Nevermore (37 page)

The three children vanished the moment their father stopped the dreadful singing, darting away to explore the labyrinthine mysteries of the enormous liner.

“Wanted to see you off.” Damon Runyon fished in his jacket pocket and came up with a baseball. “Brought you a present.”

“Jolly nice,” Sir Arthur said, examining the stitched horsehide orb with the curiosity of an anthropologist contemplating some arcane tribal artifact. “Thank you so very much.”

“It’s the one you saw Ruth belt into center field,” Runyon lied. “The one Stengel caught. Got them both to sign it.” This much was true. Conan Doyle admired the Babe’s broad scrawl. “Yanks take the Series, four games to two.” The sportswriter spoke in the curious clipped manner he’d made his trademark. “The Giants’ only wins come because of Casey Stengel’s two homers; the first one inside the park at Yankee Stadium. That’s in the opener. Only run of the game. Worth the price of admission.”

“Well, sir, I certainly owe a great measure of sporting pleasure to your kindness.” Sir Arthur tossed the baseball into the air, laughing as he caught it. When the other reporters edged closer, notepads in hand, he waved them off as one might disperse a swarm of pesky gnats.

“For my money, you’re missing out on the best game in town,” Damon Runyon muttered as he lit a cigarette.

“And what might that be?”

“Poe murders, natch.” The reporter squinted through the smoke of his dangling Sweet Cap. “This last one was a beaut. Regular chop suey. Think of the fun you’ll miss, not solving the case.”

“I’ll leave that dubious pleasure to ‘New York’s finest,’ as’ I believe your constabulary is designated.” Catching sight of Opal Crosby Fletcher entering in her sable coat, Sir Arthur shaded his eyes with a saluting hand; a parody explorer scanning the horizon. “I say,” he said, “this is turning into quite a gala fête.”

“Hello, Sir Arthur,” Isis called out with a smile. “Or should I say, farewell…?”

“Mrs. Fletcher. What a pleasure …” He grasped her black-gloved hand. When last he saw that hand it was red with blood. She’d made an excellent nurse in the makeshift surgery she arranged in a corner of her basement furnace room. “How have you been?”

“Very well, thank you.”

Sensing they wished a private conversation, Damon Runyon excused himself and drifted off, managing to pick up the words “did you contact the barrister?” before the rest was lost to him.

Isis waited until the reporter was at a safe distance. “Monday morning,” she whispered. “That same afternoon. I felt something close to joy when I burned the file.”

“And what of the skull?”

“Sidney Rammage’s personal effects are to be auctioned next month. I entered into private negotiation with the executors and I believe my bid has been accepted.”

“Congratulations!” Sir Arthur’s smile belied the sadness webbing his eyes.

Runyon spotted Harry and Bess Houdini making an entrance and sidled up to them. The magician carried a large wicker picnic hamper tied with a bold red ribbon and bow. “Couldn’t miss the bon voyage…?” the reporter quipped.

“Hello, Runyon …” The magician briskly introduced his wife without breaking stride. Conan Doyle waved at them with a forced grin.

“Delighted you came.” Sir Arthur took Bess’s hand. “So good to see you again, Mrs. Houdini.”

“Likewise.” Bess smiled, immediately seeking out Lady Jean, who sat on a chaise, chatting with a plump woman from the Theosophical Society.

Runyon patted Houdini’s basket. “Looks like quite a feast.”

“Nothing but the best for the world’s greatest author.”

Isis took note of the alarming contrast between the magician’s brash music hall demeanor and the dead emptiness in his despairing eyes. His pallor suggested incipient illness. “Have you not been sleeping?” she asked softly.

“Rough couple of nights. I’ll be okay now the tour is over with.”

Taking his arm, Isis led Houdini a few paces away from the general commotion surrounding the departing knight. “I owe you more than my life,” she murmured. “I am twice indebted for the life I carry.”

“Now, listen …”

“Please. Hear me out. After the Christmas season, I’m going abroad to bear my child in seclusion. I say mine, because I absolve you of all obligation. There will be no scandal. The world will be told I adopted Osiris in Europe.”

“Osiris …?” ·

Isis smiled. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

Damon Runyon stepped up close, almost coming between them. “What d’ya think about the Poe killer bumping off another magician?” Houdini recoiled from a drifting cloud of cigarette smoke. “I mean, after your assistant was rubbed out like that.”

