The Plastic Magician (A Paper Magician Novel)

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  The officer nodded and left. He closed the door behind him—a door that had at least one other officer guarding it. Like she would run away. Like she could. The door muffled their voices, but she heard “find Marion Praff” among them. She sat, waiting, trying not to think of her burning and raw feet. To her relief, half an hour later, a female officer came in with a medical kit, water, and some fancy-cut vegetables that looked like they’d been prepared for the convention’s opening day tomorrow. Alvie thanked her and munched on the carrots. Her nails dug into the armrests of the chair when the officer cleaned out the multiple lacerations on her feet and wrapped them in gauze and bandages. What a bother, but Alvie was grateful. The officer left as soon as the work was done.

  Even with food, water, and medical treatment, Alvie began to grow antsy. It was thoroughly dark outside, probably at least ten o’clock. She squirmed in her chair. The police officers would only let her out of the room to go to the lavatory, and she needed help just to walk there. At least she looked victimized. That helped her story, didn’t it?

  Sighing, she leaned her neck against the backrest and stared at the ceiling. Started measuring it with her eyes. Eight feet by twelve, perhaps, give or take a few inches. Her pulse throbbed in her feet, and she started timing it. Her heartbeat was about seventy-nine beats per minute. Not quite restful.

  She sat up straight again, if only to take pressure off her tailbone. She used her thumbnail to pick her other nails clean. It had to be nearing midnight now. She was exhausted, but not sleepy. Eager. Anxious. A little hungry.

  She closed her eyes, trying to alleviate the headache that had set in as a result of her mismatched vision. When she opened them again, her gaze fell onto her hands. With the pad of her index finger, she traced the scabbed-over cut along the base of her thumb—the crescent-shaped mark the automobile’s engine had bestowed upon her.

  “Usual wear and tear of service, I’m afraid. It doesn’t hurt.”

  Alvie paused, remembering Emma’s words before Alvie, Fred, and Mg. Praff left Briar Hall. Remembered the cut on the maid’s hand—a crescent-shaped slice that curved around the base of her thumb.

  The exact same cut that now traced Alvie’s skin.

  Gooseflesh sprouted across her arms and legs. Surely it was a coincidence—

  “Apparently I failed to lock the garage last night. Could swear I did, but I mustn’t have turned the key all the way.”

  Alvie leaned forward in her chair. Would Emma have access to the key to the garage?

  Her mind flew from the broken automobile to the newspaper in Bennet’s Benz. “Scandal Storms Briar Hall When Servant Confesses Adultery.”

  She chewed on her lip. For that piece of libel, Mg. Praff had let Brandon, the footman, go. Yet hadn’t Emma been the one to reveal him? To claim she’d seen him speaking with a reporter?

  Her mind worked like kneaded dough. Emma had told her not to go to the polymery the night it was broken into. She’d been very willing to get inside to help clean up the mess, though maids never cleaned the polymery. Only Mr. Hemsley did, for he was the only servant who was allowed a key.

  One of the robbers near the hospital had been a woman of Emma’s size . . .

  Alvie’s eyes glanced back to the cut on her hand. All the while, she felt herself growing smaller and smaller in her chair.

  Chatter sounded outside her door, though Alvie’s mind was sluggish in processing it. “. . . him . . . filed missing person report . . . Maidenhead . . .”

  The door swung open hard enough to slam into the wall behind it. There stood Mg. Praff, his own hair disheveled, his shirt half untucked, his eyes rolling back with relief.

  “Thank God,” he said, hurrying to Alvie’s side. He saw her bandaged feet, her broken glasses. “Are you all right?”

  “Well enough.” She tried to smile, but found her mouth too heavy to do the job. “Where were you? Fred?”

  “Fred is in a hospital in Maidenhead. He was unconscious on the road when I returned with help. The auto and the trailer were gone, along with you. I’ve been searching high and low for hours.” He ran a hand back through his hair. “I’m so glad you’re well.”

  Behind him, an officer said, “Can you tell us where this cabin is?”

  The request pushed through the molasses of Alvie’s thoughts. “Um. Is the driver still here?”

  “We took his information and testimony and let him go.”

