As I took the staircase to the basement a large clock on the wall read one pip-emma on the dot, time for tiffin. In the toy department painted wooden imps hung smiling on hooks. To one side were train sets and baseball bats, on the other kewpie dolls and tea sets. Beyond a neatly stacked pile of Erector Sets and cowboy rifles Jack chatted up a pretty floorwalker. He touched her face and she flushed, embarrassed. I sent a loose hoop his way, my revolver in my pocket to play its own game in due time. The wooden circle hit Jack and fell spinning on the tiles. Jack turned to me.
“Adieu, mademoiselle,” he said.
Jack took the shopgirl’s hand, twisted it ’round and bowed to kiss her wrist.
“Valentino taught me that.”
He winked at her and she peered over to roll her eyes at me. That was a fine sight and I was secretly delighted. Jack’s charm could curdle. It appeared that he’d taken more cocaine as he violently chewed spearmint gum while at the same time smoking a cigaret.
“We’re set,” he said.
“For what?”
“A little light entertainment.”
We went back upstairs and outside and crossed the street to the Princess Theatre. It was closed.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“A matinee,” Jack said, and smiled.
He turned to the grille of the box office wicket and rapped on the smoked glass. It was impossible to see anyone behind it. A dry voice asked: “Who’s calling?”
“Jack London, San Francisco Chronicle. I’m here for the interview.”
Jack slid a five into the gap. I heard a thumping and a click as a door unlocked. Jack carefully took the gum from his mouth and did a disgusting thing with it. We went into the lobby and found it empty. It was eerie. I fingered my gun and felt anxiety.
“Nice couvert charge,” I said.
The dry voice came from a speakerphone above: “Door to the left, dressing rooms backstage.”
We followed the directions. The theatre house was silent, empty seats before a half-closed curtain across the stage, a dusty smell of stale tobacco smoke and damp velvet. Reigning backstage we found a confusion of ropes and wires. Enormous padlocked boxes stencilled with Houdini’s name sat in the wings. These presumably held the secrets of the Chinese Water Torture Cell and the Milk Can Escape. Until the other night I’d only seen Houdini in a serial at the picture house: The Man From Beyond. He’d escaped from a light bulb once, another time from a paper bag.
“He got free from a Russian prison cell stark bollocky naked,” Jack said.
Echoing my thoughts again. I turned back on the empty house of crimson chairs. It was haunted. We were spectres. A phantom audience watched me, Ulysses by the pool of blood at World’s End as the sightless dead of Hades streamed past. Shakespeare played the ghost in Hamlet, fasting in fires. A thin, high, sharp note like the whine of a mosquito rose in my ears and abruptly quit. I turned away and Jack was gone. I noticed a line on the stage floor and bumped face-first like a fool into a large mirror reflecting a room behind me. I went into that and found Jack sitting on a barrel, smiling.
“Pepper’s Ghost,” he said. “You see how it works.”
“I don’t and what’re we doing here?”
Jack held up a finger and cocked his ear, then very quietly whistled the first bars of “Annie Laurie.”
“Bad luck in a theatre,” I said.
“Not for me.”
We moved ’round the stage machinery and found a corridor leading to the dressing rooms. From behind a closed door came murmuring voices. I made out: “...as the miracle at Cana or walking on the water. Think, lads, what I might have accomplished in those times.”
Jack opened the door to a room opposite and motioned me into it. It was a place for showgirls by the scent of powder. In the darkness Jack peered through a crack to see who came and went and consulted his wristwatch, a fine thin Longines. Nothing but the best for himself, my envy thought. I sat down on a wicker chair and was brushed by feathers. As I made to smoke Jack stopped me. He’d taken out his Webley.
“We’re going to have a private chat,” he said.
“With that?” I motioned towards the revolver.
“We’ll see.”
He held up his hand at a soft tumult and cry, then the sound of furniture shifting about. I joined Jack at the crack. A tall gaunt man with a long Mackintosh left the room across the way. A light lit his hollow face and left the afterimage of a skull on the back of my eyelids when I blinked. Jack chuckled. Beside me I could feel him set to spring, Jack-from-a-box. Opposite us the door opened again. Two more men exited and I recognized them with some small anger: Smiler and Jacques Price from the night of Houdini’s speech. Jack put on his gloves. I saw yellow pinpoints glow in the corner of the dressing room. A cat, I hoped with a sudden chill. We stepped into the corridor.
Inconsequential music ran through my head, bloody “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” A neurologist might be able to excise from my cortex the portion responsible for housing such tripe. A selective lobotomy a keen boon for the heartbroken. I took a deep breath to counteract a queasy swelling of excitement. Something unfortunate was about to happen and I felt an elation akin to morphine, ganglia pulsing with an increased cardiac cycle. Jack pushed open the door.
It was surprisingly cold. Houdini was on a chaise longue in the far corner, his eyes closed, for all the world dead. I touched the radiator by the wall and felt its chill. Jack was the first to speak.
“Time is, time was, time’s past.”
“Who dares?” asked Houdini, opening his eyes.
“Where lies the key?” countered Jack.
Houdini sat mum a moment, then shifted to his elbows and glared fiercely. His eyes were the same cold blue as Jack’s.
“You mere man,” he said.
“I’m not alone,” warned Jack.
“Yes you are.”
“There you are in error, monsieur.”
“What, this?” asked Houdini, looking at me.
“No. You see more clearly, I am sure,” said Jack.
There was a pause. Houdini sank back onto his bolster.
“Your masters,” he breathed.
“You’ve pledged to reveal all. This cannot be.”
Jack was getting mighty high-flown, in my opinion. Whether this was more than mere catechism I couldn’t say. The look on my friend’s face was past raillery. This was very serious to him.
“Truth will out,” said Houdini.
“Not this one.”
“The public must know. It’s dangerous for them.”
“Moreso for you,” said Jack.
Houdini started at this but then winced and pressed a hand to his wide forehead and closed his eyes once more.
“Are you well?” asked Jack.
“Some damn fool struck me. And my ankle was injured in Buffalo.”
Jack indicated me.
“My friend here has medical training.”
“No doctors,” said Houdini from his corner.
“Oh, he’s no doctor.”
I moved to examine the magician. He waved me off.
“I know why he bends to superstition,” Houdini said to Jack.
“Why?”
“I know because the same tragedy has befallen myself. But he cannot listen to that brood. They are jackals, vultures. To fall into their clutches means abandoning reason. I know this.”