Wasting no time, Conan Doyle stepped to the fresh-laid wall. The mortar had not yet dried. He leaned his full weight against the bricks and the wall began to bulge. He pushed harder. The bricks sagged outward and Sir Arthur raised his hands above his head as, all at once, the wall collapsed around him.
The knight staggered through the darkened alcove. He pushed the tarp aside and stepped into the corridor. Not a soul in sight. Not a sound.
The two electric torches sat on the shelf. Sir Arthur took one and returned to the alcove. After searching for a few moments, he found his revolver. He picked it up, carefully using his pocket handkerchief. Another twenty minutes’ probing revealed no further clues. The knight had learned one thing with absolute certainty: the killer was no ghost. The diminutive assailant who tackled him from behind had been very corporal indeed.
At 6:00 a.m. the following morning, Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Çonan Doyle breakfasted together in the restaurant at Central Station in Buffalo, New York. The knight’s telegram had reached the magician at the Statler in Detroit just as his troupe was making the jump to Chicago. Houdini arranged for them to go on ahead and caught the next eastbound train. Sir Arthur spent the night on the New York Central “Wolverine.” Both of them had the rumpled look of men who had slept in their clothes.
Houdini listened intently as the Englishman told his story a second time. Hearing about the Jersey Giants made him grin, although his eyes remained grim and brooding. “Think there’s any chance the police might find fingerprints on your revolver?” he asked.
Sir Arthur shook his head. “I didn’t call the police. I sent you a wire instead. It was my conclusion the authorities would assume I’d made the whole thing up for the sake of publicity. I can assure you there are no fingerprints. The Los Angeles County sheriffs department gave my boys a fingerprinting kit as a gift. I confiscated it when I found their bed sheets smeared with ink. Last night, I made use of it, dusting the revolver with silver powder. Sorry to say, the only prints I uncovered were my own.”
“Let me play the devil’s advocate,” Houdini said, “and this is not meant to take anything away from what you experienced, but what makes you so certain this really was the Poe Killer and not just some drunken prankster?”
“Because unless it was a policeman versed on the case, which I sincerely doubt, only the actual killer would be privy to such a telling detail as the absence of blood. You didn’t know about that. Nor did I.”
“Maybe the prankster made it up?”
Sir Arthur pounded his huge fist on the tabletop. “Damn it! This was no prank!”
“Relax. I believe you.” Houdini prodded a bit of cold scrambled egg with the tip of his fork. “You’re sure it was a woman?”
“She was very strong. But, judging from her size and the way she disguised her voice, I feel reasonably certain in making this determination.”
“It’s Isis,” Houdini muttered. “Has to be.”
“Might well be. But you can offer nothing but conjecture. It’s proof we need.”
“Remember the tone in her voice when she made her dire predictions about Halloween?” Houdini pushed his plate away. “She was threatening us, and she knew it. Easy enough to be a prophet when you carry out the predictions yourself.”
Sir Arthur filled his pipe. “I have a séance scheduled with Mrs. Fletcher. Six in the evening, November third.”
Houdini’s eyes brightened. “I have a plan. Who all knows what happened to you?”
“Only yourself and my wife.”
“Perfect.” The magician permitted himself a thin smile. “As far as the murderer is concerned, you are a dead man. Nothing must occur to alter that perception. You have to stay out of sight for the next two days. Take a hotel room here in Buffalo. Use an assumed name.”
“My dear fellow, what you suggest is preposterous.”
“Hear me out. The murderer thinks you dead. I’m safe until I return to New York. Longer, really, because I’m sure the killer won’t strike again until after your body is found.”
“Whatever are you talking about? There’s no body to find,”
“Of course not, but the killer doesn’t know that. By not revealing yourself in public, she’ll continue to believe you’re walled up in the subbasement of the Plaza. Send your wife a telegram so she won’t worry. Better yet, have her announce you’ve turned up missing.”
“That’s absurd! I could never ask Jean to do such a thing.”