  “Where he found me,” she said, “there’s an intersection with a dirt road that winds up through some hills. The cabin is a ways up there. Maybe . . .” She tried to calculate the length of her stride walking, jogging, and sprinting, then estimated how much time she’d spent doing each, taking into account her stop to attempt to make bandages for her feet and the variations in her speed—how she’d slowed at the crests of hills and sped up going downhill. She tried to remember where the sun had been at the beginning of her escape versus at the end.

  “Miss Brechenmacher?” asked the officer.

  “She’s thinking,” Mg. Praff snapped.

  “It’s about 3.4 to 3.8 miles north of that intersection,” she guessed.

  The police officer hesitated for a moment, then wrote down the numbers. “We’ll send someone to investigate.”

  “That man might still be there. I don’t know how well the plastic will hold . . . and there will be plastic in the lock,” she added, stalling him. “The lock to the room in the basement. From my glasses. And the window will be broken. And . . . can I have that lock?”

  “Pardon?” the officer asked.

  She glanced to Mg. Praff, who also looked inquisitive. “When you’re done collecting evidence, or looking . . . can I have the lock with my lens in it?”

  “Alvie,” Mg. Praff began, “I’ll make you a new lens.”

  “It’s not that. I just . . . I need to look at that lock, if I can.”

  The police officer raised an eyebrow, but he wrote on his paper again, nodded, and left the room.

  “Why the lock?” Mg. Praff asked.

  While that was a conversation of great interest to her, Alvie switched to a more pressing subject. Lowering her voice, she said, “Emma, sir.”

  “What does Emma have to do with a clogged lock?”

  She shook her head and showed him the cut on her hand. “Nothing. I mean, Emma . . . I think she’s been . . .”

  She could hardly bring herself to say it. It felt wrong to accuse a woman who had been nothing but friendly to her since her arrival. So she didn’t. Instead, she recounted all the evidence she herself had just collected, bit by bit, to Mg. Praff. From the way the Polymaker’s face paled and slacked as she continued to speak, she knew he was coming to the same conclusion.

  “Blast,” he swore, shaking his head. “Emma . . . I’ll have to send a telegram straightaway. Have her apprehended. And Brandon . . .” He rubbed his eyes, then swiped his palm over his face.

  “About the lock, sir.”

  He glanced up.

  Alvie swallowed. “It’s how I got out. I melted the plastic in the lock, but I swear I used a Smelting spell to open it, and—”

  The door opened. The police officer who’d bandaged Alvie, again. “I apologize, Magician Praff, but I need to record your story before you speak any further with Miss Brechenmacher.”

  The Polymaker stood. “Yes. Yes, of course. Immediately. Whatever you need.”

  The officer nodded, and Mg. Praff followed her out, leaving Alvie alone once more.

  “That’s preposterous!” Alvie shouted across the desk.

  She’d spent some time sleeping in that chair in the library before the police officers had escorted her to the Oxford police station and given her a cot. She had shoes now, sized large to accommodate her bandages, and a tie for her hair, though she still wore the same dirty clothes as the day before, and her glasses were a sorry mess. She had taken to winking often to favor her left eye. Beside her, Mg. Praff sat stiff as if all his insides were full of knots. She knew the police
had contacted the locals in London concerning Emma, but her knowledge of the situation ended there.

  The two of them sat across from the chief of police, a desk between them. He had just finished relating Mg. Ezzell’s side of the story, which was what had elicited Alvie’s outburst.

  “I’m merely regurgitating what was told to me,” the older thick man said patiently. He was broad shouldered and shaped like a rectangle, with a thick gray mustache and thicker gray eyebrows. “You must understand that Magician Ezzell did have an abstract submitted to the Discovery Convention for the items you claim he stole. We’re working to get a copy of it now. He has witnesses to testify to his locations yesterday. His own polymery was broken into five months ago, and he claims plans for this prosthesis were among the items stolen.”

  “Sly dog,” Mg. Praff muttered.

  “Every single plan? I would very much like to read that abstract,” Alvie insisted. Had Mg. Ezzell submitted the exact same abstract he’d intercepted from Mg. Praff? Had he somehow lost it, and thus Emma’s attempt to get another copy? So many questions assaulted her, and Alvie suffocated trying to answer them.

