“That was quite a performance,” Schneider said, sampling his drink, a Magic Cellar specialty called a Levitation. “Quite a performance indeed.”
Mrs. Lorde concurred. “I must say, I am very impressed with Mr. Steele. His act will be good for Lorde’s image as well as for business. Very dignified and impressive. At first, you know, when I heard about this after returning from Europe last week, I thought it was cheap and vulgar publicity.”
She was talking about Steele’s next engagement, which was to spend two weeks in a hermetically sealed, glass-topped coffin in Lorde’s front window — beginning tonight. The idea had been Steele’s originally, but after many weeks of subtle talks I had managed to convince Schneider that he had thought of it. A good theatrical manager is a good con man.
“My late husband, you know,” Mrs. Lorde continued, “was very fond of magicians. He’d seen the Great Carter as a youth and it impressed him greatly. Of course, watching magicians was only a minor passion compared to his love of stamps.”
Schneider looked at his watch. “Speaking of Mr. Lorde’s stamps,” he said, “I’d better call McCarthy. I want to make sure of the time he and his men are coming to move the collection.”
Ian McCarthy was curator of the Lorde’s Collection, one of the finest of United States issues in the world, featuring the only mint copy of the Hayes Two-and-a-Half-Cent Vermilion, probably the most valuable presidential portrait in existence. The entire issue was believed to have been destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake until, in 1929, this single stamp was found in the drawer of a desk being auctioned off by the post office. Mr. Lorde bought the stamp at auction for $22,000 — an incredible price for the time — in honor of his wife who was distantly related to Lucy Webb Hayes, the President’s wife.
The collection was periodically moved from one to another of the sixteen state-wide branches of Lorde’s — tonight it was going to Sacramento, as usual late at night with top security precautions — and, as you’d expect, it brought in many an admiring philatelist. The main branch here in San Francisco maintained a stamp room which dispensed both rare and common stamps to eager buyers — the practical approach. Old man Lorde had been a hard-nosed businessman as well as a collector.
“Perhaps you had better go over to the store immediately,” Mrs. Lorde said to Schneider. Her voice had a hard edge to it, as it had all night when she’d addressed him. I had the feeling she was not exactly pleased with her manager, for some reason.
“Yes, perhaps I should,” Schneider said. He stood and offered me his hand. He was one of those people who think politeness is what separates Man from the Lower Orders. Lillian Royce seemed to think this was an admirable quality.
When Schneider had given Miss Royce a radiant smile and departed, Lewis Thorp leaned toward me and said in his high voice, “Tell me, Booth, how does Steele do that aging trick?”
Trying not to wince at the word “trick,” I cupped my hand to my mouth confidentially. “Magic,” I whispered.
Lillian Royce giggled.
Steele was sitting in front of the triple mirror removing his makeup when I entered his dressing room minutes later. “Beautiful show,” I said. “You left them breathless.”
“Thank you, Matthew.” He began to don the outfit he would wear in the coffin for the next two weeks: black pants, black turtleneck sweater, black jacket, very somber and correct for a coffin with a glass top. “Have the Lorde’s people left for the store?” he asked.
I said they had. “There’s a limousine waiting for us out front.”
“Was the coffin delivered?”
“Yes. Thorp told me it arrived around six.” I had been at Steele’s house across the bay in Berkeley at three, when the movers had picked up the apparatus from his basement workshop.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Matthew,” he said. With his thick black hair, dark complexion, and deep-set eyes, the all-black costume made him look somewhat sinister.
Ardis joined us, wearing a simple white dress as provocative as any of her stage costumes; her long, auburn hair was now arranged in a precise manner. She linked her arm familiarly through Steele’s and we walked out to the waiting limousine. Ardis lived in a private wing of Steele’s enormous house, and was his closest friend and confidante. If there were any other quality to their relationship, only they knew of it.
The limousine took us swiftly and silently through a foggy San Francisco night to Post Street. Lorde’s main entrance was floodlit, and there was a large crowd on hand. The publicity I had planted in articles, columns, and local TV shows had paid off.
Steele and Ardis waved to the crowd and hurried inside the store; it was 9:50 and the entombment was set for ten o’clock. I would have gone in with them, but the security guard at the door wouldn’t let me pass. The store was isolated except for a few top employees because of the collection. I went over to the window to see how the coffin looked in place. On a two-foot marble pedestal, set about five feet back from the floor-to-ceiling window and parallel to it, the coffin was of dark, polished wood. Inside, through the thick glass top, you could see the white satin lining Steele would be lying on for the next two weeks. The angle, and a couple of lights inside the coffin, gave a clear view of the inside and of Steele, once he entered. When the glass top was set in place, the crack would be sealed with hot wax, presently bubbling on a brazier to the left of the coffin.
The only other items in the window were a large calendar to record the passage of the days of Steele’s entombment, a large clock to tick off the seconds, minutes, and hours, and two posters in the Houdini style of flamboyance — gaudy electric-blue and yellowish-red announcements of the greatness of Christopher Steele, which were behind the coffin.
Mrs. Lorde and Victor Schneider entered the window, followed by Steele, Ardis, and a committee of four reputable citizens who would examine the coffin and pour the wax to seal the lid and deprive Steele of his air supply. In the eleven years I’ve been with Steele I’ve seen maybe a hundred of these committees, and there hasn’t been one yet which could spot a gaff unless it reached up and popped them on the nose. Their chances of spotting this gaff — the gimmick that enabled Steele to work the effect — were exactly zero. As a matter of fact, so were mine; Steele had refused to allow me to examine the coffin while he was working on it.
Steele gave an introductory speech to the crowd via microphone and loudspeaker while the committee probed and prodded at the coffin. He explained how fakirs of the East had developed techniques for shallow breathing that enabled them to live for extended periods of time with little oxygen. He told of the years he had spent mastering this technique and that of slowing his heartbeat. Then he climbed into the coffin and the glass lid was lowered into place. Schneider and one of the committee members poured the molten wax into the groove around the lid. Steele now had maybe five hours of air left. Two weeks is three hundred and thirty-six hours...
“How does he do it?” a voice asked behind me; it was Lillian Royce. “These tricks of his, I mean, like that scary thing in the Magic Cellar where the girl turns into a skeleton?”
I had the feeling that she wanted to talk to someone about anything at all, and I was there and the effects were a convenient topic. I’m always willing to talk with a beautiful woman, and the effects are not really secret, just sort of confidential.