The Floating Lady Murder (10 page)

“—We’ll keep our eyes open, sir,” I said, following Harry and Bess to the door. “And failing that, we can always fall back on our juggling.”

5

“LET US BEGIN THE INVESTIGATION AT ONCE!” HARRY CRIED AS THE
train pulled into the Albany station.

“Harry,” said Bess, “you must try not to arouse suspicion. Mr. Kellar wants you to stay alert, nothing more.”

“Very well,” he answered. “but I shall be ready to pounce in an instant! Dash, we must make it our business to make the acquaintance of our suspects!”

“The other members of the company, you mean? I really don’t think we should refer to them as suspects.”

“Ah, yes! I see what you mean!” He gave a broad wink. “Mustn’t put them on their guard! Very good—I shall seek out Mr. Valletin.”

“I’m sure we’ll meet him soon enough in due course, along with Francesca Moore and Perdita Wynn.”

“I shall leave them to you. The fair sex is your department, Dash. I should be foolish indeed if I did not avail myself of your natural advantages.”

Bess, pulling on her winter gloves, regarded her husband with a curious expression. “Just what do you mean by that, Harry?”

“Frankly, I’m not entirely certain,” he admitted. “It was a remark of Sherlock Holmes.”

We stepped onto the station platform just as a heavy snow began to fall. Harry and I fell in with the others as the heavy
work of unloading the baggage cars began. Nearly two tons worth of magical equipment—some of it quite fragile—had to be transferred onto horse-drawn wagons for delivery to the theater, an operation that required a coordinated effort from every man in the company. Jim Collins directed the operation with the cool precision of a battle general, striding up and down on the platform as he barked out instructions and positioned the loading ramps. Harry’s remarkable strength and agility quickly won the respect of the others, as did his willingness to shoulder the heaviest crates and swarm up to the top of the baggage cars to release the support nettings. I may say that I was scarcely less useful; I never possessed the raw power of my brother, but I compensated with a certain wiry puissance.

After the first car was emptied, Collins dispatched me to load a set of Chinese painted screens onto the forward wagon, instructing me to take care with the seal-cloth covering so as to protect the delicate material from the elements. I loaded the screens safely and lashed them into place, but as I turned to jump down from the wagon I somehow contrived to put my foot through a brittle Japanese paper lantern. Pulling my foot free, I lost my balance and pitched forward over the edge of the wagon, sprawling face first into the snow at the foot of the platform.

“Are you all right, sir?” came a woman’s voice.

“How the devil do you think I am?” I snapped, wiping snow from my eyes as I pulled myself from the ground. “I’ve just made an absolute—good lord!”

It was perhaps the most beautiful face I have ever seen. In those days, I confess, my head was easily turned by a dewy cheek or a well-turned ankle, but this woman was quite beyond my experience. Even now I find it nearly impossible to describe the effect that her dark, exotic features had upon me. It was as if, in the words of a popular novel of the time, she possessed the power to cloud a man’s mind. I felt my heart quicken and my limbs grow numb. An unsettling tightness gripped the base of
my neck and began radiating outwards.

“Sir?” she repeated, in a voice accented with Italian rhythms. “May I assist you in some way?”

Too late, it occurred to me that I should perhaps bring myself to a standing position and venture a few words of conversation, but I found that the power of speech had fled.

“That was quite a nasty fall, sir. Shall I fetch Mr. Collins?”

“I—I’m quite all right,” I managed to say, rising from the ground. “Quite all right.”

“You’re sure?” A sense of alarm was plainly evident on her features. “You’ve gone the most appalling shade of red.”

“Er, yes. The snow, I expect. Very cold. Snow generally is.”

“Yes,” she said cautiously, apparently finding signs of dementia in my reply. “I believe that is an absolute rule.”

“Well, just so. Very true.”

“You’re sure I shouldn’t fetch Mr. Collins? I’m sure he has the name of a physician...”

“No. No, indeed.” I clapped my hat upon my head, only to send a wet dribble of melting snow down my nose. I brushed it away, hoping she hadn’t noticed. “Beastly weather here in Albany, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, quite,” she said, warily. “Well, if you’re certain that you’re not injured, I’ll continue on my way.” She moved off to join the other female members of the company, who were being shown into a pair of carriages by Mr. Kellar and Mr. McAdow. I watched helplessly as she stepped onto the running board with an anxious backward glance at the tall, crazed fellow wearing a hatful of melting snow.

“ ‘Beastly weather here in Albany,’ ” I muttered angrily to myself. “Of all the utter codswollop!”

“I see you’ve met Miss Francesca Moore,” said Collins, coming up behind me.

“Oh, indeed,” I said. “Made quite an impression on the young lady, I’m sure.”

Collins gave a hoarse, rumbling laugh. “You’re not the first
to make an ass of himself over that one, Hardeen. Every man in the company is sweet on her.”

“She’s extraordinary!”

“Noticed that, did you? Mr. Kellar wanted a real stunner for the floating lady. She’s supposed to be a princess, he said, so by God she should look like a princess.” Collins stepped back and raised his hat as the two carriages rolled past. “Miss Moore has been working the small-time up to this point, but once those New York managers get an eyeful, we’ll be lucky to hold onto her for the run of the season. Come on, Hardeen, we’ve got another car to unload. Why don’t you grab that bundle of tent poles?”

“Of course,” I said. “Sorry about the lantern.”

“Happens all the time,” he replied. “Oh, one more thing...”

“Yes?” I turned back toward him.

“I agree with you completely. The Albany weather
is
beastly.”

