before the show, chatting and laughing—”

  “Getting the rumors started!” Arthur butted in. “He’s told the newspapers too—plenty of journalists in the audience. I saw them come in. All of New York has been talking about Herbie, and now he’s come back out of nowhere! Wesley isn’t just going to keep his terrible theater going; it’s going to be more successful than ever and—”

  “Pretty smart plan.” Billie swung around from her spy hole. “But Wesley Jones ain’t the only one who’s cooked up one of those, is he?”

  She pointed at the sheet of paper in Arthur’s hands. It was covered with three different types of handwriting, all spiraling in different directions, a mass of scribbled words and diagrams. It had been Artie’s idea that they each write their different ideas down, and the result was something of a mess, but every last scribble had fit onto one page, and Arthur was proudly holding it in his hands. Billie reached out and took hold of a corner of it. Harry grabbed it too. It hovered there, gripped in their three hands.

  “Let’s just do it, shall we?”

  They raced through the shadows. Unseen, they glided past Bruno, the pearl-diving ladies, and a couple of the Cossack dancers, all looking as down-trodden as ever. Arriving in the corner of the backstage area by the huge piece of wooden seaweed, Harry rooted through the collection of ropes, chose one, tossed it into Arthur’s arms, and headed off with him into the dark. Hurrying through the gloom, he spotted the most mournful-looking figure of all, trudging toward the stage.

  Herbie. What a broken man he looked to be. His gray ha
ir drooped, his body shivered, and his suit was still damp and creased after his time imprisoned in Wesley Jones’s cage. Harry remembered the terror of the old magician down there, and he looked hardly less frightened now, tottering through the wings, forced to perform once again. A dreadful sight, made even more terrible by the sound of a familiar voice wafting gleefully from the stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we come now to the main business of the evening. The miraculous return of Herbie Lemster, our resident magician!” It was Wesley Jones, out on the stage, the pink top hat twirling as he boomed out his announcement. “Many of you may have heard of the strange events of last night. Purple smoke, an inexplicable disappearance! Sadly, ladies and gentleman, I am unable to shed any light on the affair. It will be a mystery that will grip and baffle this city for years to come, I venture.”

  A wink over the hat’s rim. “What I can say is, however unexplained his disappearance, Herbie is with us once again. Puzzle for yourselves, if you will, about his vanishing. But here he is, ladies and gentlemen! Here he is!”

  The applause was tumultuous. The audience cheered, and there were even shrieks as the old magician went shuffling on. Harry was deep in the backstage gloom, but he could still make out the stage—and he had never seen anyone look as miserable as Herbie taking up his position, nor had he ever seen anyone as gleefully happy as Wesley Jones as he marched into the wings. Chuckling, the theater manager handed his hat to Arnold, who was smirking and also looked pleased about the business.

  Harry shifted his gaze to Billie, as she wandered out of the shadows and strolled up to the two villains.

  “Excuse me?” She propped herself casually against some scenery. “Don’t suppose you’ve seen a boy around here, have you? Harry’s his name, and he’s a good friend of mine—”

  Arnold lunged for her, and Billie was running as fast as she could. Harry watched her tiny outline hurtling away from the wings toward him. Arnold and Wesley were close behind, but Billie raced through the dark, her glue-spattered smock flapping as she gathered speed. What would she call this latest adventure of hers when she told the story? The Wesley Jones Theater Dash, maybe? Harry watched her speed past him, vanishing through a doorway into the props room, which was where they had carefully agreed she should run.