The Floating Lady Murder (14 page)

“That’s fine for the Belasco,” Valletin said, “but what about on tour?”

“I guess we’ll have to bridge those domes when we get there. I think this is our best option. Houdini, let me be the first to—”

“Wait a moment,” Valletin interrupted. “Aren’t we getting a bit ahead of ourselves? Houdini’s plan is very clever, I’ll admit, but does it actually accomplish what Mr. Kellar wants? The way you’ve blocked it out, Princess Karnac will disappear from the stage and appear in the dome. It’s a good effect, but will we ever actually see her floating in mid-air? It seems to me that unless we actually see the princess travel from the stage to the dome, then we haven’t created a Floating Lady illusion.”

I fished another red juggling ball out of the prop chest and tossed it to Harry. “Graveyard Ghouls?” I asked.

He nodded. “Exactly.”

“You’ve lost me, gentlemen,” said Collins.

“It’s an idea we had a couple of years ago,” I said. “We were travelling with the Marco Company, working as acrobats.”

“You were an acrobat,” Harry corrected. “I was an escape artist extraordinaire.”

“Fine, Harry. In any case, sometimes the crowds would be a little thin, and Mr. Marco would lay on an added attraction for the late night shows. He’d do a ghost and goblin routine called ‘The Graveyard Ghouls.’ Harry and I would dress up in black costumes so that no one could see us against the black backdrop. Then we’d wave a lot of skeletons and tambourines in the air so that it looked as if they were floating around by themselves.”

“Black art,” said Collins. “We used to do a bit of that with the Herrmann show. But I don’t really see how that helps us.”

“It doesn’t, but this part does. Mr. Marco began making a lot of money on the ghost show, so he added a special improvement mid-way through the tour. Marco had been a bit of an explorer in his younger days, and he always carried a lantern projector with him on tour, because whenever the opportunity arose he liked to earn a little extra by giving a ‘mind-improving lecture’ about his visit to Egypt with the Berrier expedition. He had a set of twelve slides painted onto glass—the pyramids, the sphinx, a couple of camels—and he spaced them out over forty minutes while he droned on about the ancient grandeur of Egypt. People sat through the lecture in order to marvel over the images, which were projected onto a large white wall. It was an amazing spectacle.”

“I saw a lecture like that once,” said Valletin. “Ancient Greece. The man had a lantern slide of the Parthenon. You’d have sworn it was right there. You could just about touch it.”

I nodded. “The projector gives a remarkably lifelike effect. So when the ghost show caught on, Mr. Marco decided to use lantern slides to spice it up a little. He took three glass slides and painted them with images of ghosts, goblins and grinning skulls.”

“Pepper’s ghost,” said Collins. “What you’re describing is just
a version of the old Pepper’s Ghost illusion. You take a lantern projector and show slides of ghosts on a sheet of glass. The glass is angled so the audience never sees it, but the ghosts look very lifelike. If you get fancy, it doesn’t even have to be slides. If you work it with a mirror, you can even dress someone up like a ghost and have them move around. Is that what you’re getting at? We should project an image of a Floating Lady onto glass?”

“It’ll never work,” said Valletin. “The last time we had a Pepper’s Ghost at the Egyptian Hall, the glass sheet weighed upwards of five hundred pounds. It took over a week to install. There’s no possible way that you could tour with it. What if it fell?”

“We found a way to do it without glass,” I said.

“No glass?” Collins took a look upward at the ceiling. “How?”

“The ghost show always had a lot of smudge pots going, to create a spooky atmosphere,” I said. “The smoke also helped to hide what was going on behind the scenes. Harry and I discovered that if we added some extra potter’s ash to the pots, they gave off a particularly thick column of white-colored smoke. If we then projected a lantern slide onto the smoke, it looked as if there were ghosts darting in and out.”

Collins closed his eyes for a moment. “Is it possible? Could that actually work?”

“I’m telling you, the ghosts were very convincing. If we keep the lights low, and just show them a couple of glimpses—”

“I don’t get it,” Valletin said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see what you’re driving at.”

Collins walked to the center of the stage. “We’re talking about doing the trick in three stages,” he explained.

“Small steps,” added Harry.

“First, Princess Karnac disappears from the banquette, right here at the center of the stage.” He stepped forward and waved his hands over the orchestra pit. “Then the audience catches a glimpse of her floating in mid-air, right about here, on a column
of smoke. We get ourselves a lantern slide of the Princess looking hypnotized, stretched out like she’s on some kind of magic carpet.” Collins trotted down the stage steps and moved halfway up the center aisle. “Then we see her again about there,” he said, pointing over his head, “only she’s farther away this time, as though she’s actually moving upward.”

“Exactly,” Harry said. “And we use spotlights to control where the audience is looking at each phase.”

“Until finally—” Collins moved further up the aisle. “She’s all the way up in the dome. Hell, she could even look down and wave at us.”

“Right,” I said, “because it won’t be a lantern slide by the time she appears in the dome. She’ll have had time to get up there from the stage while the audience is busy looking at the projections. It’ll really be her up there, suddenly popping into view.”

Collins rubbed his jaw, reviewing each stage of the plan. “There’s got to be a flaw,” he said. “I can’t believe that’ll work.”

“It’ll work,” Harry insisted.

“How can you be so certain?”

Harry took the red juggling ball, threw it hard against the stage floor, and watched as it arced upward into the branches of the chandelier. “Because,” he said, “it’s the only idea I have.”

