dreams. They all had dreams, though. and it was the power of those dreams — the magic of ordinary New Yorkers — that Morgaunt sought to bend to his own selfish ends.
Sacha wanted to tell Lily about this revelation. If she found Wolf first, she had to warn him that Morgaunt would use the crowd’s magic against him. But just as he opened his mouth to speak, the band began to play.
“They’re starting!” Rosie shouted over the strains of “Bewitch Me.” “I have to get changed and find Edison!”
“Will you warn him?” Sacha asked.
“If I can get to him in time. But he won’t listen. He’s stubborn that way.”
Rosie raced across the stage, which was still alive with the bustle of stagehands setting up before the curtain rose. It was the strangest set Sacha had ever seen. On one side sprawled the etherograph in a chaotic bird’s nest of wires and switches and clamps and insulated footings. On the other side hulked Houdini’s Water Torture Cell with its massive padlocks and its threatening glimmer of bulletproof plate glass. The two mechanisms seemed to be facing off across the empty stage like duelists getting ready to aim their pistols at each other.
Sacha and Lily scanned the audience, trying to find Wolf in the crowd. But the only familiar faces they saw were those of Commissioner Keegan and J. P. Morgaunt — both sitting right in the middle of the front row so that there was no way to get into the audience without going past them.
“Houdini’s our best chance,” Lily said. “at least we know where he is. and even if we can spot Wolf in the crowd, we’d never be able to reach him without Morgaunt seeing us.”
Suddenly, a ripple of excitement coursed through the audience. The curtain rose and Houdini swept onto the stage, flanked by half a dozen burly bodyguards.
Lily sighed. “So much for that.”
While Lily was gazing forlornly after Houdini, Sacha was squinting into the wings, where he could have sworn he’d seen something moving in the shadows.
Sure enough, he heard a faint noise that he would never have noticed if some part of him hadn’t already been listening for it. And off in the gloom he caught a glimpse of the thing he’d been expecting and fearing to see ever since they’d slipped into the theater: a dark, slim, boy-sized shadow.
The dybbuk must have seen Sacha too, because it vanished around a corner as soon as he glanced toward it.
He turned, meaning to call out to Lily. But she had already set off to find Wolf, leaving him alone. If he followed her, he would lose sight of the dybbuk — and lose what might be his last chance to stop it before it got to Edison. If he called out to her, he’d bring every guard and policeman in the building down on top of them. And then the dybbuk would get to Edison anyway.
So Sacha did the only thing he could think of to do.
He followed the dybbuk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. Seeing the Elephant
THE WINGS OF the theater smelled like wet paint and sawdust. Lights swayed overhead, suspended on creaking hemp ropes as thick as Sacha’s arm. Canvas backdrops bellied from their riggings like the sails of clipper ships.
Someone whistled overhead. Sacha started in surprise — and then realized it was just a set rigger or spotlight operator whistling out instructions in the sailors’ code that stagehands used. When he squinted up into the rafters, he could just see the catwalk where two riggers manned the powerful spotlights that would follow every move Edison and Houdini made onstage.
The dybbuk slipped swiftly through the shadows, as if it knew exactly where it was going. Sacha was hard- pressed to follow without giving himself away. They crossed behind the stage, with only the flimsy backdrop between them and the audience. The band stopped playing. Edison and Rosie stepped onstage, outlined against the backlit canvas like cut paper silhouettes. As he crept along behind the dybbuk, Sacha heard Edison play a sample cylinder on the etherograph and go into his salesman’s patter. Sacha barely listened; he was too busy wondering where Wolf was and why he wasn’t putting a stop to this madness.
Finally he reached a vantage point where he could look out over the footlights and into the audience. he saw Lily moving down the aisle, looking nervous but determined. She hadn’t found Wolf yet, and she couldn’t search much more of the crowd without Morgaunt or Keegan catching sight of her. Sacha could have cursed in frustration.
The dybbuk was so close to the stage now that a few steps would reveal it to the audience. As Sacha peered cautiously from behind a pile of stage props, the creature raised its head and the light played along the side of its face. Sacha gasped. This wasn’t the vague, smoky shadow he’d grappled with only a few hours ago. Now the dybbuk looked like a real boy — a boy that any witness would swear on his life was Sacha Kessler.
The dybbuk strode over to a spindly wrought-iron ladder and began climbing up into the rigging. Sacha hesitated, but he couldn’t risk losing sight of the creature. Whenever it struck, he had to be there to stop it. He steeled his nerve and began climbing.
Balconies branched off the ladder at regular intervals, but the dybbuk never so much as looked at them. It was headed for the catwalk, where it could lurk unseen over Edison’s head — in the perfect position to kill him whenever Morgaunt gave the final signal.
When Sacha reached the catwalk, it was all he could do to step out onto it. There were no railings to speak of, and the narrow walkway was littered with coiled ropes, unused winches, and disemboweled floodlights that looked like they’d been abandoned halfway through some complicated repair.
Far below, Sacha could see the top of Edison’s head moving around the stage as he demonstrated the workings of the etherograph. Rosie was down there too; the spangles on her costume twinkled like the lights on the Luna Park roller coaster. Down in the orchestra pit Sacha could see the shiny bald spot of the flutist winking up at him as the man nodded and swayed to the beat of the latest show tunes. And on the far side of the stage Houdini now waited, dwarfed by the ominous bulk of the Water Torture Cell.
At last it was Houdini’s turn. He stepped forward, his spotlight following him as smoothly as if it were tied to him by an invisible wire.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Houdini cried in a voice that carried clear to the rafters, “there is nothing supernatural about the Chinese Water Torture Cell — or in the methods I shall use to escape from it. The bottom and three of the walls are hewn from solid mahogany. In front, as you can see, is a single sheet of specially tempered plate glass. May I invite a few distinguished members of the audience to step onstage and inspect it? Commissioner Keegan? Mayor Mobbs? And might I be so bold as to ask Mr. James Pierpont Morgaunt to step onstage as well?”
Down in the audience, Sacha saw the mayor, the police commissioner, and Morgaunt rise to their feet, looking like they’d rather be anywhere but onstage with Edison and Houdini.
“Will you gentlemen kindly examine the apparatus and inform the audience of the results of your inspection?”
Sacha could only hear vague embarrassed mutterings from the mayor and the police commissioner. But Morgaunt’s voice rang out firm and clear into the hushed theater.
“Solid as a bank vault,” the Wall Street Wizard announced. “No trick … or no trick that
Houdini stood before the Water Torture Cell while a crew of mackintosh-clad firemen dragged heavy fire hoses onstage from both sides of the wings and began filling the tank with water.
“As you can see,” Houdini announced, “I have dispensed with the silk curtain that usually hides the Water Torture Cell from view during my escape. Every move I make and every breath I take — or rather don’t take — once I am lowered into the water, will be in full view of the audience. Mr. Edison has insisted upon this point in order to rule out even the slightest suspicion of a hoax. Of course, it will be absolutely impossible to obtain air once inside the Water Torture Cell. Should anything go wrong, my assistant will be standing by with a fire ax to break the glass and release the water.” Houdini smiled. “In which event, I regret to inform you that some of the ladies in the front
