The Glass Magician

by Caroline Stevermer

  Nothing to worry about there. No trick of Thalia’s used levitation. She had seen the trick done far less subtly, by assistants who flopped limp as laundry on an ironing board while they were hoisted. Mrs. Von Faber, who was probably a trained dancer, managed to seem as if she truly were entranced, motionless yet pulsing with life.

  Thalia remembered Von Faber’s disgusting expression as he’d complimented her on the chains she used in her act. Something in his gestures as he moved around the girl made Thalia think of the look in his piggy eyes that day at Madame Ostrova’s. If his assistant had been lying in bed, instead of floating in the air, Von Faber’s leering manner would have been right at home.

  Von Faber stepped back and raised his hands to point at the floating woman. The orchestra took the cue and played her back down to rest again upon the elegant little divan as Von Faber mimed control. She lay there as if asleep, while Von Faber stood gloating over her. The orchestra played a lullaby, softer and softer, while he watched her. The music died away. Von Faber snapped his fingers, breaking the spell.

  The girl woke. Von Faber held his position, looming threateningly over her, as she cowered back.

  The curtain fell, the orchestra struck up a jolly new tune, and the lights came up for intermission.

  Thalia sat back, appalled, as the whole audience came back to life, titillated into shocked whispering. Little by little, as the atmosphere lightened, members of the audience moved toward the doors to spend the interval stretching their legs, attending to calls of nature, smoking, or drinking.

  Beside her, Nutall stifled a yawn. “Who on earth would copy that? One wonders why the man ever bothered with a noncompete clause in the first place.” He saw Thalia’s discomfort. “It’s just Von Faber’s way. He soils everything he touches. He can’t do a coin pass without throwing it into the audience, as if we were beggars awaiting his largesse. The levitation goes well enough, thanks to his assistant, but he turns it into a pantomime of helpless submission.”

  “Is that what the pantomime was?” Thalia suppressed a shudder.

  “His audience is not your audience,” Nutall reminded her.

  Thalia grimaced. “I guess not. I’m out of work and he’s playing to a packed house.”

  Nutall leaned toward her. “The man’s only advantage is his instinct for the lowest common denominator.”

  “That and his noncompete clause,” Thalia countered.

  “Yes, I’ve done a bit of research on that topic.” Nutall smiled. “It seems that Cornelius Cadwallader lends Von Faber his assistance in all manner of situations. I’m told he does what Von Faber tells him to do, whether he wants to or not. There is understandable speculation about the reason. Rumor has it, Von Faber knows something about Mr. Cadwallader that he, as the head of the syndicate, wants kept secret.”

  Thalia felt her eyebrows go up higher than she’d thought they could. “Von Faber is blackmailing Cadwallader?”

  “That’s pure speculation.” Nutall gave her a wink. “Von Faber also has excellent legal advice, which makes it unwise to make such statements.”

  Intermission ended as the lights went down. Music built.

  Thalia barely caught Nutall’s final whisper. “Such claims could be considered slander.”

  * * *

  The second half of Von Faber’s performance left the seaminess of the first behind. Von Faber transformed his assistant into a rabbit and back again and moved her from one cabinet to another, but nothing in his repertoire resembled Thalia’s act until he moved at last to his grand finale, the Bullet Catch.

  Von Faber the Magnificent announced that he would defy the only thing in the world that could harm him: a silver bullet. His assistant, now in filmy white draperies, brought the rifle ball out on a black velvet pillow. A professional jeweler was called up from the audience to attest that the object was sterling silver.

  “Nice touch,” Thalia muttered.

  “Too flashy,” Nutall whispered back, ignoring the glares their words drew from those sitting nearby. “Why use silver? It begs the question, why not gold?”

  The jeweler gave the silver bullet to Von Faber, who passed it to his assistant, who loaded the rifle with due ceremony. As the orchestra played, Von Faber took his place, Limoges plate in hand.

