You Might As Well Die (17 page)

Benchley looked it over. The wooden box itself was a cube, about half the size of a shoe box. On the top face of the box, like two brightly colored candies, were a green button and a red button. There was also a large, flat, brass letter
N
. That was all.

“When you wish to bid on an item,” the smooth voice continued, “simply depress the green button. Your bid will be automatically and electronically registered here, at this control panel.”

Benchley shifted his focus to the stage, on which stood a long-faced gentleman—the smooth-voiced man. The auctioneer. The man stood behind a wide wooden tabletop, the surface of which was covered with metal buttons and gizmos, like a horizontal telephone switchboard.

Benchley sank even farther down in his seat. Among his weaknesses, he always had trouble with mechanical things. They were somehow out to get him, he had decided after many bad experiences. Even the simplest of devices—a footlocker, an egg timer, a revolving door—gave him fits on a daily basis. But more complicated mechanical contraptions—a typewriter, a radio, an elevator, the crank starter of an automobile—were positively seeking his destruction.

And he did not like the look of this newfangled bidding instrument. Not at all.

The auctioneer smoothly continued. “When the bidding price of the auction item is raised, you may depress the green button again to raise your bid. It’s that simple. Shall we begin with the first lot?”

It was not that simple. Someone down in the front of the audience raised a hand and posed the same question that Benchley wanted to ask: What was the red button for?

“Ah,” the auctioneer replied with some hesitation, his smoothness momentarily disturbed. “The red button is not yet functional. That feature will be implemented at a date very soon.”

What feature?
he wondered. The red button would likely be used to cancel a bid. Of course,
that feature
—the one he would most likely need—was not yet functional.

For distraction, he turned to Lucy Goosey, who still scrutinized the catalog’s fine print and disclaimers.

“So,” he said, “about those nudes . . .”

 

The charcoal gray Rolls-Royce—Houdini’s private car—rolled along Wooster Street in Greenwich Village. “Stop here,” Houdini commanded his chauffeur.

Houdini turned to Dorothy. “We’ll walk the last two blocks. We don’t want to call any extra attention to ourselves. And this car is rather noticeable.”

“Yeah? I hadn’t noticed,” she said dryly as she got out of the car, looking at the large silver
HH
embossed on the side of the Rolls.

Houdini jumped out and walked in the direction of Viola’s residence. He was entirely convincing as an elderly gentleman, yet he still moved fast. She could barely keep up with him.

“What’s the big hurry?” she asked. “If Mistress Viola really speaks for the dead, then there’s no need to rush. It’s not like the ghost of Ernie MacGuffin is going anywhere.”

“I want a good seat in the circle, preferably right next to Mistress Viola, so I can hold hands with her.”

“Hold hands with her? That’s what all the boys say.”

“No, that’s how I can best catch her in her act.”

“Her act? So you don’t believe in any of this voodoo bullshit, huh?”

He spoke sternly. “I never said that. I’m not a foe of spiritualism, only of fraudulent mediums.”

“But at Mickey Finn’s hideout, you said—”

He stopped and turned to her sharply. “I said, I have yet to see any convincing evidence that people in our world can communicate with those in the spirit world.”

Dorothy was confused. In her mind, there were usually two types of people: cynics and suckers. “So you do believe?”

She couldn’t see his face in the dark, but his shoulders sagged lower. He spoke softly. “To be quite honest, I want to believe. I’d give away my entire fortune to have one word from my dear sainted mother.”

“One word? She says ‘Hello.’ That’s one word. Now, pay up.”

Houdini chuckled. “Mama never spoke English. Only German.” He started walking again, but not as quickly as before. “Do you know of Arthur Conan Doyle?”

“Of course. He wrote the Sherlock Holmes books. What about him?”

“He and I used to be friends.”

“You
used to be
friends?”
Boy,
Dorothy wondered,
who and what else did this man have up his sleeve?
“What happened?”

“We had a falling-out. You see, Doyle is an avid and totally committed supporter of spiritualism.”

“You’re telling me that the man who wrote about Sherlock Holmes—a detective who relies on deductive reasoning—believes in spooks and séances?”

