Harry dropped to his knees, his mouth working convulsively, though he made no sound. He pressed his fists to his temples as if to force the terrible scene from his mind. O'Donnell gripped the bars of the cell, his eyes moving from the dead man to my brother to the lock-picks scattered on the floor.
I fell back against a bare brick wall, unable to catch my breath. My head swirled with questions, but one thing had become perfectly clear.
My brother and I were no longer playing a game.
VII: The Human Telescope
"All right, Houdini," Lieutenant Murray said. "Let's have it from the beginning."
Harry laced his fingers around the coffee cup he had been clutching for three hours. "1 can add nothing to what I have already told you."
The lieutenant turned to me. "How about you, Har-deen? Anything to add?"
"I'm happy to go over the details again, if I can be helpful."
He looked at us both, his expression wavering between dark suspicion and genuine curiosity. We had been sitting at a table in the police interview room for the better part of the night, relating the events of the evening for perhaps seven different officials. The lieutenant had listened attentively to each reiteration, apparently uncertain as to our motives and trustworthiness. Two floors below us, a team of police investigators combed through the cell where Josef Graff had died.
"Tell me again how you knew that the old man was in danger," Murray said.
"It was obvious," Harry replied. "Mrs. Graff had
been killed. Clearly the murderer felt it necessary to silence her. He would not kill the wife and leave the husband to talk."
The lieutenant nodded. "So you've said. But with respect, Houdini, Mrs. Graff's murder looks a whole hell of a lot like the work of a gang. Hit over the head, cut up the side. Gang boys. Irish. Italian. We see this sort of thing often enough, though it doesn't always make the papers. All those immigrant neighborhoods packed together. There's always a bad element, always young people looking to make trouble."
Harry stared listlessly at a map of the city pinned to the wall across from him.
"And Mr. Graff," Murray continued, "that looks to have been a suicide. There was even a note pinned to his chest. 'Forgive,' it said. It would have been natural enough for the old man to take his own life. He felt disgraced-you said it yourself, Houdini-and his wife's death would have pushed him over the edge. My superiors are tempted to close the book on the whole thing. Chalk up Graff's suicide as an admission of guilt in the Wintour killing."
"You don't believe that, Lieutenant," Harry said with quiet certainty.
The lieutenant let out a heavy sigh. "No, I don't." He stood up, linking his hands behind his back as he walked to a grimy window. "I might have believed it, if you two hadn't stirred up the waxworks. But now? The timing is wrong."
"Timing is very important in my business," Harry said.
"No one was due to check the cells until tomorrow morning. By then, there might have been time for Graff to have heard about his wife. Possibly. If her body had been discovered last night, one of his neighbors might have brought him word; shouted it up to him through the alley window. We would have had no way of knowing one way or the other. It probably would have been ruled a sucide."
"I'm not sure I see the problem," I said. "The killer must have been seen entering the building. Mr. Graff was dead when we got there, so he must have been killed sometime before midnight. The killer would have had to pass Sergeant O'Donnell in order to get down to the cells."
Lieutenant Murray laced his fingers behind his neck. "You'd think so, wouldn't you?"
"What do you mean?"
"A few minutes before eleven, a pretty young girl comes running through the doors of the station house. She says her poor aged mother has turned her ankle just outside and please, Mr. Policeman, could you help us get home? Well, this young lady is such an attractive creature, and Sergeant O'Donnell is such a courtly gentleman, that he leaves his post and helps the girl with her elderly mother. Must have been gone for half an hour or so."
"Leaving the desk unattended," I said.
"Precisely."
"He never thought to check the cells when he returned?"
"I gather it's not the first time the sergeant has deserted his post. He had no reason to think anything was out of order."
"In theory, then, Mr. Graff wouldn't have been discovered for another six or seven hours." I tilted back in my chair. "We only found Mrs. Graff's body because we were supposed to be meeting this Harrington character. She might have been there for days before anyone found her."
"She'd have been found last night," Murray said. "We got a call, someone reporting a disturbance. The roundsman was on his way to have a look when he spotted the two of you tearing out the front door, looking guilty as hell." He turned away from the window. "If you hadn't run straight to a police station, I'd have you under lock and key for killing the old lady."
"Why that's the most-!"
"Harry, we were seen fleeing from the store. It would have been a natural conclusion."
Harry folded his arms and glowered.
I turned back to the lieutenant. "Is it possible that whoever killed Mrs. Graff was attempting to pin her murder on us?"
"Three bodies in two days," Murray said, ignoring my question. "All connected to this little toy."
"A very expensive toy," Harry said.
"Three people. A lot of killing over one little toy."
"As I have said," Harry continued, "it may be only one of-"
"I know, I know. A valuable cache of magical treasures. I still don't buy it. Whoever killed Wintour is covering his tracks. He didn't want the Graffs to be able to identify him. Still-" he leaned across the table, his palms flat on the scarred surface. "You're sure the wife never saw this guy?"
"Yes," said Harry. "She said he only came to the shop late at night. What else did she say? Oh, yes. She said that he was 'a queer bird.'"
Murray let out another sigh. "That's wonderful. I'll just comb the city until I find a queer bird." He jerked his head suddenly toward the door. "All right, gentlemen, I'm through with you for the night. Stay out of my way and don't bring me any more bodies."
Harry opened his mouth to reply but I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him out into the night.
We walked in silence to Mother's apartment building. When we got there, I could see the outline of Bess standing in the window, waiting for Harry. He glanced up at the window. "Tomorrow we begin again to look for Mr. Harrington," he said. "Call for me in the morning."
I nodded. "What about the dime museum?"
"I'll send a wire in the morning," he answered. "I have a new job now." He turned and walked into the building. I waited, looking up at the shadow in the window. After a moment, I saw Harry fold his arms around her. I turned and jammed my fists into my pockets, keeping my head down as I walked the six blocks to the boarding house.
The following morning at half past nine, Phillips the butler answered our knock at the door of the Wintour mansion. "Mrs. Wintour is expecting you," he told us, as if surprised by this information.
The butler conducted us through the vast entry hall and down a wide corridor lined with Impressionist paintings and Chinese urns. There was also a suit of armor clutching a pikestaff, and one of those big glass domes with a stuffed pheasant in it. I half-expected to see the eyes in one of the paintings follow our progress down the hall.
At the far end of the corridor Phillips opened a set of double doors into the family greenhouse, a two-story glass cathedral filled to capacity with exotic plants and trees. Mrs. Wintour, wearing traditional black and a veil of thin netting, sat at a small glass table some twenty yards away. Dr. Blanton, looking somber in a gray frock-coat, hovered at her elbow.