“All right. Have her say nothing. Just don’t show yourself. Then, when you arrive for your séance with Isis, you’ll know immediately by her expression whether she’s guilty or not. If she is the killer, she won’t be expecting you. She won’t have made any preparations for the séance.”
Sir Arthur grinned. “What an excellent idea. If Mrs. Fletcher is the woman who attacked me, I’ll see it instantly in her eyes.”
“Be on your guard.” Houdini consulted his watch. “I have a train to catch if I’m going to be in Chicago for tonight’s performance.” He placed a half-dollar on the table. “Breakfast’s on me. You still have that revolver?”
“I’m carrying it now.”
“Good.” The magician pulled on his overcoat. “Make sure you’re armed when you go for the séance. If Isis tries any funny stuff, don’t hesitate to shoot her.”
26
UNDER THE KNIFE
THE LINCOLN GARDENS ON Chicago’s South Side featured the hottest musical aggregation in town, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. Catering to a rough clientele, the place served as an informal clubhouse for flashy yeggs from the Capone mob and every night saw its share of fights. Occasionally, the lethal staccato of gunfire punctuated the wailing New Orleans blues. Rather than driving people away, impending mayhem proved an irresistible draw and business was booming.
The gaudy barnlike dance hall had walls efflorescent with faded crepe paper blossoms and bright petals of peeling paint. A balcony corralling small, round tables ran along one side. Body heat, tobacco smoke, the astringent smell of sweat sweetened by a potpourri of cheap perfume and scented hair oil coalesced into a volatile miasma suggestive of sex and betrayal.
Slightly after ten o’clock on a weekday evening, the joint was just beginning to jump when Harry Houdini, still dressed in his stage tux, made a furtive entrance. Very much a fish out of water, he quietly took a table by the railing at the end of the balcony farthest from the bandstand. Energetic gangsters and their effervescent molls shook and shimmied, gyrating wildly through the intricacies of the Charleston and the Black Bottom as the band played “Froggy Moore,” the ‘‘Alligator Hop,” “Canal Street Blues.”
The magician held the opinion that he didn’t care for jazz, although the music he so designated was a corny Tin Pap Alley hybrid bearing only a passing resemblance to this exuberant improvised polyphony pulsating with the shocking novelty of true art. Almost against his will, he found his foot tapping to the robust syncopations.
“Did this place used to be called the Royal Garden Cafe?” he asked a waiter still sneering in disbelief at his order. Lemonade wasn’t the usual bill of fare on the South Side.
“Right. New name. New management,” the apron-wrapped Sicilian replied, turning briskly on his heel.
Houdini pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and smoothed it on the tabletop. A typewritten message read:
Excuse me sir, I beg your Pardon,
I believe you wish to know
The whereabouts of Edgar Poe.
Just ask the King of the Royal Garden;
Say the password: Geronimo.
He will tell you where to go.
The magician found the doggerel in an envelope on his dressing room table after the second show at the Lyric Theater. Reading it made his hands tremble, even as he puzzled over the cryptic meaning. He asked one of the stagehands if there was someplace in town called the “Royal Garden” and received a detailed set of directions leading him to the rainbow-hued railing he leaned against.
/> Houdini studied the band, a Negro septet featuring two cornets, trombone, clarinet, piano, bass fiddle, and drums. The pianist was a lovely light-skinned woman barely out of her teens. The percussionist seemed not much older, a small, laughing man nearly hidden behind his huge bass drum. Their ensemble playing, collectively improvised, formed a seamless amalgam, with four distinct individual voices weaving in and out around the melody.
The leader stepped forward to blow a cornet solo on “Snake Rag.” A dark, formidable man whose rain-barrel physique recalled turn-of-the-century politicians, he appeared almost twice the age of the other musicians. His cheeks puffed as he blew chorus after chorus with such power his starched dickey popped free, curling up to reveal a red union suit. “Oh, Papa,” shouted the bassist, “play that thing!”
Houdini sipped his lemonade, only half-listening. He thought about the mysterious poem, wondering what to do next. Assuming the reference to “the King” must indicate the cabaret’s owner, he waved down a waiter to inquire if the proprietor was on the premises.