“He does indeed,” Houdini said. “Two years ago, he brought his family on a tour of America, and they had a summer holiday in Atlantic City. My wife and I had the occasion to visit him and his family.”

“Sounds pleasant enough.”

“It was, until Lady Doyle sat me down and told me she could perform a spirit-writing séance. She was not being duplicitous. Lady Doyle knew of my love for my dear departed mother, you see. And she thought she was doing me a favor. Like her husband, Lady Doyle is a true believer. For my part, I attempted, in the spirit of friendship and in a hope against hope, to participate fully in the endeavor to contact the spirit of my mother.”

The spirit of his mother?
Dorothy’s mother had died when she was only five. But Dorothy wouldn’t ever consider trying to reach her in the great beyond.
Rich people like Houdini,
she thought,
are no different from the rest of us. They want what they can’t have.

“So what happened?” she asked.

“We sat in a darkened room. Lady Doyle sat across the table from me. Her husband stood behind her for support. After several supplications to the spirit world, Lady Doyle started writing on a notepad, telling me it was the words of my mother. And she read them to me. There was never a more ghastly display. The words she spoke were in English.”

“You just said your mother spoke only German.”

“Exactly. And later I told them as much.” His soft voice now took a venomous tone. “But, oh, they were so convinced, those Doyles. Sir Arthur gave me some patter about how the spirit speaks through the ether, without the filter of an earthly language. The spirit’s meaning comes through no matter which language you speak.”

“But you didn’t buy it?”

“Not in the least. As a matter of fact, that was just about the turning point for me. I still want to believe, but now I’ll accept only absolute proof.”

“You were close to your mother?”

Houdini looked up at the few visible night stars. “Every day was Mother’s Day for me. It still is.”

Dorothy nodded, wondering what the recent practice of psychoanalysis would make of this guy. Dr. Freud would have had a field day.

“All the same,” she said, “I’m pleased that you’re willing to challenge Mistress Viola.”

“I suppose that she performs her act in the dark?”

“That seems like her line of work, yes.”

Houdini smiled. “I gather that she’s an attractive woman?”

Dorothy explained that, by day, Viola was a nude model. “Then again, if I had a body like Viola’s, I’d take my clothes off as often as possible, too.”

“But as a medium,” he asked, “she holds séances in the dark?”

Dorothy thought a moment. “I don’t know. My friends didn’t mention that.”

“That’s usually how they work. In the dark, they can hide their tricks. Not at all like a magician. A magician, such as myself, is proud to do his amazing feats before the bright lights of the stage and in front of an audience of thousands.”

Dorothy found his self-admiration to be both a little endearing and increasingly irksome.

Houdini continued. “In a typical séance, everyone sits in a small circle and holds hands, and then the lights are extinguished. Holding hands is supposed to create the spirit circle, they say. But it’s also supposed to assure you that the medium isn’t up to any chicanery.”

“So if both of Mistress Viola’s hands are held, she can’t perpetrate any tricks?”

“That’s what you’re naturally
supposed
to assume. But phony mediums always use some device, or they employ an assistant—or even use their feet—to ring a bell, lift up the table, knock on the floor. They’ll try any trick to simulate a spiritual manifestation. And the closer we sit to her, the better we shall uncover her duplicity.” Houdini paused in front of Viola’s house. “Is this the place?”

Dorothy pulled the flyer from her pocket and glanced at the address printed on it. “This is it.”

She reached for the door, but Houdini stopped her. He turned to her and laid his big hand on her shoulder. Even in the dimness, his piercing eyes stared intently into hers. “Now, let me warn you. Despite all I’ve said about trickery, everything changes once we get into that room. When the lights go out and we sit there in utter darkness and unnatural silence, it’s very easy to succumb to a very real, primordial fear. I myself have felt the creeping hand of terror crawl up my back on more than one of these occasions.”

“I’ve felt that creeping hand in a darkened theater. It was usually some man I was with.”

“This is not a joke.”

“Not to worry. I don’t scare so easily. Don’t think I’m a pushover just because I’m a woman.”