After two hours, the baggage cars had been loaded onto a series of seven wagons. While Kellar’s train was diverted onto a side spur, the procession of wagons started along a snowy track for the theater. Harry and I rode with Collins atop a pile of bundled costume trunks on the rear wagon, and after a distance of some five or six miles we arrived at the darkened theater. Another hour of hard labor saw the wagons unloaded into a backstage holding pen, where the equipment would wait until early the following morning for the unpacking and set raising. Once Collins had satisfied himself that the crates were dry and secure, he left them under the watch of Sergeant Danbury—a stocky older man with a military brush moustache—while the rest of the crew made its way to the hotel.

It must have been past 10 o’clock by the time we checked into our rooms at the Blair-Kendricks, a stately if dark establishment not far from the train station. Harry immediately joined Bess to retire for the night, while I repaired to a small attic room that had been reserved for me at the last moment.
I found that I was not in the least bit sleepy, and a volume of Bret Harte stories I had brought with me on the train offered little distraction in my agitated frame of mind. After half an hour or so, I threw on my jacket and tie and made my way downstairs to the gentlemen’s lounge.

I saw at once that Jim Collins was already seated at the bar, along with a pair of my fellow stagehands. Collins looked up as I came through the doorway and waved me over. “Hardeen!” he called. “I was wondering where you’d gone! Did you have a chance to meet the others at the train platform? I thought not. Allow me to present the other members of the illusion crew— Casper Felsden and Malcolm Valletin.”

“A pleasure,” I said. “Is that seat empty, Mr. Felsden?”

“Sit down, Hardeen,” Valletin answered when Felsden made no reply. “Don’t bother about him, he doesn’t say much. They call him Silent Felsden. Me, I’m quite the opposite, I’m afraid.”

Malcolm Valletin was a broad-shouldered, bulky man of perhaps thirty years of age. His plump cheeks and toothy grin gave him the aspect of an overgrown, mischievous cherub. Casper Felsden, by contrast, was small and rail thin, with a serious and brooding cast to his pale features. His eyes, when he looked up at me over his beer stein, might have been cast of cold steel.

“Have a cigar, Hardeen,” Collins said, pushing an ash-wood humidor towards me. “The selection is quite good.”

“I’d best not,” I said.

“Go on,” said Valletin. “It all goes on Mr. Kellar’s tab. He’s quite decent about looking after us on tour.”

“Well, in that case—” I reached for a tightly-rolled belvedere.

Valletin pushed over a bronze cutter that lay near him on the bar. “So, Hardeen,” he asked, after I had ordered a Harper’s bourbon, “tell us all about the big mystery.”

“Mystery?” I stammered. “I don’t know—”

“Come on, Hardeen,” said Collins. “None of us have ever been
invited into Mr. Kellar’s private car. What did he want with you?”

“Ah. I was surprised myself,” I said, as I warmed and lit my cigar. “I don’t imagine that I’ll ever be invited in again, unless another lion happens to escape. Mr. Kellar wanted to hear the details from my brother.”

“Still can’t imagine how that happened,” said Valletin. “That cage looked to me as if it could hold a dozen lions and a gorilla besides. I’d have never gone anywhere near the thing if I’d thought otherwise.”

“Boris must be even stronger than he looks,” Collins said. He emptied his glass and pushed it forward for a refill. “You know, Hardeen, you’re not a thing like your brother.”

“Well, no,” I allowed. “He’s unique, as he would be the first to tell you.”

“No offense to him,” Collins continued, “he seems to be a hard worker, but I don’t appreciate being told how to do my job.”

“Pardon?”

“Down at the train station. He was watching me like a hawk. ‘Just remember, Collins,’ he said, ‘I’m keeping an eye on you.’ Just like that.”

“He told me that, too,” said Valletin. “I thought he wanted my job.”

I sighed. “My brother—my brother has a peculiar sense of humor,” I ventured. “He was trying to make a joke.”

“Perhaps,” said Collins. “How did he do that trick with his wife in the trunk, anyway?”

It was a familiar question and I gave the standard answer. “Very quickly,” I said.

Collins smiled at the evasion. “Have it your way. I admit I’m flummoxed. We have the three men responsible for Mr. Kellar’s latest illusions sitting right here at this bar, and we can’t figure out how he did it.”

“Just give us a hint!” cried Valletin, with the noisy enthusiasm of a man well along in the night’s drinking. “Otherwise Silent Felsden here won’t be able to sleep a wink.”

I looked at the pale, serious Mr. Felsden. True to his sobriquet, he had not said a word since I entered the lounge. He nursed his ale and stared ahead into the mirror behind the bar. He did not appear to be overly concerned about the Substitution Trunk.

“I really can’t help you,” I said. “My brother is very chary with his secrets.”

“Quite a bit of that going around,” said Collins.

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Valletin, sipping at his gin and lemon. “I could manage the escape from the trunk. It’s just the speed of the thing. I can’t imagine how they made that switch so fast, him and that little slip of a girl.”

“It suggests to me that Mr. Houdini is rather clever at coming up with new ideas,” Collins said. “Seems to me as if Hardeen and his brother might just be able to get us back on track with the Floating Lady. We could use whatever help we can get, with only four days to go until the debut.”

“We’ll do our best.”

“Little slip of a girl,” Valletin repeated, by way of nothing in particular. “Too bad she’s married, I say.”

“Surprised you have eyes for another woman at all,” Collins said, “not while Miss Francesca Moore walks among us.”

Valletin raised his glass in salute. “Miss Francesca Moore!” he cried, sloshing a bit of gin onto the bar. “She walks in Beauty, like the night...”

“What an extraordinary woman!” I said. “And what an ass I made of myself!”