“The cuffs,” Merlini commented, “have been loaned by the police department. Gavigan owed me a favor or two, and I collected. I want you to play that up in one of the publicity releases.”
“Who, me?”
“Yes. You’ve just been appointed press agent.”
I remembered what Burt had said about a missing angel and started to make a delicate inquiry as to salary, but Merlini’s mind-reading ability was working with its usual efficiency.
“We’ll have a business conference later,” he said. “Watch this.”
The two assistants were lifting the performer’s body and placing it within the waiting coffin. The piano player increased his tempo.
The man in the coffin looked out at us, smiled, and raised his manacled arms in a gesture toward the large clock dial that hung from the flies above the tank and on which a single hand began to move, marking off the seconds.
The assistants pulled the hinged coffin lid around into place and swiftly fitted the six chromium hasps that bordered its edge down upon their staples. Heavy padlocks were snapped into place. Then one man tossed the keys that fitted cuffs, shackles, and padlocks down onto the stage floor, and turned to help his partner attach steel lifting cables into fittings at the coffin’s ends.
The men straightened. One waved an arm. A whistle blew, and the cables tightened. The coffin tilted unsteadily, then lifted, swinging out into space.
The whistle shrilled again. The rush of water that poured from the hoses died away and the six-foot depth of water within the tank shone in the spotlight greenly phosphorescent. The dark shape of the coffin hung above it, one assistant leaning precariously forward to steady it with his hands. The piano music was muted, almost inaudible.
Then, the whistle sounded again, loud in the hush. The cables dropped swiftly. The coffin struck the surface with a splash that sent a myriad flashing fountains of bright color cascading upward in the light.
Slack appeared again in the cables as the coffin floated for a moment. Then slowly, as the water seeped in, it sank down through the sparkling green depths. The outline of its hard ugly shape was blurred by the swirling water. It came to rest, finally, on the floor of the tank.
For a space, nothing moved except the hand on the clock dial which reached and passed the first minute mark, and crept closer toward that final red-lettered word: Danger.
As the hand neared the two-minute mark, one assistant hurried from the platform down to the stage and picked up a red-handled fire ax. He hefted it slowly, his eyes on the clock. The other man above gazed anxiously into the water.
“Nice touch,” I commented. “And good acting.”
“It’s not acting,” Merlini said, his eyes fastened on the stage, his voice taut. “This is the first time we’ve tried it!”
My association with Merlini and the magicians who made his shop their headquarters had dulled my wonder at the average miracle and I had, thus far, been watching calmly, sprawled out in my seat. But those words brought me upright, out on the chair’s edge.
The moving hand went on. Two minutes, two and a half. It neared the three-minute mark and the red Danger sign. Then with only twenty short seconds of safety remaining, the assistant down below moved in closer to the tank. He swung his ax up, holding it ready in both hands. The space between the moving pointer and the Danger mark diminished rapidly. A quick, accelerating tom-tom beat swelled in the music.
But still there was no movement from the submerged coffin, no hint of what might be happening in its black, water-filled interior.
Just as the last five seconds began to tick away, the man on the platform suddenly raised one arm. The whistle shrilled again. The man below lifted his ax higher, its bright edge flashing where the spotlight shimmered on the sharp steel.
And then, abruptly, a masking curtain of air bubbles ascended through the water, billowing upward from the tank’s floor around the coffin like escaping steam. The pianist reached the crescendo he had been building toward. The white glare of the spotlights changed to amber, and the green water glinted gold.
The second hand reached and passed the danger mark.
The thin piercing note of the whistle shrilled once more. And slowly, the rising geyser gush of bubbles faded and cleared. The coffin could be seen again, still submerged, still closed, and still locked.
But just above it there was a flash of red swimming suit and of a brown body rising.
Don Diavolo’s head broke the surface. Applause broke the tension in the dark around us where the ballet girls had gathered to watch.
The magician, free of cuffs, shackles, and coffin, pulled himself slowly up from the water’s surface onto the tank’s brassbound edge. He lifted one leg over and balanced there, shaking the dark wet hair back from his eyes. He breathed heavily, filling his aching lungs with air.
“And then,” Merlini said, “curtain. Like it?”
I nodded. “Yes. In fact, I think it’s good. But I know how it’s done.”
That nearly put him down for the count. His eyes popped.
“You what!” he exclaimed, staring at me as though were something with two heads that had just escaped from a bottle.
“I know how it’s done. It’s a trick.”
He grinned with relief and whispered confidentially, “Don’t tell anyone, but that’s it exactly. You’re an analytical genius. I don’t know how you do it.”
“It runs in the family,” I said. “Medical science is baffled. There’s no cure. And how are you?”
“I’m baffled too.” He leaned back in his seat and frowned up at the stage where Larry was saying, “Alright. That’s all. Everybody report at nine in the morning.”
For the first time since I had known him, Merlini’s voice, usually so charged with energy, seemed tired. “I had forgot,” he added, “how many things can go wrong with a Broadway show between script and opening night.”.
“Burt,” I said, “mentioned a little something about angel trouble.”
Merlini nodded glumly at the shiny half dollar that he balanced on his finger tips. “A lot of things in this show vanish into thin air.” The half dollar flickered and did just that as he spoke. “But I hadn’t counted on it happening to the man who writes the checks. It certainly wasn’t in the script. He tried to put over some complicated financial sleight of hand down in Wall Street, and it backfired. The reverberations, of course, echoed dismally all up and down Broadway. And the creditors are howling like so many wolves.”
I decided not to bother the man with my troubles. He had enough of his own. “And so,” I said, “you need a press agent who doesn’t have to eat until after opening night.”
“It’s not quite as bad as that. The Mrs. Merlini Home-Cooked Meals Corporation will be happy to extend you an Annie Oakley, good until opening night. I think she’ll stay in business that long.”
“You think — say, have you put your own money into this show?”
The vanished half dollar reappeared in his fingers as a quarter, then shrank at once to a dime. “I couldn’t help myself,” he admitted. “I had to throw something to the biggest and hungriest wolves.”
I took the dime from his hand quickly before it could decrease in value further. “Okay. I’m hired. I’ll take this as a retainer. I didn’t expect to sleep much for the next few days anyway. And it may keep my mind off other things.”
He gave me a sharp look. “I thought you seemed a bit subdued. Not as much bounce as usual. What’s wrong now?”