  The music stopped as a single drumroll began. The assistant put the rifle to her shoulder, took aim, and pulled the trigger. As the shot rang out, Von Faber fell as if poleaxed, the Limoges plate scattered into fragments all around him. The drummer stopped. Silence fell.

  “Bit clumsy,” Nutall complained, as the audience’s gasps and murmurs filled the theater. Then he paused, and added very softly, “Dear me. How distressing.”

  Thalia discovered that her mouth was hanging open. She closed it with a snap.

  The assistant dropped the rifle and rushed to kneel at Von Faber’s side. In the brilliant light onstage, the blood on his chest looked too dark to be real. When the girl looked up, her face was a blank, but her voice was shrill, piercing over the audience’s confusion. “Is there a doctor in the house? Somebody help me, please!”

  One of the audience members, presumably a doctor, made his way to the aisle. An usher led him to the stage and helped him up.

  The curtain came down then, concealing the tableau onstage, even as the stage manager stepped out from the wings to address the uneasy audience.

  “Traders and Solitaires, ladies and gentlemen, please remain in your seats. The proper authorities have been summoned. Everything is under control.”

  The audience stirred and grumbled. The murmurs were precisely as Thalia had imagined when she thought about the trick going wrong. Yes, it was dreadful. Yes, they had witnessed disaster. Already they were practicing their stories of the shocking mishap they had witnessed.

  The stage manager gestured for silence. “Keep your seats. Everything is under control. Maestro?”

  With a flick of his baton, the conductor brought the orchestra back to life with a lighthearted waltz.

  Thalia turned to Nutall. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Keep your seat. They’ve summoned the police. I expect they will be taking names at the door. If we leave now, we’ll only draw the wrong kind of attention to ourselves. Better to look morbidly interested and leave when everyone else does.”

  “Von Faber has been shot.” Thalia found that saying it aloud didn’t make it any easier to believe. “What went wrong?”

  Nutall closed his eyes as he shook his head. “There’s simply no way to tell as yet.”

  The orchestra played on, waltzes and polkas, while the audience grew more and more restless.

  At last the stage manager returned. “Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for your patience. The authorities are here. We request your further cooperation in one more respect. As you leave the theater, please give your name and address—your real name and your real address—to the officer of the law stationed at your queue.”

  Hecklers from here and there in the audience demanded the reason for such a request, but the stage manager was firm. “Just do as you are told.”

  With no further ado, the seats began to empty as the theatergoers were permitted, ever so slowly, to leave. The audience around them rose and shuffled toward the exits in a slow line. Nutall and Thalia remained in their seats, resigned to a long wait and determined to spend it sitting down.

  “You’d think the management would promise a few free passes or at least a discount on admission,” Nutall observed. “But no. Not even an apology for the interrupted performance.”

  “No updates on Von Faber’s condition either,” said Thalia. “Do you suppose they took him straight to the hospital?”

  “Thalia.” Nutall was taken aback. “I thought you knew. Von Faber’s dead.”

  Thalia frowned at her own stupidity. The bloodstains on the man’s broad chest had formed so sluggishly. She ought to have known at once. “They never said.”

  “Why risk alarming the crowd?” Nutall inspected her. �
�You’ve gone pale. You aren’t going to faint, are you?”

  “Certainly not.” Thalia knew what it was to feel faint. This was different. She felt distinctly odd, but it was not an unpleasant oddness. “If he’s dead, so is the noncompete clause. I can work again.”

  “Just so.” Nutall looked away. “We might want to keep that to ourselves for a bit, until we find out exactly what went wrong tonight.”

  Thalia put Nutall’s words and the expression on Nutall’s face together and felt as if her stomach had dropped away. “It could be considered a motive. If someone made the trick go wrong on purpose, if someone…” The enormity of it silenced Thalia.

  If someone had spoiled the Bullet Catch on purpose, that was murder. There were many ways to ruin stage magic without meaning to, but not many people knew how to do it on cue. If people found out about the noncompete clause, Thalia herself would be a murder suspect, and Nutall with her. She felt sick. “This is bad.” Cattle on the slaughterhouse floor died with as much ceremony as Von Faber had.