Houdini spoke slowly, choosing his words with care. “The death of a colleague is always regrettable. This … tragic horror makes the loss much … much more difficult to accept.”

“Did you know this guy, Sidney Rammage?”

“Not very well… . He was secretary of the Society of American Magicians. I… knew him mainly in that capacity.”

“Think you’re next?”

“I certainly hope not.” The magician’s doleful gaze implored Conan Doyle to intercede for him.

“Don’t mean to be rude,” Sir Arthur said, taking the hint. “But I need a word in private with our mutual friend.” He thought Houdini’s unexpected impotence with the press a most telling sign.

“And I need to hurry if I’m going to make my next appointment.” Isis threw her arms around Conan Doyle’s neck, giving the burly knight a fervent hug. “Good-bye, Sir Arthur. You possess a radiant spirit.”

“Good-bye, dear lady.” He kissed her cheek.

She gave Houdini’s hand a brisk shake. “Always most entertaining, Mr. Houdini …” Isis ignored Damon Runyon, passing him by with a cold smile.

The reporter grinned, wiping his cheaters on his handkerchief. “Hey, everything’s jake. I’m not a guy to hog all your time. Answer one question and I’ll scram.”

“Ask away.”

“What’s your last word on the Poe murders?”

Sir Arthur glanced at Houdini. The magician stared fiercely at Damon Runyon. “You may repeat what I’ve always maintained,” said the knight. “A random killer, acting out of madness, might be anyone, anywhere. The man standing next to you in a queue might harbor the most dreadful homicidal secrets. The stranger encountered in a pub or on a railway platform could well be the next Jack the Ripper. The monster wears the face of everyman.”

Damon Runyon grinned. “Moral being to watch your back…?”

“There is nothing moral about murder, Mr. Runyon.” Conan Doyle extended his hand. “A pleasure meeting you.”

“Pleasure’s mine.” A quick handshake and the reporter was gone, snapping the magician a sharp hat-brim salute in parting.

“Let’s take a walk,” Houdini said.

“I’ll show you our stateroom.”

After Sir Arthur reassured all present he would return shortly, the two men set off together along a passageway decorated in the stern Restoration classicism of Christopher Wren. They walked a good distance in silence. “Are you all right?” asked the knight at last.

“I’m alive,” the magician replied. “Alive and kicking. Both of us … alive and kicking. Our families and friends, safe and sound. What could be better?”

“Nothing better …”

The two men paused and faced one another. Sir Arthur pulled a folded newspaper page from his side pocket. “I saved this for you.”

Houdini set the gift basket at his feet, spreading the page out on the bulkhead. There was a three-column photo of the Jenny at rest in Central Park,
“WAY OFF COURSE,”
read the caption head. “Saw it on the train,” he said. “But, thanks. Flying again was the best part of this whole dirty business.”

“No. The best part was renewing my friendship with you.”

Houdini picked up the gift-wrapped picnic hamper, handing it to Conan Doyle. “Here.”

“Heavier than it looks.” Sir Arthur attempted a weak grin.

“There is no heavier burden.” The magician’s mournful stare burned into the apprehensive knight. “I know you to be a connoisseur of magic. And so, I’ve prepared one last trick for your entertainment …”

Sir Arthur cleared his throat. The utter lack of emotion in Houdini’s voice chilled him. He sensed the crossing of an invisible line. “I’m honored … to participate,” he said.

“Put the hamper away in a safe place. Do not open or unwrap it. At precisely midnight on the third night out, read the card attached to the ribbon.”

“What then?”

“The card will instruct you what to do next.” Houdini squeezed Sir Arthur’s shoulder, one comrade to another. “Good luck in your spiritual search,” he said, hurrying off down the passageway with no further word of farewell.

The knight watched his rapid departure. “Good-bye, Houdini,” he called, cradling the wicker picnic hamper in his arms. Hanging from a blood-red ribbon, the floral greeting card lay open before his gaze, the unfolded white inside surface completely blank.

D
OWN OFF THE WAYS
in 1914, the
Aquitania
was the last of the great four-funneled ships, a floating museum of architectural style. Walking through her public rooms and salons revealed a time machine worthy of Mr. Wells’s imagination. Every period from sturdy Tudor to the baroque excesses of Louis XIV awaited the discerning traveler. On A Deck, a number of suites had been named after the great painters. One might choose Holbein, Rembrandt, or Velasquez, among others, each suite decorated with a nod to the aesthetics of the appropriately designated Old Master.