  The chief of police sighed. “I will read the abstract, Miss Brechenmacher. We will get to the bottom of this.”

  Mg. Praff asked, “The cabin?”

  “Yes, we found the cabin, and everything was as Miss Brechenmacher said it would be. There was no man chained up at the bottom of the stairwell, but there was melted plastic looped around the rail. Torn fabric was embedded in it. Scuffs on the wall indicated a struggle.” He looked down at a paper in his hand. “The deed for the property is in the name of a Mr. Garrett, whom we are also trying to locate, but we’ve found no other records with his name.”

  “I see,” said Mg. Praff.

  The chief of police took a deep breath. “I should also inform you that Magician Ezzell is very put out by these accusations. He’s hired a solicitor and has begun the process of having Miss Brechenmacher deported. He’ll have a good case if he can link you to the burglaries.”

  Alvie felt her body temperature drop at least 0.7 degrees. “You’re joking.”

  The man looked at her with his stern, aging face. No, he was not joking.

  “I assure you,” he went on, “that nothing will go forward until we determine the truth of this incident. But I also cannot allow either of you to leave.”

  Alvie hugged herself. “But the convention—”

  “Neither you nor Magician Ezzell will be allowed into the convention until we sort this out.”

  Mg. Praff nodded, ever pragmatic. “Very well.”

  A few hours later, another officer arrived with a change of clothing for Alvie, straight from her closet—meaning he’d gone to Briar Hall. He’d probably questioned the family and servants while there. Maybe he’d even apprehended Emma, but he wouldn’t answer when Alvie asked. Everything inside Alvie was tightly wound, but she felt some relief when she discovered a pair of glass lenses sandwiched between the blouse and skirt. Mg. Praff must have told the officer where to find them. With some effort, she popped the right one into her frames. Her headache almost immediately subsided. It felt wonderful to be able to see again, even if she might not be seeing England for much longer.

  Deep breaths, Alvie. She needed to stay calm. She needed to trust the system. Mg. Ezzell couldn’t keep his ruse up forever. He couldn’t pin the burglaries on her—she hadn’t even been in the country for the first two!

  It wasn’t until late afternoon—the first day of the convention was nearly over—that Alvie and Mg. Praff were called into a conference room. Several police officers filled it. At the far end of a long table, Mg. Ezzell sat with a man Alvie presumed to be his lawyer.

  “You!” He stood up, but the heat of his gaze fell on Alvie first, not Mg. Praff. “How dare you—”

  The lawyer placed a hand on his shoulder, and the chief of police said, “Sit down, Magician Ezzell, or this will take longer than I have the patience for.”

  Mg. Ezzell sat down. Alvie scowled at him. He was a terrific actor.

  The chief sat down on a chair equidistant from both ends of the table. Alvie and Mg. Praff sat at the end closest to the door, opposite Ezzell. The other police officers remained standing.

  The chief gestured to a young, balding man in uniform. “This is Officer Caldus, of the North London Police Department. He is one of the officers dealing with the string of polymery burglaries, most recently Magician Praff’s.”

  The lawyer said, “A burglary in which the culprit was never caught . . . to which only Miss Brechenmacher was witness. Obviously a staged cry for attention, or means to cover up greater crimes.”

  Alvie bristled. The chief ignored the lawyer and said, “Officer Caldus?”

  “We have written documentation of Magician Praff’s testimony, which includes his concern over the possible theft of a prosthesis. We also have a testimony from Magician Ezzell detailing what was taken from his property last October, though nothing specifying prosthetic limbs.”

  Mg. Ezzell’s shoulders straightened into razors. “Do you think I’d give away the secrets for my greatest work? So they could be printed in the paper later for all to see?”

  The lawyer said, “My client can provide records.”

  Mg. Ezzell leaned over to the man and whispered something to him. The man nodded. Neither of them said anything more.

  Alvie’s heart tried to grow legs and climb right out her throat, but she settled it down with a cough.

  The chief reached under the table and set Ethel’s prototype before him.

