no longer remark on it.
A few minutes later, though, her maid, Lucy, came up and asked me if I would step downstairs for a few minutes.
I found Olivia seated at her green-baize card table, with two or three bottles and two glasses standing on it, and an empty chair opposite her. She waved me to sit down, and then poured me a drink. I added some orange syrup to the gin, to help take away the taste.
'Robbie,' she said with her familiar directness. 'I'm going to leave you.'
I mumbled something in reply. I have been expecting some such development for months, although I had no idea how I would cope with it if, as at this moment, it happened.
'I'm going to leave you,' she said again, 'and then I'm going to come back. Do you want to know why?'
I said that I did.
'Because there's something you want more than you want me. I figure that if I get out there and find it for you, then I have a chance to make you want me all over again.'
I assured her I wanted her as much as ever I had, but she cut me short.
'I know what's going on,' she declared. 'You and this Alfred Borden are like two lovers who can't get along together. Am I right?'
I tried to prevaricate, but when I saw the determination in her eyes I quickly agreed.
'Look at this!' she said, and brandished this week's copy of
'That's your friend Borden,' she said. 'See what he says?'
An attractive young female stage assistant is required for full-time employment. She must be terpsichorally adept, strong and fit, and willing to travel and to work long hours, both on and off stage. Pleasing appearance is essential, and so is a willingness to participate in exciting and demanding routines before large audiences.
The address of Alfred Borden's rehearsal room followed.
'He's been advertising for an assistant for a couple of weeks, so he must be finding it difficult to hire the right one. I guess I could help him out.'
'You mean you—'
'You always said I was the best assistant you ever had.'
'But you—? Going to work for
'You want to find out how he does that trick, don't you?' she said.
As it dawned on me what she was saying I sat silently before her, staring at her and marvelling. If she could gain his confidence, work with him in rehearsal and on stage, move freely in his workshop, it would not be long before Borden's secret was mine.
We soon got down to details.
I was worried in case he recognized her, but Olivia was not. 'You think I'd dream up this idea if I thought he knew my name?' she drawled. She reminded me that he had had to address her as 'Occupant'. The need to supply references seemed for a time to be an insurmountable problem, because Olivia had worked for no one but me, but she pointed out that I was entirely capable of forging letters.
And I had doubts, I don't mind admitting here. The thought of this beautiful young woman, who had wreaked such exciting emotional havoc on me, and who had given up her own life to be with me, and who had shared almost everything with me for five years, the thought of her preparing to enter the camp of my blackest enemy was almost too much to countenance.
Two hours or more went quickly by while we discussed her idea, and began to lay our plans. We emptied the bottle of gin, while Olivia kept saying, 'I'll get the secret for you, Robbie. That's what you want me to do, isn't it?' And I said yes, but that I did not want to lose her.
The spectre of Borden's ruthlessness loomed over us. I was torn between the euphoria of making a definitive strike against him, and the prospect of him taking some even greater revenge should he realize Olivia was mine. I voiced these fears. She replied, 'I'll come back to you Robbie, and I'll bring you Borden's secret—' We were soon both of us inebriated, both of us frolicsome and affectionate, and I did not return to my own apartment until after breakfast this morning!
At the moment she is in her own apartment, drafting a letter of application to Alfred Borden. I must go to forge one or two testimonials for her. We are using the address of her maid for
7th August 1898
It is a week since Olivia applied to Borden for a job, and there has been no reply. In some ways this is almost an irrelevance, as since the idea came into being Olivia and I have been as tender and loving to each other as we were during those heady weeks of my American tour. She looks more comely than she has for many months, and she has entirely given up her gin.
14th August 1898
Borden has replied (at least, an assistant called T. Elbourne replied on his behalf), suggesting an interview early next week.
I am suddenly dead against it, having in the last few days found a renewal of happiness with Olivia, and more unwilling than ever to see her fall into Borden's clutches even if it should be for a ruse of our own invention.
Olivia still wants to go through with it. I argue against her. I minimize the importance of his trick, shrug off the earnestness of the feud, try to laugh the whole thing off.
I fear that in the past I gave Olivia too many months and years to think alone, however.
18th August 1898
Olivia has been to the interview and returned from it, and she says the job is hers.
While she was gone I was in a torment of fears and regrets. Such is my suspicion of Borden that the moment she had left me I imagined that he had placed the advertisement in an attempt to snare her, and I had to restrain myself from dashing out after her. I went around to my workshop and tried to distract myself with mirror practice, but at last I came home and paced around my room again.
Olivia was gone far longer than either of us had expected, and I was seriously wondering what I should do when suddenly she arrived back. She was safe and sound, elated and excited.
Yes, the job is hers. Yes, Borden read the references I had written, and he accepted them as genuine. No, there was no apparent suspicion of me, and no, he appeared not to suspect there was any link between us.
She told me about some of the apparatus she had seen in his workshop, but it was all disappointingly ordinary.
'Did he say anything at all about the switch illusion?' I queried her.
'Not a word. But he told me there were several tricks he did alone, and for which he did not need a stage assistant.'
Later, saying she was tired, she went to her flat to sleep, and here I am once more, alone. I must try to understand; it is tiring going through an audition, no matter what the circumstances.
19th August 1898
It transpires that Olivia has started work with Borden immediately. When I went to the door of her flat this morning the maid told me Olivia had risen early, and would not be home until this afternoon.
20th August 1898
Olivia came in at 5.00 p.m. yesterday, and although she went straight to her flat she did admit me when I went to her door. She looked tired again. I was eager for news, but all she would say was that Borden had spent the day showing her the illusions in which she would be needed, and she had been rehearsing them intensively.
Later we had dinner together, but she was plainly exhausted and went again to sleep alone in her flat. This morning she departed at an early hour.
21st August 1898
A Sunday, and even Borden does not work. At home with me all day Olivia is being tight lipped about what