“You got a complaint?” If looks could kill, the waiter’s surly scowl might have caused a massacre.
“No. Not at all. I merely want to talk with him. He isn’t a gentleman named King, by any chance?”
The waiter jerked his thumb at the burly comet player. “Only ‘king’ we got around here is him.”
“Oh?”
“Joseph ‘King’ Oliver. Comet king of the Crescent City. Don’t you read? Name of the band is posted outside in big red letters.” The waiter sauntered off, shaking his head. Rudeness obviously constituted a deliberate part of the dance hall’s raffish charm.
Houdini glanced from the crumpled poem to the bandstand. The big man had been joined by the younger second cornet, and the two played a duet in fast, flawless harmony. The magician had performed with the incomparable Bert Williams, but on the whole, Negroes were a rarity on the vaude circuit, although there certainly was no shortage of blackface acts. He marveled at the jazz band’s devil-may-care professionalism, at how much fun they seemed to be having.
After another twenty minutes, the musicians took a break. Houdini pushed back his chair and headed for the bandstand.
“Lord, Babe,” the clarinet player said to the drummer, “you gonna kill somebody in that big red Oldsmobile of yours, ‘specially the way you fill up on rotgut ‘fore you drive. I gotta keep my eye on my baby brother.”
“The Tiger’s safe as they come,” the trombone player said. “He fetches me to work every evening, and gets me there all in one piece.” The others joined with his laughter.
“Excuse me,” interjected the magician from the edge of the dance floor. “Mr. King … ?”
The whole band stopped talking, regarding the stocky white man quizzically. “Mr. King?” laughed the affable young second-cornetist. “That’s you, Papa Joe.”
“How you know that, Dippermouth?” the drummer demanded with a big grin. “Maybe I be Mr. King.”
“King of what? King of talkin’ trash?”
The imposing band leader stepped forward. “I’m Joe Oliver,” he said with quiet dignity. “They call me King.”
“Geronimo…?” Houdini said tentatively.
King Oliver chuckled to himself. “So, it’s you all right.” The musician pulled a sealed envelope from the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket and handed it to Houdini. “Man said I was to give this to you.”
“What man?” He held the envelope with both hands, as if afraid it might get away.
“Man that gave me fifty dollars. Said a gentleman’d be comin’ in bye-and-bye, don’t matter who. He’d let me know by sayin’ ‘Geronimo,’ and I was to give him the letter and not answer any questions.”
Houdini pulled out his billfold. “I’ve got a hundred here for any information you can give me.”
“Mister, save your money. I can’t tell you a blessed thing more’n I’ve already done. It was a white gentleman. ‘Bout your size, maybe a little shorter. I didn’t pay it no nevermind, as we say down home.”
“Bet you paid plenty mind to that there fifty,” the impudent drummer sassed. All the musicians laughed, King Oliver loudest of all.
The young cornet player stared at the magician, his generous mouth curving into a smile. “Say. I know you,” he said. “You’re the Great Houdini. I saw you escape from a strait jacket once in downtown Saint Louie. I was workin’ the riverboats with Fate Marable.”
“I saw him in that movie,” the drummer enthused. “He was froze-up in a great big ol’ iceberg.”
The magician smiled, nodding in uncomfortable silence. “I am Houdini,” he said at last, backing away. “Always a pleasure … to meet my fans.”
Houdini backed almost to the middle of the empty dance floor before he turned and made a beeline for the exit.
The comely pianist smiled at the boys in the band. “He mailed out the invitations,” she said softly, “but weren’t nobody home.”
The envelope contained a newspaper article torn from a late edition of the Chicago Tribune. Four inches on the closing of the historic Majestic Theater, the old vaude house to be converted into a motion picture palace. “I had no choice,” the story quoted owner Izzy Finkleman. “Better I should knock it down and open a parking lot?” The address was Sixty-fifth and Cottage Grove.