  “You went through my room?” Mg. Ezzell asked.

  The chief raised a brow. “You think I wouldn’t get a warrant to do so?”

  Mg. Ezzell remained quiet. His lawyer whispered something to him.

  “We’ve obtained a copy of the paper submitted by Magician Roscoe Ezzell to the board for the Discovery in Material Mechanics Convention on November 14 of last year. However, while the paper discusses a project promising to change an ‘entire facet of medicine,’ it does not specifically mention a prosthesis.”

  The lawyer said, “It’s common with this convention for such submissions to remain vague.”

  “It is.” The chief nodded.

  Alvie worked the words over and over in her brain as her fingers smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt. Wasn’t that something similar to what she’d said to Mg. Praff at the polymer depository?

  She dug her nails into the table. “Maybe you should ask him about Emma,” she mumbled.

  “Excuse me?” the chief of police asked.

  Alvie cleared her throat. “I said, maybe you should ask him how much he’s paying my maid, Emma.”

  Mg. Ezzell blanched, though his expression remained neutral. “I’m not familiar with your employees, Miss Brechenmacher.”

  The chief continued on about the arm, not Emma, but Alvie couldn’t hear him above the buzzing in her mind. Ezzell was in possession of the prosthesis. He knew all about it. Perhaps had already drawn out sketches to look like early plans for the thing to use as later evidence against Mg. Praff and herself. No doubt he’d dumped the Imagidome and any other materials that might be incriminating. And yet . . . if Alvie and Mg. Praff had been detained this entire time, then Mg. Ezzell must have been, too. He wouldn’t have had much time to study the prosthesis, to learn more about it. To experiment with it, just as Alvie had experimented with that door in his basement.

  Mg. Ezzell had asked Alvie if she really thought he was some overzealous villain ready to slip up. But he was, and he had. He’d set up everything so perfectly—the break-ins at the other polymeries, making himself a victim, using thugs so he’d never be found at a crime scene. But the appearance of Alvie had thrown a wrench in that. She was not only a witness, but her unexpected presence had eaten up Mg. Ezzell’s precious time. His crime was behind schedule.

  “Excuse me.”

  All eyes turned to her, and she realized she’d interrupted the chief midsentence.
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  “Alvie,” Mg. Praff warned.

  She ignored him. “Sorry, but . . . if Magician Ezzell is the true creator of this work, why not ask him how the prosthesis works?”

  The rogue Polymaker’s expression finally slipped.

  “Excuse me?” asked the chief.

  “This woman is in contempt of—” started the lawyer.

  “This isn’t a bloody courtroom,” snapped Mg. Praff.

  Alvie stood up. “If this is truly Magician Ezzell’s creation, then have him demonstrate how it works.”

  Mg. Ezzell snorted. “Please, it’s only a prototype.”

  She didn’t even look at him; she kept her eyes locked with the chief’s. “The abstract Magician Praff tried to submit to the convention discusses a previously undiscovered spell in Polymaking. Obviously the true creator of this prosthesis would know the spell. So have Magician Ezzell tell us what it is.”

  The lawyer said, “This is harassment.”

  Mg. Ezzell added, “This is to be the highlight of my display! I can’t possibly—”

  The chief turned his steely gaze onto Mg. Ezzell. “We’re hardly a large audience. Do as she says.”

  The lawyer said, “This is unfair treatment of my client. As Mg. Praff said, this is not a courtroom, and you do not have the right to demand anything from my client.”

  The chief of police glowered. “I have the right to throw him in a jail cell until the system affords the time to appoint a trial.”

  Mg. Ezzell’s white fingers gripped the edge of the table, yet his jaw was set in what looked like confidence . . . or maybe determination. He stood swiftly, knocking his chair back, and came around the table, moving toward the chief of police. He stared at the prosthesis for several seconds before reaching forward to grasp it.

  The Polymaker held the prosthesis in both hands. Turned it this way and that, subtly, but his behavior screamed that he had yet to discover the spell. Alvie sat back down as she waited for him to speak. Everyone did. The room was silent as a morgue.

  Mg. Ezzell held the arm out like it was an extension of his own and said, “Heed: Direction.”