Horten's Incredible Illusions (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

“Hello, little chap,” said the museum receptionist, smiling down at him. “Have you come for the Junior Fun Day storytelling session?”

“No,” said Stuart.

“You will get a special hat,” she added encouragingly.

“No,” repeated Stuart between gritted teeth. People were always mistaking him for someone younger; it was one of the worst things about being short.

He continued up the corridor and then hesitated outside the door of Rod Felton’s office.

“What ails?” inquired his father, who had come along too, mainly because the museum had a bookshop.

“Do you think Mr. Felton realizes that it was me who broke all that stuff?” asked Stuart.

He was referring to an awful incident that had happened two weeks before. In a room filled with Victorian farm equipment, Stuart had accidentally nudged a large model of a milkmaid—who had shoved a wagon wheel that had toppled a fake blacksmith that had knocked over an enormous artificial horse. The horse had lost an ear and a leg. Stuart’s father had written out a large check to cover the damage.

“That is something that we shall imminently discover,” said his father cautiously. He reached over Stuart’s head and knocked on the door.

“Come in!” called a keen voice. Rod Felton had many large teeth, and all of them were on display in a huge smile as Stuart entered the room. “Aha,” he said. “The young horse-smasher and his dad.”

“Hello,” said Stuart with a sickly smile.

“Sit down, sit down.”

While Stuart and his father squatted on two very low chairs, Rod Felton sat on the edge of his desk and looked down at them.

“Sorry again,” muttered Stuart. “About the horse, I mean. I honestly didn’t—”

Rod Felton held up a hand to stop him. “We’re prepared to forgive and forget,” he said, “because we in the museum have had what I think is a terrific idea. Our Beeton in Wartime exhibition has come to an end, and we have a two-week gap before Roman Beeton opens, which is obviously going to be a huge crowd-pleasing mega-blockbuster. There’s going to be a half-size model of a
triclinium
and a working
balneum
.”

“Would that be a
triclinium stratum
?” asked Stuart’s father.

Rod Felton nodded so fast that his head was a blur. “It would indeed. The
triclinia lecti
are adapted for the
accubatio
and, excitingly, we also have a replica
cathedra
which was based on an illustration in the …”

Stuart sat like a lump of wood as the conversation whizzed over his head, most of it in Latin. After a minute or two he held up his hand, as if he were in class. After another minute or two Rod Felton noticed.

“Yes?” he asked.

“You were saying about the terrific idea. To do with my great-uncle’s workshop …”

“Oh yes, so I was. Well, you know that the museum offered to store the tricks until a more permanent home could be found for them.”

Stuart nodded.

“Well, we thought that for the next two weeks, while Roman Beeton is being set up and most of the galleries are closed, we could use a side room of the museum to display your great-uncle’s stage illusions—we thought we’d call it Teeny-Tiny Tony’s Temporary Tricks. And—this is the terrific bit—we had the idea of making
you
the exhibition curator.”

“Me?” asked Stuart incredulously.

“Yes. To demonstrate to other youngsters that the museum is for
everyone
, even people who’ve behaved badly in the past. You know—‘Once I was a vandal and now I’m a helper!
’
”

“I
wasn’t
a vandal,” protested Stuart. “It was an
accident
.”

“And it would be wonderful publicity,” continued Rod Felton, ignoring the interruption, “what with you being a relative of Tony Horten. I think we could even get local television to cover it. So, would you be interested?”

“What would I have to do?”

“Welcome visitors, tell people about your great-uncle, answer questions about the exhibits and their history. Wasn’t there a story about a terrible fire?”

“Yes, Great-Uncle Tony’s first magic workshop was in the Horten factory, but it got firebombed during the war, and every single illusion in it was totally destroyed, and his fiancée Lily—who was also his assistant—disappeared at the same time. And then Great-Uncle Tony rebuilt his tricks in the secret workshop under the bandstand, before disappearing himself four years later.”

“Excellent,” said the curator approvingly. “I can see you’d be very good at it. And you’d even have an official badge.” He picked up a small object from his desk and held it out to Stuart. It was a badge bearing a cartoon of a toddler wearing a gown and mortarboard:

“What do you think?” asked Rod Felton.

Stuart hesitated. The badge was awful, the title stupid, and he was pretty certain that any visitors would either ignore him or laugh at him. On the other hand …

“Would I be allowed to touch the exhibits?” he asked hesitantly.

Rod Felton looked surprised. “Of course,” he said. “As exhibition curator you’d have to know all about the items under your care. Do you want to come and see them now?”

“Yes,
please
.”

Stuart started to follow Rod Felton out of the room, and then realized that his father was still sitting on the chair, staring blankly into space—his usual expression when thinking of a particularly difficult crossword clue.

Stuart nudged his arm. “Dad?”

His father reached into his pocket and took out a tiny notebook and pen. “Vegetable amidst effort becomes a specialist,” he said dreamily.

“What?”

“The answer’s
expert
.”