A lonely survivor from the era of Booth, Drew, and Minnie Maddern Fiske, the Majestic had seen better days, her soot-darkened Moorish details frosted with pigeon droppings like a widow in the snow. Houdini had the cab driver drop him half a block down from the abandoned theater in a dark, deserted neighborhood. No surprise that Mr. Finkleman’s box office reciepts had fallen off. The magician walked along the opposite side of the street, keeping in shadow close to the buildings.
Concealed in the darkened entrance of a boarded-up hardware store, Houdini surveyed the surroundings. A narrow, graveled alley ran along the back side of the old theater. No automobiles parked within a block of the building. Traffic on Cottage Grove remained sparse. After waiting fifteen uneventful minutes, the magician crossed the street and ducked into the alley.
He found the stage door sealed tight with a padlock completely familiar to him. Inserting a simple pick formed from a bent piece of wire, the magician bypassed the wards inside. He felt the bolt shoot free and the lock popped open.
Silently, Houdini eased the stage door ajar, confronting an ominous damp darkness foreboding as the interior of a mausoleum on a moonless night. His every instinct warned of inherent danger, but a lifetime of risk-taking inured him to apprehension and he stepped inside without further thought, pressing his back to the wall beside the open door.
Houdini groped for a light switch. Finding none, he stood motionless, listening to the even beat of his heart. A faint illumination from the alley glowed in the doorway beside him and as his eyes gradually became accustomed to the greater dark within, he made out a black line dividing the shadows above his head. He reached up to grasp a grimy cord and hanging glass bulb. Houdini pulled the short chain. Sudden glare made him squint.
It looked no different from a thousand other stage entrances framing his life over the years: bare brick walls, utilitarian iron-pipe railings on the stairs, a list of management rules (KEEP IT CLEAN) pinned to a call board near the door. Houdini stood very still, studying his surroundings. His footprints marked a scuffed trail through the dust gently powdering the forgotten premises like the ashes of memory. He saw at a glance no one else had entered this way in a very long time.
Houdini closed the door and drew the dead bolt, remembering a prankster who’d locked him in a hotel lobby telephone closet. He never went in one afterwards without wedging his’ foot in the doorway. The light from the single dangling bulb carried past the dressing room stairs, revealing a portion of bare stage under the flies. A control box hung above the rows of dimmer-switches along the far wall. The magician considered his next move.
Other than his penknife and a couple simple lock-picks, Houdini carried no
tools. He didn’t consider the implications of being unarmed. Over the years, confronting difficult jail-house challenges, the magician had made a habit of concealing vital implements on his person; the lock-pick and other tiny devices in his mop of wiry hair, a thin strip of spring steel inserted into the callus on his heel. Once, he hid all his tools in a tiny blue serge sack, which he hooked to the back of the warden’s suit collar before being strip-searched, and then deftly plucked free as he was led naked to the waiting cell.
Houdini wrapped one of his lock-picks in a torn corner of a pocket handkerchief and swallowed it. Retroperistalsis gripped the little bundle halfway down his throat. Feeling it there provided a sense of security. He walked cautiously to the dimmers. The magician opened the control box and threw a master switch, turning on the worklights overhead. A second master lit up the house.
Houdini glanced above at the dust-festooned gridiron in the empty flies: ropes, sandbags, and pulley systems long gone. The stage yawned wide and open with the tormentors and teasers removed. Only a memory of the curtain remained in the stark, open proscenium. Some sort of scaffolding stood center stage. Houdini ignored it, looking out at row after row of dusty seats. A man stared back at him from the center of the house.
The magician froze, locking into the stranger’s unblinking gaze. There was something vaguely familiar about the old-fashioned clothing and nineteenth-century hair styling; the abrupt mustache. Houdini shuddered. The man’s makeup and costume made him resemble Edgar Allan Poe.
The man didn’t move. He never blinked. The magician left the stage, finding a set of stairs leading to an exit under the box seats. The man dressed like Poe hadn’t moved a muscle. He stared straight ahead like someone in a trance.
Houdini walked between the seats one row in front of the immobile stranger. “I got your poem,” he said as he approached. “What’s with the scavenger hunt?”
Nevermore Page 24
