thirty-five cents. What are the three coins?” Solution: The three coins are a quarter and two nickels. Show the coins and say, “One of them isn’t a nickel. The one that isn’t a nickel is the quarter.”
THREE DAYS EARLIER
A lot of people were dying on continents two oceans apart with America in the middle. In the Pacific, the battle for control of the Coral Sea was going badly, from the Bonin Islands to the Philippine Sea, for Admiral Shigetaro Shimada, His Imperial Majesty’s Naval Minister, who had taken personal control of the fleet. Thirty Japanese Royal Navy ships had been sunk, fifty-one seriously damaged, seven hundred and fifty-seven aircraft downed and thirteen landing barges on the way to Saipan destroyed in two weeks. Across the other sea, a week after D-Day, the American army had taken Cherbourg. A Japanese radio report explained that “in France, the Allied Armies are retreating haphazardly inland.”
Harry Blackstone, in a dark business suit and blue tie, his hair brushed flat, sat at the round table in the office of Pevsner and Peters on the fourth floor of the Farraday Building.
I sat across from him. The office was large, roomy enough for Phil’s desk and mine and the round table with four chairs. It had been the headquarters for the inventor of the aoelean trafingle, a goofy electronic gizmo that made weird almost musical sounds when you touched it, sounds that reminded me of dying plumbing. The echoes of the damned thing still haunted the place.
It was almost ten in the morning. Phil was about to be walking in any second. He was out running down information about a man whose name Blackstone had given us over the phone.
Blackstone had been touring for the U.S.O. since the beginning of the war, with a show almost every day, sometimes two. He had also been able to tuck in some dates of his own at major theaters. His five days at the Pantages, which would begin that afternoon, was the longest booking he had scheduled for one theater since 1939.
One of the latest amenities of the new P amp; P agency was a hot plate in the corner and an aluminum pot of warming Maxwell House. Blackstone had a cup in front of him. So did I.
He took a sip, paused and waited while I examined the four-by-four card he had sent by messenger the day before.
The Los Angeles Friends of Magic invite you to attend a reception and dinner in honor of HARRY BLACKSTONE at the Roosevelt Hotel on Saturday June 28 and 8 p.m. Formal Attire. R.S.V.P.
Marcus Keller
I looked across at the magician who said, “It’s a challenge. Marcus Keller is not someone who would be honoring me. He considers himself a rival, and he has both spoken at meetings and written letters to magic magazines attacking me and my show.”
“Why?”
Blackstone considered, touched his mustache with a slender finger, and said, “He is-and this is charitable-a third-rate parlor magician with a family fortune in furniture manufacturing. His real name is Calvin Ott, the name I gave you yesterday when I called. Ott took his stage name from my mentor, the great Keller, claiming that he had given him the secret to all of his illusions. It was nonsense. I made the mistake of saying so to my friend Dunninger, the mentalist. My remarks were over-heard by some people and …”
“It got back to Keller …”
“Ott,” Blackstone corrected.
“Ott,” I acknowledged.
“That was three years ago,” said Blackstone. “The man is more than a little demented, a prankster who has bought, flattered, and muscled his way into the office of Conjuror of Los Angeles Friends of Magic. With determination, money, and a devious personality, Calvin Ott has succeeded in making more enemies than Tojo.”
“So why is he honoring you?”
Blackstone shrugged and smiled.
“He most certainly isn’t.”
“You’re going?” I asked.
“I’ve already accepted. We have no show Saturday night. Ott knows that. The theater has been booked for a Sinatra concert.”
“And you want us to …?”
“I have a romantic attitude toward challenges,” Blackstone said with a grin. “Normally, I’d just do it and take whatever comes, but the same day I accepted the invitation I received a call at my hotel threatening to sabotage my show if I didn’t reveal to him the secret of my illusions. The hint of personal danger was also very much a part of the conversation.”
He told me then about the call and the man who’d threatened to show up at the theater to embarrass him unless he agreed to reveal all his secrets.
“How were you supposed to give him this information?”
“He said he would have someone at the theater to get it just before the show.”
“You called the police, got to Sergeant Seidman and he suggested that you call us?”
“Correct.”
“You think the invitation and the threat are connected?”
“I believe in coincidence,” said Blackstone, “but I don’t trust in it. No one has ever threatened me before. And Ott’s jealous rivalry is at least a bit mad.”
I pulled a pad of paper and one of the two sharpened pencils I had placed on the table over to me, took a sip of coffee, and got some background information on Blackstone.
Onre Boughton was born September 27, 1885, in Chicago. One of seven brothers, his father was a Civil War veteran who had fought with the Union Army. His mother was a milliner, and his father made men’s hats. Their company, Bouton (the ‘gh’ removed) and Adams was successful and later became the Adams Hat Company.
“Unfortunately,” Blackstone said, “my father could not stand prosperity. He supported the saloons of Chicago’s South Side instead of his family. I went, at the age of seven, to live in the Home for the Friendless. My father died when I was fifteen.”
Blackstone had apprenticed himself to a Halstead Street cabinetmaker. After seeing a performance by the Great Keller, the young Onre Bouton decided to become a magician. When he was 17, he and his younger brother Peter put together a vaudeville act in which Harry did magic tricks and Pete followed with a comic version of the same trick.
In 1910, at the age of 25, Harry, using his skills at slight of hand and cabinetmaking, created his first big illusion show.
“Pete and I put it together with scrap wood, borrowed props, secondhand costumes and a pile of unwanted handbills for a long defunct magic act called Fredrik the Great. I remained Fredrik the Great till World War I, when it no longer was a good idea. And the rest is …”
“… history,” I said looking up.
“Mystery,” he corrected with a smile.
I also learned that Blackstone now made his headquarters, workshop, and home in Colon, Michigan, in St. Joseph County, where he owned 208 acres of woods, fields, and beachfront on Sturgeon Lake. There was more, lots more. I filled four pages before the door opened and Phil stepped in.
I introduced them. My brother shook hands, nodded at the magician, got himself a cup of coffee, and sat at the table.
“Calvin Ott is a nut,” Phil said, sitting back and running his right hand over the gray bristle of his military haircut. “Calls himself Marcus Keller. He’s got a long list of people he doesn’t like. He writes letters, makes speeches, brings lawsuits that go nowhere and spends a lot of his family’s money making life miserable for people who have made the mistake of existing on the same planet with him, including a tailor, a magazine editor, three different actors, a producer, an actress, and …”
“A magician,” Blackstone finished.
