Nevermore

by William Hjortsberg

  “What should we do?”

  “Don’t know there’s much we can do, other than to stay on guard at all times.” Puffing at his pipe provided only the briefest pause. “You might think about possible enemies; someone wishing to do you harm.”

  “Houdini has no enemies; there are only friends, throughout the world.”

  Sir Arthur sighed. What was one to do with a living, breathing circus poster? “I ask you to seriously look beyond hyperbole. Is there no one who might harbor some grudge? Can you not recall any threats from disgruntled fans?”

  Houdini said nothing but thought immediately of Isis. How he sat exhausted on the bronze coffin as she came pacing back along the pool’s edge, sipping from a folded paper cup filled for her at the water cooler in the men’s locker room. “You must be careful,” she said, in passing. “I get a very strong feeling they’re going to bury you in that casket.” He didn’t think of it as a threat when she said it, but remembered the unfamiliar prickle of fear, instigated a second time that day by just the sound of her silken voice.

  “Well…?” Sir Arthur cut into his reverie. “All that cogitation uncover any likely suspects?”

  “No,” the magician blurted, altogether too quickly. Sir Arthur raised a bushy eyebrow. “Jess Willard and I once exchanged heated words,” Houdini continued, visibly annoyed. “I was onstage. He sat in the balcony. The audience hooted him from the theater. That was in Los Angeles in 1915. He’s not champion anymore. Maybe he’s a bitter man. Maybe he’s had it in for me for the last eight years. Maybe he reads a lot of Poe!”

  Sir Arthur patted Houdini’s shoulder, as if he were comforting a nervous pointer. “I quite sympathize with the impossible enormity of the task I’ve given you. Looking back over your long career, you undoubtedly could name a thousand such chance encounters. How many of those led to lasting enmity? It’s impossible to tell. So, in essence, we’re back where we started, confronting a faceless madman.”

  “Wrong. We started out among the spectators. Now we’re on the program with a faceless madman topping the bill.”

  “Or madwoman …” Sir Arthur drew thoughtfully on his pipe. “Last seen dressed as a gorilla.”

  The windows of Conan Doyle’s suite looked out across the boardwalk to the wind-tossed Atlantic. From where he stood, Sir Arthur could easily see the children sprawled on the beach with young Ashton, their tutor. He’d warned the apple-cheeked Oxonian to keep a weather eye out for strangers, saying there’d been veiled threats from the anti-spiritualist factions. As a further precaution, he checked the loads in his service revolver, a .455 Webley-Green he kept in his desk drawer at Windlesham and hadn’t seen since packing it deep in one of the trunks at the start of the mission.

  The Webley’s weight felt reassuring in Sir Arthur’s jacket pocket. There it would reside until all were safely home. He held back the lace curtain and watched his children frolic in the angled afternoon sun.

  Houdini hadn’t told all he knew. It wasn’t the man’s nature to share secrets. Sir Arthur saw him flinch when he mentioned the possibility of a mad “woman.” Not that the knight had been altogether candid with his magician friend, having made no reference to communicating with Poe’s spirit. Without witnesses, he knew any such claim would be dismissed by Houdini as mere “ghost stories.”

  Sir Arthur had begun a journal on the Poe manifestation in tandem with the study of a two-volume biography. He marked critical observations with an asterisk in the notebook’s margin.

  •Spirit shows itself only to me.

  •Spirit only visible in cities where Poe actually lived. No sightings in Atlantic City after ten days.

  •Spirit regards ME as a ghost. Is very calm and rational regarding this belief.

  •Spirit does not acknowledge own death!

  •Spirit mourns death of wife (Virginia Clemm).

  •Is there a way to test the spirit and my own runaway imagination? I must phrase a question for which I haven’t the answer, then check Poe’s response with a known authority. A correct match-up proves me sane …

  Reading through these made him pause and uncap his fountain pen. He jotted this note:

  Must ask spirit about murders.

  Also, get NYC newspaper accounts of all three “Poe” murders.

  Is it a puzzle? Can it be solved? Poe a student of cryptography. Victims’ names?

  The following afternoon, Bess Houdini snuggled her head against her husband’s shoulder, safe in the relative privacy of a rented wicker-and-canvas cabana, a bit of welcome shade on the blaze of sunbright beach. Bess felt romantic by the sea. Their whirlwind teenage romance had been a Coney Island courtship and ever since that hot-blooded time it took the merest whiff of salt air, of cotton candy and Cracker Jacks, or the distant calliope waltzing of merry-go-rounds, to make her weak in the knees around Harry.