Houdini held up his hand. “Woman, man, young, old—none of that matters when you are in the dark and you’re told that the dead are silently standing there beside you. And then—then you hear a tortured voice from beyond the grave—”

“And the voice says, ‘What the hell are all these people doing in my living room?’ ”

Houdini smiled wryly. He opened the door. “Come on. It’s time we met your dead friend.”

O
n the stage of the auction house, the first item came up for bid. It was a medium-sized painting of an American soldier in green fatigues rushing forward, with the glinting steel of his rifle’s bayonet pointing toward the drooling, open maw of an attacking Russian bear. Benchley glanced at the catalog. This was one of Ernie MacGuffin’s first professional paintings, perhaps the first he ever sold. It had been the cover of an old issue of
Boys’ Adventure
magazine. The description in the catalog said that MacGuffin had sold it for twenty-five dollars. The starting bid was listed as five hundred.

“Never bid on the first one,” Lucy said. “That’s for amateurs.”

“Is it, now?” Benchley’s eyes were fixed on the glamorous female assistants who stood on either side of the painting. He heard the auctioneer’s voice.

“This exciting piece,” the auctioneer said, “has increased in value more than twentyfold since its creation. Some have described the subject matter as overly dramatic or even juvenile, but please do not be fooled. Experts have commented that this painting exhibits a deceptively complicated, dynamic composition, with a bold choice of colors and masterful brushwork. Its value will surely continue to quickly multiply.”

Lucy clucked her tongue. “Listen to that carnival barker’s patter. Look at those busty assistants. This whole thing’s a racket. They know how to get you all worked up so you lose your sense of proportion. They want you to get caught up in the excitement of it. Then you’re not thinking with your head, you’re thinking with your—
Benchley!
”

He had pushed the green button. He simply couldn’t help himself. He didn’t want to let this painting get away.

“Our first bidder!” the auctioneer announced. “Thank you, N. The bidding stands at five hundred dollars for bidder N. Do I have six hundred?”

 

A blond battleship of a woman—about Houdini’s age, Dorothy estimated, but nearly twice his weight—met them at the door when they entered, clipboard in hand. Dorothy guessed she was Viola’s mother. Viola was built, Dorothy thought, but her mother was built like a brick wall. She had no neck. Her chin disappeared in the solid mass of flesh above her thick chest.

“Your name?” the woman said in a rough voice.

Dorothy, dressed as an errand boy, couldn’t state her name as Becky Sharp—the name she had given to Viola the day before. But Houdini solved the problem. He simply asked, in a quavering elderly voice, “How much?”

“Fifty,” the woman grunted.

Dorothy wanted to mention that she and Benchley had already paid a deposit of ten, so they owed only forty, an amount that was still outrageous. But Houdini, acting as the stoop-shouldered elderly gentleman, produced a money purse with palsied fingers and offered the woman the full amount. She snatched the bills and, without another glance at them, pointed toward a small, cozy parlor.

The little room was dimly lit and furnished in an old-fashioned style, with dark, spindly furniture and thin, worn carpets. In the middle of the room was an oblong table, adorned with a crimson tablecloth and a single candle in a tall brass stand.

Mistress Viola sat at the head of the table. Dorothy had somehow expected Viola to again be wearing that revealing satin bathrobe and maybe a bejeweled swami’s turban on her platinum blond head. Dorothy was surprised to see that the young woman was conservatively—even plainly—dressed in a shapeless brown frock. Her white-blond hair appeared newly shellacked.

Viola reached out a hand as they entered. “Welcome,” she said soothingly. “Please sit.”

To Viola’s right sat a sullen, thin-faced man. A woman with an equally narrow, sallow face—Dorothy took her to be the man’s wife—sat at Viola’s left. In either seat next to this pair sat another couple, a slick-haired young man with a sharklike smile and, across the table from him, his very young, doe-eyed girlfriend—Dorothy saw that her hand had no ring. At the end of the table, the last two chairs sat empty. Viola gestured toward them.

“Please sit,” she said again.

Houdini coughed and stammered, playing the role of the elderly gentleman. He leaned heavily on his cane and spoke in a wheezy croak, addressing the narrow-faced couple. “My hearing isn’t what it used to be, I’m afraid. Could I impose on you to give up your seat to an old man, so that I may better attend to Lady Viola?”