  “It is.” Nutall was still absorbed in the slow progress of the rest of the audience toward the exits. “But we need to focus on our own requirements for the moment. They’re taking names and addresses at the door.” Cautiously, Nutall drew out his pocketbook and selected a two-and-a-half-dollar gold piece, which he palmed. “Fortunately for us, the police in this city are notoriously susceptible to bribes.”

  Thalia marveled at the size of the prospective bribe. Nutall was serious. “I’ll follow your lead.”

  “Let us join the press of humanity, shall we?” Nutall rose and helped Thalia toward the aisle. “We don’t wish to be the very last to leave. Keep your veil down and remember, I’m your Solitaire uncle. We live in Brooklyn. Let me do the talking.”

  Nutall was the only person Thalia had ever met who truly did not mind standing in a queue. He waited with her as if no line existed ahead of or behind them, as if he had chosen to stand there purely for his own satisfaction. Thalia tried to do as he did, but she was too much like her father. Any such experience was an invitation for Thalia to notice the people around her and decide precisely why they annoyed her. This response at least had the merit of distracting her from Von Faber’s fate. She’d detested the man, yes. But she’d done the Bullet Catch herself. She knew exactly what it felt like to be in his place. She could imagine the final moments of his life all too vividly.

  What made Thalia feel worse was that in that narrow moment between learning Von Faber was dead and realizing Von Faber could have been murdered, she’d felt oddly happy. The noncompete clause died with Von Faber. Her stage career was her own again. That fleeting moment of joy now made Thalia feel disgusted with herself. It was mean and low to feel that her relief mattered more than a man’s life. Nevertheless, Thalia could not deny that she would benefit from Von Faber’s death. She had loathed the man, but Thalia knew it was wrong to rejoice in anyone’s death.

  Eventually they reached the policeman who was recording names and addresses, his eyes sharp with suspicion. Nutall responded to the policeman’s questions with ill-concealed embarrassment. He was Mr. Jonathan Davenport and Thalia was his niece, Miss Jenny Davenport. They lived in Brooklyn. The address he gave sounded convincing but meant nothing to Thalia. She memorized it in case they were questioned separately.

  Thalia kept her eyes down and hoped Mrs. Morris’s sister’s veil concealed her features. She didn’t see money change hands but she couldn’t miss the policeman’s disgust with Nutall. Whoever Nutall said he was, whatever the gear Thalia had borrowed from Mrs. Morris made her seem to be, Nutall was simply far too old for Thalia.

  Whatever the policeman wrote down, Nutall and Thalia were waved through soon enough. At last they emerged from the smoky warmth of the theater into the brisk night air beyond.

  Despite the late hour, the streets immediately around the Imperial Theater were crowded. There were already reporters there, nagging at the policemen who kept them out of the theater. No photographers yet, but Thalia was glad of her veil all the same. The very last thing in the world Thalia needed was to be identified emerging from a theater where a rival magician performed.

  Not a cab to be found, even if they had wanted to waste money on one. Neither of them had any desire for the supper Nutall had originally proposed to end the evening. Thalia fell into step beside Nutall as they walked briskly westward from Times Square back to Mrs. Morris’s boardinghouse. The whole way, Thalia had the sense someone was following them. She looked over her shoulder four times and never saw anything.

  “What is it?” Nutall asked.

  “Is there someone behind us?” Thalia took another look. Still nothing but darkness. “I feel like someone is watching us.”

  Nutall slowed as they came to a corner and then pulled them both into the shelter of a shuttered newsstand. Together they listened and watched in silence for five minutes, ten minutes.

  Thalia watched until her eyes burned and she had to blink repeatedly. There was nothing.

  “I don’t see anyone.” Nutall sounded amused. “Perhaps giving false names to the police is bothering your conscience?”

  “No.” Thalia was certain the sensation was neither imagination nor conscience, but Nutall’s good humor inspired her to ask, “Where were you last night? Don’t lie.”

