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,
“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.”
Houdini looked at his dressing table where rested a gold-framed portrait of an aged lady.
“It is as much for his own sake as that of your people,” Houdini continued.
“No good will come of it,” Jack said. “Let the foundation rest; the walls are unstable. The key is in the bone box. Leave it there.”
“Is that a command?”
“To a greater or lesser degree,” said Jack.
“Well. It does not matter. The fire has died in me.”
He opened his eyes and looked into mine magnetically. Jack bent over a carafe in the corner. Houdini asked me: “And what is your learned opinion?”
The moment extended and I saw the world-famous man weak and alone like the rest of us. He didn’t look well. If it was magic he dealt in, magic I’d give him.
“Sacrifice a cock to Asclepius,” I said.
Houdini snorted with contempt. Jack handed him a glass. Houdini sipped from it and pulled a sour face. He handed it back to Jack, who ran the faucet in the sink. Houdini sighed and said: “Tell them the secret is safe with me.”
“I will.”
“Houdini is a man of his word.”
We made to leave. I looked back and Houdini’s eyes were closed again. The room was a tomb. We threaded our way through the back of the theatre to a door leading out to an alley.
“What’s the word?” I asked Jack.
He put a finger to his lips and smiled.
PAST SCRAPS OF dirty snow we made our way over cobbles to the street proper. The sun had come out, warming the steaming pavement; ’twas relief to trade Houdini’s mausoleum for the life and colour of the city. The contrast was striking. A pretty girl looked at me through long eyelashes. I was alive, an electric animal singing with power. At the corner a traffic accident had a policeman untangling arguments as vapour hissed from under a green Chrysler’s bonnet and people crowded ’round for the free show. We passed an Indian squaw carrying a papoose slung on her back. The baby smiled at me through a horrible cleft palate covered in streaming mucus. My stomach twisted at this, the true face of mankind. Jack walked along blithely and suggested a late luncheon.
He led us west to the Royale for either Oriental or Occidental cuisine. Jack ordered the former, a mess of tapeworm noodles and cat’s flesh. My plate sampled the latter cookery, leathery horsemeat with fried crow’s eggs. Instead of eating I smoked while Jack forked nourishment into his mouth.
“Not hungry?”
He finished his plate and with my nodding assent started on mine. Replete, he wiped his mouth with a serviette and asked: “Ready for tonight?”
“Yes. How’s it look?”
“Swell. Eggs in the coffee. There’s something I need to tell you, though. We have a third.”
“A third? Who?”
Jack lit a cigaret and raised his eyebrows. No. Not that sharper. Not now.
“We have to,” Jack said, reading me.
“Like fun,” I said.
“’Fraid so.”
“Then you lose me.”
“Mick, please.”
He reached across our ruined meal and put his hand on my shoulder.
“You can settle your score with him when we’re done.”
“It’s your hand in all this,” I said.
