“First of all,” I said, drawing her to one side, “don’t ever call them tricks. They’re effects, or slights, or illusions, but never tricks.” I could see Steele’s face at the extreme angle I was standing, but no more of him. It seemed to shimmer slightly by some illusion of the lighting as I turned away.
“Tell me,” Lillian insisted, “how does he do it?”
“I warn you,” I said, “magic is funny in one way: when it’s explained it seems silly and obvious, no matter how powerful the effect was when you saw it. That’s why magicians never explain their effects. You’re being fooled, and people resent being fooled.”
“I can’t figure it out,” Lillian said. “I admit he’s fooled me.”
“It’s called the Blue Room Illusion,” I told her. “Maybe fifty years old. It involves a peculiar optical property of glass.”
“What’s that?”
“If a plate of perfectly clear glass is dark on one side and well lit on the other, it turns into a mirror on the lighted side. You’ve probably noticed this on windows at night.”
“Where was the glass?” Lillian asked.
“Picture the stage,” I told her. “Ardis comes in wearing that sexy white dress and goes to the chair at the back. The lights dim except for a couple of spots on her. Steele goes into his spiel. That’s when it happens. A sheet of clear plate glass — a giant, damned expensive sheet of clear plate glass — is slid into place on concealed tracks diagonally across the stage. It’s invisible to the audience because it’s meticulously cleaned and evenly lighted on both sides.
“Then, slowly, the lights on the far side of the glass are lowered and the lights on this side” — I wiggled my fingers to indicate which side — “are raised. The glass turns into a mirror, reflecting the image of an identical chair at right angles to the stage, concealed in the wings. An assistant in a copy of Ardis’ costume, made up to look incredibly ancient, is sitting in the chair. The gradual change of lights makes it look as though Ardis herself is aging.”
Lillian looked incredulous. “What about the skeleton?”
“While Ardis is in darkness she gets out of the chair and is replaced by the skeleton. Then the lights change again and the glass is silently slid back.”
“Gosh,” Ardis said, appearing behind me with an armful of posters, “I thought it was magic.”
“Ardis,” I said, “meet Lillian Royce. She buys.”
“Indeed?” Ardis said. “Excuse me.” She pushed through the crowd and began tacking up display posters on one of the wooden boards framing the exterior of the window. They were identical to the yellow-red ones inside, behind the coffin.
I turned back to Lillian. “I’ve just had a brilliant idea,” I said. “Why don’t we—”
A sudden loud flapping sound cut off the rest of what I was going to say, and Lillian and I and the rest of the crowd shifted our gaze to Ardis and her poster. She had slipped: tacked up the top of the poster, stretched out the bottom, and then let go. The poster had, of course, rolled back up.
“The unflappable Ardis,” I said to Lillian. “Well, there’s always a first time. As I was about to ask you, why don’t we go over to Franscatti’s and get something to eat?”
“I’d love to,” Lillian said.
“Sounds good,” a new high-pitched voice cut in, and Lewis Thorp appeared at my elbow. “You won’t mind if I join you?”
I was trying to figure out how to answer that politely when Mrs. Lorde emerged from the front door and saved me the trouble. “Mr. Thorp,” she called, waving her cane at us, “I wish to see you. You too, Miss Royce.” She looked disturbed, angry. “Will you both come up to my office, please. I won’t keep you long, Miss Royce.”
“The Queen Mother calls,” Thorp said.
“Do you mind going on ahead?” Lillian asked me. “I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
“As soon as she could” turned out to be about twenty minutes after I had arrived at Franscatti’s, which caters to the late-night crowd. “I’m sorry. There were some things...” She sat down in the booth across from me, looking distracted and unhappy. “I couldn’t find Victor,” she said.
“Schneider? Why were you looking for him?”
“We’re... friends,” she said vaguely. “Something peculiar is going on, and I don’t know what it is. Mrs. Lorde is angry, and Victor is... Oh, I don’t know where Victor is.”
“He’s probably gone home to sleep, like any sensible man.”
“No, I don’t think so. He wouldn’t leave the store until Mr. McCarthy came to move the stamps, and Mr. McCarthy hadn’t arrived yet when I left. He’s due any time.”
“Well,” I said, “I’m sure Schneider is around somewhere. There’s no need to worry.”
I ordered spaghetti with white clam sauce, and when it came it seemed to cheer Lillian up a bit. We started to talk of, among other things, my life as a magician’s manager. “While Steele’s lying in that coffin practicing shallow breathing or whatever,” I said, “I’m going to be getting TV crews down to film it; keeping crowds in front of the window day and night; seeing that it’s played up on local and national news. He lies there while I do all the work, which is why he’s a genius and I work for him.”
“Does he do this sort of thing often?” she asked.
“He doesn’t like to repeat himself,” I answered. “There’re people who make a living just getting buried, but Steele is doing it because he’s never done it before. It’s a challenge, and he can’t turn down a challenge of any kind. That’s the way he is.”
“Are these effects original?”
“Some are. In Steele’s case there’s something original in every effect — and his presentation is always original, created to fit his stage personality. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a challenge.”
It was past 11:30 when we walked the three blocks back to the store. The crowd was still there but its focus had shifted from the coffin in the window to the main door. Drawn up in front were three police cars, a couple of unmarked vehicles with red lights suction-cupped to their tops, and an ambulance.
Steele was snug in his coffin in the great window to the left of the entrance, serenely staring at the ceiling. After checking on him we pushed our way through the crowd. Judging by their conversation, none of them had any idea of what was going on.
A uniformed cop stood at the door, repelling traffic. When we gave him our names he let us in and told us to go up to the executive offices on the second floor. He wouldn’t tell us anything else.
Mrs. Lorde was sitting in rigid solitude in the middle of a large Regency-for-the-masses couch, with both hands firmly twined around the butt of her gold-handled cane. Lewis Thorp sat in a hard-backed chair opposite, wearing an expression that indicated a submerged and unpleasant emotion. Also present were two stoic patrolmen.
“What happened here?” I demanded of the group at large.
Thorp looked over at me sourly, then switched his gaze to Lillian. “It’s Schneider,” he said. “He’s been killed.”
“Oh!” Lillian’s hand went to her mouth, and all the blood drained out of her face. She managed to stumble over to the couch nearest us and drop onto it. She began to weep softly.
“Mr. McCarthy found him,” Mrs. Lorde said. “In the Stamp Room.” She proceeded to explain that when McCarthy and his men had arrived at the store, they hadn’t been able to get into the Stamp Room because they couldn’t locate Schneider, who had the only key. Mrs. Lorde had sent Schneider to the Stamp Room to do some last-minute inventorying, and insisted that was where he had to be. So, with her permission, McCarthy and his men had broken the door in. “He was lying on the floor in front of the sales counter,” she finished. “Nothing they could do for him. Terrible thing. Terrible.”