  He was such an old poop. Brooding, his mouth clamped in a scowl, eyes fixed on the horizon; he might as well be a million miles away. Bessie forgave his introspection. She had long ago. At least he was sitting beside her, his arm hugging her to his side. Always such a struggle to get him to take a vacation, even harder to make him relax. It pleased her to have him close, her love a balm for his turbulent thoughts.

  The magician’s mind filled with targets, all whirling like pinwheels. A knife-thrower’s blade flashed through his imagination, thudding among the red concentric circles, anchoring runaway images with a frightening finality. He pictured Bessie framed within a target, the bull’s-eye as red as her heart. As red as blood, he thought. Red as death.

  He felt numb from the futility of knowing a task to be impossible. His whole career consisted of performing miracles. Easy enough with everything safely rigged beforehand. But what about a challenge from a madman? How do you protect someone you love from the unknown?

  Young Billy’s breakneck zigzagging through the sand interrupted this desperate meditation. She skidded giggling to a stop on her knees in front of them. Sir Arthur trudged up behind in his dark wool suit, as out of place among the supine sun worshipers as a missionary surrounded by naked heathens.

  “My … my …” Billy caught her breath. “My mother wants to … to invite you up to her room. She means to conduct a séance and wishes you to be her guest.”

  Sir Arthur towered behind her, blocking the sun. Oddly enough, he considered himself a missionary, his speaking tour a mission proselytizing spiritism. Not a religion, actually, but a faith offering more comfort than wearing out your knees on the cold stones of some damp cathedral. His somber get-up was in no way meant to emphasize his beliefs. He’d had a breakfast meeting with local business leaders and a dark suit had seemed appropriate. “Excuse Billy’s enthusiastic excesses, but please accept her invitation.” Sir Arthur smiled down at them. “It’s not a séance, actually. As you may know, Jean has a gift for automatic writing.”

  “My goodness, yes,” Bess piped up, having straightened primly at Sir Arthur’s approach. “She was telling me what a thrill it was to feel the spirits take possession.”

  Sir Arthur coughed. “Well, you know… . The experience can be quite an emotional one. It was my wife’s expressed feeling that contact with Houdini’s dear mother should be attempted. She knows your sentiments and wishes to help.”

  “Nothing could bring me greater joy.” Houdini sprang to his feet, his desire for contact tempered by a natural skepticism. “To speak once again with my sainted mother is a dream I cherish.”

  “Perhaps we can put you in touch with that dream. Unfortunately, these things go better if it’s a private sitting. Having two subjects present might confuse matters. J do hope Mrs. Houdini won’t think me rude, but—”

  “Sir Arthur, please!” The magician took his wife by the hand. “Under the circumstances, I am certain you realize I cannot allow my wife to leave my side.”

  Sir Arthur nodded quickly, the revolver heavy in the pocket of his dark wool suit. “Yes. Of course. Quite right.”

  The windows were left ope
n in the Conan Doyle suite at the Ambassador as a concession to the season. A stiff sea breeze rippled the drawn drapes, allowing in occasional flashes of sunlight and a muted chorus passing along the boardwalk below. Pads of paper and a pair of ordinary yellow pencils waited on the table around which they sat. Sir Arthur stood beside Lady Jean. He bowed his head. “Dear Lord,” he prayed in a gruff whisper, “send us a sign from our beloved friends who have gone on before us.” Houdini thought he looked like a simple child.

  Lady Doyle had been charming. “Now, Mr. Houdini,” she said when they first arrived, “I trust you’re on your best behavior and won’t try and embarrass me with any mischief this afternoon?”

  The magician blushed at her forthright manner. He turned to his wife and stammered, “I … I have always been a good boy, have I not?”

  Even Bess seemed surprised by his emotional exposure. She caught Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle exchanging a quick glance. “Why, Harry,” she said, “you’re never anything less than a perfect gentleman.”

  “I should think not,” Lady Jean said, guiding him to a comfortable chair. “No true hero ever is …” .

