“The trick is safe?” I asked. “I mean, even without the switch?”
“Well,” said Bouton. “I’ve built it with three safety backups, but I don’t know what this guy has done.”
“Can you check it out?”
“Not without going onstage during the act. It’s out there covered by a red silk sheet.”
“What’s the stuff about the missing blade?”
Pete frowned and pursed his lips.
“Only once before has a major piece of equipment been missing, a saw blade for this act. We have a full 70- foot baggage car wherever we go, and in thirty years we’ve never lost a major piece of equipment except.…”
“… except for the saw blade.”
He nodded and said,
“And that was about twenty years ago.”
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“Do it?”
“The giant buzz saw trick.”
“It’s supposed to be a beautiful young woman,” Bouton said. “The audience doesn’t want a beautiful young woman cut in half.”
“They’ll have to settle for a beat-up middle-aged man.”
“I’ll have to check with Harry,” he said.
“Does he come offstage before the buzz saw?”
“No, but.…”
“It’s not dangerous, right?”
“Well.…”
I didn’t like the pause.
“Let’s just do it. Tell me what to do.”
“Oh god,” Bouton said. “Alright. Just go stand in the left wing. When Harry uncovers the buzz saw and it’s rolled forward, he’ll call for his courageous young assistant to come forth.”
“And I come forth.”
“You do,” he said. “Let’s just.…”
“… do it,” I said. “The big bald man by the stage door, tell him what’s happening and have someone tell my brother, the surly looking guy in the front row with two boys.”
“You know what you’re doing?” asked Pete.
“Definitely not,” I said. “That’s the secret of my years of success.”
Before he could say more, I moved behind the velvet curtain, past the maze of boxes and animals and headed for the left wing. When I got there, my nephew Nate and the kid in knickers who had been in the wings were standing on the stage next to Blackstone.
“And you are?” Blackstone asked.
“Nathan Pevsner,” my nephew said in a quivering voice.
“And you?” the magician asked the other boy.
“Anthony Perkins,” the boy said in a high reedy voice.
Blackstone reached into his pocket and plucked out a lightbulb. He held it out in front of him, let it go and stepped back. The lightbulb floated and was suddenly glowing brightly.
Blackstone urged Nate and Anthony to see if there were any strings attached. Nate, wide-eyed, looked down at Phil and then at the bulb. He ran his hand around the bulb. So did the other kid.
“Out,” said Blackstone.
The lightbulb went out.
“On,” said Blackstone.
The lightbulb went back on and started to float away. Blackstone walked after it, guiding Nate and Anthony by the shoulder as they followed it down the stairs on the right and in front of the orchestra where it hovered about waist high.
The audience applauded, and the magician said to Nate, “It’s yours to command. Tell it to turn off.”
“Turn off,” Nate said.
The bulb obeyed.
“Tell it to move up or down,” Blackstone said to the other boy.
“Move up,” said the boy.
The bulb obeyed.
I looked across the stage at the other wing. A costumed girl stood smiling. Behind her a figure moved forward, a bearded man in a blue dark suit with a turban on his head. In the middle of the turban was a large green glassy stone.
The man in the turban looked across the stage at me and held up a sign.
The large black letters of the sign read:
Buzz. Buzz.
I started to back up as the turbaned man lowered the sign. Blackstone was returning back to the stage.
“And now,” the magician said, holding his right hand out. “If my lovely and courageous young assistant would step out to help me.…”
I stepped out on the stage. The audience laughed. I was certainly not lovely, and I wasn’t feeling courageous. Blackstone’s eyes met mine for a flash. He didn’t miss a beat. He grinned as if he were in on the joke.
The red silk sheet was pulled off of the device on the other side of the stage, and four girls in frilly tights began pushing the wheeled platform and buzz saw center stage.
Blackstone approached the device, pulled a lever and the buzz saw, about five feet around, began to buzz and whirl noisily.
“With the help of my assistant,” said Blackstone. “We will defy the blade, defy death itself.”
Blackstone strode over to me and put a hand on my shoulder speaking without moving his mouth as he smiled, “What is going on?”
I was grinning, too. Jimmy Clark, the freckle-faced kid, had limped down the aisle to where Phil was sitting. He was whispering into my brother’s ear.
“Switches are missing,” I said.
“Missing?”
“Stolen,” I said, as Blackstone guided me to the bench next to the blade, which looked all too hard and solid.
“We’ll cancel the act,” he whispered between closed teeth. “It’s just a show.”
“Pete said it’s not dangerous,” I said.
“Not unless someone’s done something else to the mechanism.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“We can’t let him win,” I said, lying on the platform.
“God help us,” Blackstone said to me. Then he turned to the audience with a knowing smile and loudly announced, “And now death itself will be defied. Those of you in the first rows, should anything go wrong, we will pay the cleaning bills to have the bloodstains removed. And now.…”
He turned and, with the help of three young women, strapped my arms and legs with leather straps. He moved away, and I looked down as the buzz saw began to move toward my body between my spread legs.
The audience gasped. A woman screamed.
Just about then a private detective died.
Chapter 2
Hold out your hand and say, “I have three coins in my hand. One of them isn’t a nickel. The three coins total