  Nutall hesitated before he answered, and when he did, his voice was grave. “I went to the Imperial Theater. After the performance, I tried to talk to Von Faber. He wouldn’t see me there, so I waited for him outside his hotel. He never came.”

  Thalia nodded. “You wanted him to drop the noncompete clause.”

  “I wanted to talk to him, that’s all.” Nutall cleared his throat. “It occurs to me that perhaps there is good reason this area is deserted at this hour. Perhaps we should go. It is neither a good time nor a good place for a stroll.”

  Thalia gave it her best effort, but Nutall would say nothing more. Once they were back at the boardinghouse, he went to bed immediately.

  Mrs. Morris was waiting for them. Thalia returned the hat, veil, and stole with her thanks.

  “Did you have a good evening?” Mrs. Morris asked.

  Thalia was tempted to say yes, but she knew the morning papers would be full of Von Faber’s death. “Not really. Let me tell you all about it.”

  * * *

  Thalia slept surprisingly badly, but eventually morning arrived. She tended to her doves and worried about the snake. At the breakfast table, talk among the other boarders was a debate about the best barber in the immediate vicinity. Ordinarily Nutall would have joined in with enthusiasm, but today he was silent yet nervy and on edge. Watchful, Thalia stayed at the table with him. She kept her hands in her lap and did her finger exercises out of sight beneath the tablecloth.

  At last, they were all dislodged by Mrs. Morris clearing the table. Thalia tagged after Nutall into the parlor and cornered him near the potted plant. “I’m teaching Miss Ryker again today. What will you be doing this afternoon?”

  “I was planning to make the rounds and see about getting us a gig.” Nutall produced a neatly folded newspaper. “Now I’m having second thoughts.”

  Thalia took the paper from him. The only item on the front page that didn’t relate to Von Faber’s death was an item about a second manticore sighting in Central Park. The headline screamed MURDER NOT MISADVENTURE. Beneath the headline was a photogravure of a wedding portrait, a much younger Von Faber arm in arm with a plump blond bride. Beneath the picture, the caption read Grieving Widow Offers Reward.

  “That’s not Mrs. Von Faber,” Thalia said.

  “It is the first Mrs. Von Faber,” Nutall replied. “According to local gossip, his assistant didn’t know that Von Faber had been married before.”

  “How typical of him to lie to her about that.” Thalia took her time reading. “I see what you mean. But the police might find it just as suspicious if we don’t do anything. It’s normal to look for work.”

  Nutall eased the lace curtain
back and looked out the front window. “Keep your eyes open. Someone may be watching this place.”

  Thalia craned her neck to look past him. The street view was precisely as usual, a few pedestrians and hardly any wheeled traffic. The feeling she’d had the night before, that sense she was being followed, was entirely absent. “Why would they do that?”

  Nutall let the curtain fall back in place and eased away from the window. “It’s possible the police have noticed we used false names. Even if they haven’t, it won’t be long before it occurs to them to wonder about Von Faber’s business rivals. His death was good news for us.”

  “Good news for other people too,” Thalia reminded him. “Mr. Cornelius Cadwallader, for one. I can’t imagine he enjoyed letting Von Faber push him and his syndicate around.”

  “That is a good point.” Nutall took a seat on the davenport and unfolded the newspaper again.

  Thalia considered reminding Nutall that even if the police found out he’d been at the Imperial Theater the night before Von Faber’s demise, he wasn’t a murderer. She also considered how well sound carried in the boardinghouse and how nosy her fellow lodgers were. Instead, she said, “Plenty of people hated Von Faber. The police are going to figure that out. They can’t find anything against us because we didn’t do anything. If someone truly rigged the Bullet Catch to do away with Von Faber, it was neither you nor me.”

  “Neither you nor I.” Nutall corrected her absently from behind the newspaper.

  That was much more like the usual Nutall, Thalia decided. “So are you going out to find us a gig? Or will you just sit in here and read the newspapers all day?”

  “The latter.” Nutall sounded preoccupied. “We can start to look for work properly on Monday.”