  Houdini pondered the nature of heroism as he studied her face, so utterly without guile. He noted her sincere smile as Sir Arthur sat beside her and lovingly covered her hands with his own. Across the way, Bess waited with her eyes shut. To assist, if possible, Houdini closed his own eyes, calming his mind with thoughts of religion.

  A sharp rapping put an end to his meditation. Lady Jean gripped a pencil, her arm jerking with galvanic spasms, the tip pounding against the tabletop. “They have me now, Arthur,” she said. “It’s never been stronger.”

  “Allow it to flow, my darling.” The knight gently kneaded the back of her regal neck and the corded tension relaxed somewhat.

  Houdini watched the spasmodic jerking of Lady Jean’s hand. He had no doubt the seizure was genuine. A thrill of anticipation prickled through him, generated by his overwhelming desire to feel his mother’s presence once again. He wanted desperately to believe, at the same time recognizing this to be a sucker’s impulse. All deception begins with the deceived’s willing trust.

  Jean regarded her trembling right arm as if it were a foreign creature; fingers bloodless from the strain of clenching the pencil in a death grip. “Spirit,” she cried. “Do you believe in God?”

  As if in reply, her hand beat three times upon the table.

  Jean looked straight into Arthur’s eyes when she said: “Then I will make the sign of the cross.”

  The agony showed on her face as she directed her vibrating hand to scratch a cruciform on the top sheet of a pad. “Who is there?” Jean implored. “Is it Mrs. Weiss, mother of Houdini the magician?”

  Again, her hand tapped three times, the pencil scrolling across the page, words shaped by a jerky scrawl. “Oh my darling,” she wrote, “thank God, at last I’m through—I’ve tried, oh so often—now I am happy—”

  The large letters filled the first page quickly. Sir Arthur tore it from the pad and handed it to Houdini. The magician read all in an instant, his face grim and pale. Clearly possessed, Lady Doyle scribbled on, page after page. Sir Arthur ripped each free as she finished, tossing it over to Houdini. “Use me, use me…,” Lady Doyle moaned.

  “There, my dear …” Sir Arthur rubbed her neck. “Be gentle with her. Gentle …”

  The pages flew from her spastic hand. Sir Arthur ripped them off the block, passing each to the magician. Houdini read on and on, loving, eager thoughts, the promise of a better world to come: “I want him to know that—that—I have bridged the gulf—That is what I wanted, oh so much—Now I can rest in peace—How soon—”

  Sir Arthur interrupted at this point to ask the magician to think of some sort of private question, a silent test to see if the spirit at their side was truly his mother. Houdini nodded in agreement, thinking, “Can my mother read my mind?” Lady Jean continued to scribble.

  The next sheet began: “I always read my beloved son’s mind—his dear mind—there is so much I want to say to him—but—I am almost overwhelmed by this joy of talking to him once more—” Houdini nodded at Sir Arthur as he read it.

  “She got it right?” Sir Arthur beamed. “You lucky man …” And he smiled with pure pleasure and pride as the scribbled pages continued to flow until a pile of fifteen or more lay before the magician.

  After the séance, Lady Doyle lay back on the couch, exhausted and unable to speak. Sir Arthur saw to her comfort, placing a damp, folded washcloth on her forehead. Houdini stacked the sheets of notepaper, feeling both grateful and embarrassed. The silence made him uncomfortable and he spoke mainly to sidestep such feelings, just aimless banter about automatic writing. Houdini picked up a pencil. “Maybe I should try it myself at home,” he said. “How do you start? Just write the first thing that comes to mind?” He printed a name on the pad: POWELL.

  Sir Arthur glanced over the magician’s shoulder. “Powell!” he exclaimed with considerable excitement. “Great God! Truly Saul is among the prophets! You are a medium.”

  “Powell, the magician,” Houdini said. “He’s down on his luck in Texas. Used to be big. A headliner. Mrs. Houdini and I were talking about him just the other day.”

  “No, no, that’s but your conscious mind searching out a logical explanation. Dr. Ellis Powell, a dear friend and fighting partner in the great cause, died recently in London. I am certain it is he, seeking contact with me.”

  “Just a coincidence. I was thinking of Frederick Eugene Powell.”

  Conan Doyle grew red in the face. “You deny the indisputable evidence before you out of your obsession with discrediting spiritism.”