The Conan Doyle family occupied the Romney Suite. Reproductions of his lively portraits hung in every room. Sir Arthur had a special fondness for the vivacious portrayal of · Emma Hamilton decked out in a wide-brimmed straw sunbonnet. Her saucy glance beamed down at him from the damask-covered wall of their sitting room. The knight reclined on a comfortable couch, staring up at those dancing eyes that had so bewitched Lord Nelson.

“Land of my dreams … into the land of my dreams .. .” He sang the line again and again, softly under his breath. A perverse penance for having taunted the press with his raucous treatment of the cherished sentimental songs of the Great War. “A-winding, into the land of my dreams …”

Third night out on a calm passage. Over in the corner, a tall Hepplewhite grandfather clock chimed the hour, the hand-painted phases of the moon waxing on its face. Humming along, Sir Arthur counted all twelve strokes of midnight.

It was time. The knight retrieved Houdini’s wicker picnic basket from the stateroom closet. He had concealed it behind a jumble of overcoats and rubberized macks hung out in readiness for their return to the inhospitable climate of home. Turning back toward the couch with it under his arm, he saw the ethereal ghost of Poe sitting, somewhat petulantly, on the edge of a Chippendale armchair opposite the couch. A hovering luminous fog surrounded him like the haze of cigar smoke.

“So, we meet again…?” The specter’s querulous voice whined: a cold wind whistling though the unlatched shutters of an abandoned house.

“Do you know where we are?” asked Sir Arthur, concealing his amazement as well as he could while he resumed his seat. He placed the wicker basket on the low table in front of him.

“Aboard ship… . Some miserable packet bound out for …” His words drifted into inaudibility.

“Bound for where?” the knight prompted.

“I know not where I sailed for England once, as a child long ago. In the company of my stepfather and his family.”

“Is England your destination now?”

Poe’s ghost waved his frost-white fingers in an indeterminate gesture. “Does it matter? We’re all fellow passengers on a voyage into eternity. The ports at which we call along the way are of no real import. Our mutual destination remains the same …”

Sir Arthur sagged back against the couch cushions, succumbing to the numb beginnings of despair. “You paint a bleak picture of life,” he said.

“Life demands such perspective.” The apparition wavered, a dim candle flame in the winds of time. “And such a palette: dismal gray, murky browns, blue shadows, the black of night … of the yawning grave.”

“Is death truly such a lonely affair!” the knight cried out, his heart sick with doubt.

“You tell me,” mocked the spirit. “I can only vouchsafe for the loneliness of life.”

“Then speak for yourself. My life remains cheerful.”

“Does it indeed…?” The sepulchral laugh tolled with the hollow chill of a death knell. “Is that why you guard that case like it was a loved-one’s casket? What does it contain that is so precious?”

Sir Arthur placed a protective hand on the wicker basket. “I … don’t know.”

“Don’t know, or don’t want to know?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not to me. I no longer have treasures to cherish.” The ghostly figure rose to its feet like a wisp of smoke drifting up from a smothered fire. “I wrote a tale once about a man on shipboard who keeps a clandestine container in his cabin.”

“ ‘The Oblong Box’ …”

“Ah, you’re familiar with my work?”

“An excellent story. But, so sad …”

“No less true, for all its pathos. How often have I wished to sink beneath the surface along with my dear departed wife.” As before, the image of the ghost began to fade; a flight of moths in the moonlight, the dust from their fluttering wings filtering down through the shadows.

“Poe, wait!” Sir Arthur implored. “Please. Stay a moment longer. There’s so much I need to ask you.”

“Alas, I have no answers …” The ghostly voice whispered. “I possess not a single truth to share with you.” Just as if the moon had slipped behind a dark storm cloud, Poe’s luminous form diminished, leaving only a trace, his vague nocturnal outline hovering in the corner. “I do know this … ,” he said, his voice a thin hiss. “The casket you guard is filled with sin. It reeks of evil. You may think yourself somehow separated from malfeasance, but you are wrong… . You are bonded to the poison… . The guilt is yours. It is … an eternal chancre … upon your soul …”

A firefly winked; the wolfs lonely cry lost on the distant wind. Poe was gone.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle felt very cold. He hugged his arms to his sides and shivered. Perhaps his conscience played tricks on him. The wicker picnic basket squatted on the table; insidious, malevolent, the bright scarlet bow bold as a harlot’s leering smile. He reached for the gaudy floral card, plucking it free from the ribbon.