7

“
I ASSURE YOU
,
MR
.
LYMAN
,”
HARRY WAS SAYING
, “
I AM NOT A
humbug.”

“You’re sure?” Lyman asked genially. “I’ve heard you talking about all those things you can do. The handcuff escapes. Leaping from bridges while tied up in chains. Getting out of ropes. It all sounds like a lot of humbug to me.”

“Dash,” Harry caught my eye in the dressing room mirror, “what does he mean by that word?”

“Phoney,” I said. “A fraud.”

“Ah. A
shmegegge
.” Harry turned back to Lyman. “Mr. Lyman, the Great Houdini is not a humbug. Of that you may be assured.”

Harry and I were backstage donning our costumes for Kellar’s return to the Belasco, back in New York City. The performance would feature the debut of the Levitation of Princess Karnac, and the last-minute preparations had left us pressed for time. My brother had barely found time to slip into his “Brakko the Strongman” costume as the five-minute bell rang, and I was busy hunting around for the floppy cap that I wore with my juggler’s motley.

We had been working without pause for two days. Having secured Mr. Kellar’s approval to develop the illusion along the lines Harry and I had devised, we spent an afternoon of frantic activity in Albany securing the necessary materials and
props. Mr. Kellar himself supervised the staging and mechanical rehearsals, which continued until the very moment that it was time to strike the set and load the show back onto the train. Now, having installed the illusion at the Belasco, Harry and I had only a few moments to get into make-up before the curtain went up. For some reason, Mr. Lyman had chosen this moment to park himself in the dressing area and unleash a barrage of strange questions.

“Why are you so concerned about Harry’s humbuggery?” I asked.

“I assure you that I mean no disrespect!” Lyman cried. “I’ve done a bit of humbuggery myself over the years. I’ve worked all sorts of angles—printer, crockery salesman, chicken farmer, small town newspaper man—I even sold axle grease at one stage. But I never thought of becoming a ‘self-liberator.’ That one got right past me!”

Harry smeared a bit of Tucker’s paste onto his cheeks, hoping to make himself look ruddy and virile under the hot lights. “It’s not an angle, Mr. Lyman. I am the world’s foremost escape artist. There is no bond on earth that can hold Houdini a prisoner. One day my name will be as famous as that of Mr. Kellar. You may be certain of that, Mr. Lyman.”

“Frank. Call me Frank.” He pushed his spectacles up on his nose and flipped back a sheet of his note pad. “You see, that’s just the sort of thing I wanted to know. ‘World’s foremost escape artist.’ That’s very good!”

I settled my cap onto my head and pushed the dangling balls away from my face. “May we ask which of your many professions you are pursuing at the moment?”

Lyman put a finger to his lips. “Can’t say! Bit of a secret! But it’s important that I come to know a bit about everyone who works for the great and powerful Kellar.”

“You mentioned that you’ve worked as a journalist,” I said. “Are you writing a story about Mr. Kellar?”

“Let’s suppose I were,” Lyman said carefully. “Let’s suppose
that I were gathering information for a story such as the one you propose. I would have to be very careful to cast the material into a form that his many admirers might care to read, wouldn’t I? If I were writing a story about a politician, say, or a barrister, my path would be clear. I would take down the particulars of his accomplishments and the broad outline of his rise to the top, and then I would set it down on paper, largely without embellishment.”

I glanced anxiously at my pocket watch. “Mr. Lyman—”

“Frank.”

“Frank, the show is beginning. Harry and I are due on stage in a few moments.”

“How very interesting!” He made a note on his pad. “Now, in Mr. Kellar’s case there are a goodly number of events and happenings which would quite naturally make for interesting reading. Did you know, for instance, that he was once shipwrecked in the Bay of Biscay? He lost everything he owned—his props and costumes, his personal effects, and more than $20,000 worth of gold and silver!”

I glanced again at my watch. “A fascinating tale, but—”

“As fate would have it, Mr. Kellar was wearing a diamond ring when he struggled ashore on the island of Moleno. He sold the ring and managed to start over again from scratch! That is the measure of the man, wouldn’t you say?” He thumbed back a few pages of his pad. “But where I would run into difficulty is in describing the actual things that Mr. Kellar does upon the stage. It is all very well and good to say that he causes a fierce lion to vanish, or that he brings about the magical blooming of a rose bush, but the plain words do not convey the spectacle, the grandeur. I would need to know the details of how he manages to accomplish these feats. Like the levitation of Princess Karnac, for example.”

“You want to know how the tricks are done?” Harry asked.

“Well, yes,” said Lyman. “I suppose I do. Mr. Collins gets terribly agitated whenever I inquire, and I hate to trouble Mr.
Kellar. I merely want to know for verisimilitude, you understand. It would help me a great deal.”

I put a finger to my lips. “Can’t say! Bit of a secret!” I cried, echoing Lyman’s own words. “Mr. Kellar is most particular about that!”

“But in this case couldn’t you—”

“It’s against the rules!” I continued. “The penalties are exceedingly harsh!”

“Rules? Penalties?”

“Dash, why didn’t you tell me that it had gotten so late?” Harry cried, snatching up his wooden caveman club. “Mr. Lyman, we shall be happy to speak with you after the performance, but right now Dash and I are in danger of missing the curtain.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the door.

“Can’t have that!” he called after us. “Until later, then!”

“Harry, I’m quite capable of walking,” I said as he dragged me down the corridor. “You can let go of my arm.”

“That man is a spy!” he said in a fierce whisper. “Snooping around Mr. Kellar’s secrets! It’s just as bad as Collins said!”