  “No. It is you who distorts the truth in support of your own beliefs.” Houdini gathered up the leaves of the “spirit” letter. “Thank you, Lady Doyle, for your earnest efforts on my behalf.” He held out his arm for Bess. “Come, Mrs. Houdini. Good afternoon, Sir Arthur.” With exaggerated dignity, the magician escorted his wife from the room.

  * * *

  On the train back to the city, Houdini tried to mollify his Bess, but she was in no mood for conciliation. “A seaside holiday is supposed to last more than one afternoon.” Bess stared out the window, refusing to look at him. “At least among sane people it does.”

  “There was no way I could stay, Bess,” he pleaded. “Lady Doyle was so well-meaning. She believes the letter to be genuine. I know it’s bogus. Mama couldn’t write English. She would never mark a letter with a cross. Bess, for crying out loud, today is Mama’s birthday! Don’t you think she would have mentioned that?”

  “Well, I suppose, knowing Mama …” Bess smiled and gripped his hand. “Do you think it’s all in her subconscious? Lady Doyle’s writing, I mean.”

  “I believe an alienist would say so.” Houdini sat straight-backed beside her like a boyish suitor. “I’ve seen every kind of fake in the world, and wherever it comes from, I know Lady Doyle to be sincere. But, even so, sincerity doesn’t make the letter genuine.”

  “Harry? You don’t suppose the Conan Doyles might take offense from the note we left, do you?” Bess looked like a little girl when she worried.

  “Of course not. I explained we were called away unexpectedly.” Houdini cupped his wife’s small hands within his own. “Maybe it’d be safer for them to put some distance between us.”

  “What do you mean, Harry?”

  “Oh, just a premonition. I’ll explain it to you someday, kiddo.”

  14

  MAKING WHOOPEE

  HOUDINI WALKED UPTOWN ON Madison. He’d already been around the block once, having asked the cabby to drop him at the corner by the DeLuxe French Dry Cleaners, where his reflection wavered a second time in the plate glass window. He had approached a lifetime of challenges with the same precise caution. Whether piano case or iron boiler, glass box. or wooden barrel, the challenger always left his container on display in the theater lobby for a week prior to the performance, giving the magician and his crew ampl
e time to examine the problem and build an appropriate gag into the challenge, rigging it so the eventual onstage escape went off without a hitch.

  He turned west on Eighty-fifth Street, walking back toward Fifth, on his own for tonight’s challenge. He saw the dark turrets crowning Opal Crosby Fletcher’s mock chateau and the darker silhouette of the trees in Central Park across the avenue. Considering the evening as a problem to be solved, as an undercover investigation, cloaked the adventure in propriety and masked the giddy erotic excitement gnawing at Houdini’s gut. The magician’s heart raced as he mounted the stone steps to the arched entranceway. He told himself it was stage fright.

  Maybe I’m walking straight into the spider’s den, Houdini thought, handing his hat to the elderly housekeeper who opened the door in answer to his ring. He followed her tidy gray bun across a vast shadowed foyer, illuminated by a single wall sconce. Other broad dark rooms gaped on either side; the whole place silent as a foreign embassy closed for the night. A huge unlit chandelier hung like an outstretched midnight octopus in the gloom above the curving stairs. He stayed one step behind the prim old woman. She led the way without saying a word.

  Bess had gone to the opera with Dash. The magician took comfort in the safety of crowds. Houdini told his wife nothing of his fears. He saw no point in having her worry. All the same, he hired the Burns Detective Agency to conduct a 24-hour surveillance of his home. His brother was the only person, other than Conan Doyle, with whom the magician discussed the Esp girl and the connecting web of murdered strangers in which he found himself inexplicably enmeshed.

  The library door stood open at the end of a long hallway on the second floor. It was a spacious room, warm with woodwork, gold-tooled leather bindings, and thick Caucasian carpets. A gas fire flickered in a marble-faced hearth under a Georgian mantel, giving no warmth but casting an agreeable light. Several bright candles augmented the mood of comfort and intimacy.

  Isis sat by the fire, looking altogether radiant in a clinging midnight-blue velvet gown with a considerable décolletage. Firelight cast a rosy glow on her bare neck and shoulders. She wore a single ornament between her breasts: a large Mayan moon-face of hammered sheet gold. Originally part of an ancient funeral necklace, it had been adapted by Walter Clarke Fletcher into a pin as a present for his teenage bride.