“Is it?”

“
P
—as in
vegetable
—in the middle of
exert
—as in
effort
.
Expert
. I’m really pleased with that one. And I’ve had another exciting thought—”

“Dad, I’m just going to look at Great-Uncle Tony’s stuff.”

Mr. Horten nodded vaguely. Stuart had long ago realized that his father’s definition of “exciting” was different from most people’s. On a scale of 0–10 it would probably look something like this:

“See you later, then,” said Stuart, following the curator.

Beeton in Wartime was being dismantled. An air-raid shelter lay in pieces on the gallery floor, and a dummy wrapped in bandages was leaning against the wall, looking rather sinister.

“Through here,” said Rod Felton, opening a door that had previously been hidden behind a poster about air-raid precautions.

It led into a square, high-ceilinged room, with only a single window near the top of one wall. The curator clicked the light switch a couple of times and then tut-tutted with impatience. “The lightbulb must have burned out,” he said. “I’ll go and find the caretaker. In the meantime, have a poke around. I’m sure I can trust you not to deliberately damage anything.”

“It was an
accident
,” said Stuart yet again, but the curator had already gone.

Stuart was alone in the room, with his great-uncle’s legacy.

CHAPTER 3

Stuart looked at the cluster of objects draped in dustcloths. When he had discovered Great-Uncle Tony’s workshop in the vast and gloomy room under the bandstand in the park, he’d had no time to explore it properly. The Beeton Fire Department had declared the place unsafe, and Stuart and his companions had been hustled away before he could do more than glimpse most of the contents. Now he stepped forward and pulled at one corner of the nearest sheet.

It slid to the floor, revealing a tall oval cabinet, its surface smooth and ruby red. From the center of the door protruded the glittering handles of four swords. Stuart reached up and, gripping the lowest, tried to pull the sword out of its slot. It was stuck fast. He let go again and took a step back. There was no lock or handle to the cabinet and no obvious way of opening it. He knocked on it softly, and heard the hollow boom of his knuckles.

“
Enjoy the workshop
,” he said in a whisper. “
It has many surprises
.” Great-Uncle Tony himself had spoken those words to Stuart on the stage of a Victorian theater, just five days (and over a hundred and ten years) ago …

There was a noise behind him, and he turned to see Rod Felton coming into the room, holding a stepladder and a lightbulb. Close behind him was April.

“I got the job!” she announced gleefully.

“Which job?”

“Reviewer for the
Beech Road Guardian
. And guess what the first thing I’m going to review is?”

“What?”

“This exhibition! Mr. Felton’s just given me permission to see it—not that there’s much to see yet. Shall we take all the other covers off?”

Before Stuart could protest, April had darted past him and was ripping the dustsheets off the other illusions. He felt as if he’d just woken up on Christmas morning and found that someone else was opening his presents. And then Rod Felton fitted the lightbulb and turned on the light, and the room that had been full of mystery and excitement just a second ago now looked like a brightly lit shop-window display.

“Seven,” said April. “Seven magic tricks.”

Rod Felton climbed back down the ladder and stood with his hands on his hips. “What we really need is a name and a short description for each illusion—how it works and so on. Do you think you could make a start on that for us, Stuart?”

“I’ll try,” said Stuart.

“Right. I’ll leave you to it. Incidentally, er”—he looked rather embarrassed—“er, your father’s still sitting in my office. He seems to be talking to himself. I don’t know how to get him out.”

“Tell him the bookstore’s about to close,” said Stuart.

The curator nodded and strode out, and the heavy door closed with a bang.

For a moment there was silence.

“So, do you know if these tricks even
have
names?” asked April.

“Some of them do,” said Stuart. “When the mayoress was a little kid, she saw Great-Uncle Tony’s stage act—she told me about it.” That had been on the first occasion he’d ever met the mayoress, Jeannie Carr, and he had learned two things about her: the first was that she loved magic tricks and the second was that she loved money to a frightening degree.

He began to walk around the room. “The Pharaoh’s Pyramid,” he said, lightly touching a golden pyramid taller than himself.

“The Reappearing Rose Bower…and the Book of Peril …” Stuart trailed off, glancing first at a bronze throne entwined with silver wire and flowers enameled in pink and scarlet and then at a giant book whose jet-black cover was locked by a huge key. “The Well—”

“—of Wishes,” finished April, and they both stood for a moment beside the object that had led them on such a manic and magical hunt through Beeton.

“It’s odd …” said April hesitantly.

“What’s odd?”

“The Well of Wishes doesn’t look quite the same as it did when it was in the room under the bandstand. I mean, it’s the same shape and everything, but …”

Stuart frowned. “It doesn’t look different to me.”

She shook her head. “I can’t put my finger on what’s changed, but
something
has. Anyway, what’s this one called?” she asked, pointing at a graceful arch made of mirrored glass.

Stuart had no idea, but telling April things she didn’t already know was a new and pleasant sensation, so he paused to invent something.