“Make sure you are satisfied with the weapon and it is ready to fire,” he tells her.
She examines the weapon briefly, cocks it, and lays it back on the table.
“I am ready, but—”
“No buts, my love, these people have paid good money … well, would have paid good money had they not been a captive audience on a ship. Either way, they deserve to see the most dangerous and incredible feat ever performed onstage!”
She starts to hand him his distinctive hat and give him a peck on the cheek, saying, “I’ll try not to miss, dear,” but he steps back and holds up his hands, telling her, “We must not touch, there must be no trick of a hand faster than the eye of the audience.”
Finally, the Aussie takes up his position in front of the barrier with the wife, rifle in hand, on the other side of the stage. The assistant has gone offstage, behind the wife.
The Aussie appears a bit nervous and pats sweat on his forehead, but it’s easy for me to see it’s an act.
A drum starts with a low tempo and slowly builds up as the wife gets into a shooting stance, cocks the rifle, and slowly raises it to aim.
She starts a countdown as the drum beats louder : “One … two…”
“Three” is lost in the bang of the drum and the sound of the shot.
The man’s head snaps back, blood sprays, and his whole body slams back against the barrier. His mouth gapes open and a bullet falls out.
A moment frozen in time occurs as no one moves or breathes in the room.
A cry of surprise and agony breaks the silence.
The sound is from the wife.
The rifle slips out of her hand and onto the stage.
THE MAGICIAN WHO STOPPED A WAR
In 1856, magician Jean Robert-Houdin was sent to French Algeria by Emperor Louis-Napoléon to use his conjuring skills to break the influence of the Marabouts, Islamic religious fanatics who claimed to have magic powers to drive the French from the country.
After putting on shows in cities, Robert-Houdin went into the desert and performed the most dangerous trick of all for rebel tribal leaders: the bullet catch.
He had a rebel put a distinctive mark on a lead bullet, then he placed the cartridge in the rebel’s own rifle, and had the man fire it at him—stunning the rebels when he caught the bullet in his teeth.
Robert-Houdin, through sleight of hand, had switched the real cartridge for one in which the bullet appeared to be lead but was actually wax mixed with lampblack.
When the cartridge was fired, the wax “bullet” completely dissipated—and the magician, who had slipped the real bullet in his mouth, spit out the bullet as if he had caught it with his teeth.
On another occasion before rebel leaders, to demonstrate that his magic was even more powerful than the jinnis, the demonic spirits of the desert, he suddenly shouted that a jinni was in front of a building. He fired his pistol at the “spirit” and then raced to where the bullet had left a mark on the building. As he ran his hand over the bullethole, he smeared a red substance—and told the amazed tribesmen the spirit had bled from the gunshot wound.
By the time Robert-Houdin left Algeria, there was no doubt that French magic was more powerful than that of the fanatics.
Jean Robert-Houdin, who died in 1871, is considered the Father of Modern Magic.
His name was immortalized by a disciple named Ehrich Weiss—who took the stage name of “Harry Houdini” as a tribute to the great conjurer.
42
Before most of the ship is awake, I am at Frederick Selous’s door. He surprises me by being fully dressed and ready to leave his cabin.
“I was expecting you,” he explains. “Let’s walk.”
“Why were you expecting me?”
He gives me a sour frown as he steps out and shuts his door behind him. “I’ve learned to expect you at the scene of a sensational news story.”
I stop him short in the corridor. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Selous, you make it sound like I find my way to crime scenes chasing police wagons. That’s hardly been the case. If anything, I’ve been the one chased.”
“You’re right, I apologize. I was up half the night with the captain and others going over the accident.”
“Accident?” I deliberately say it with a tone of sarcasm.
That gets a lift of his eyebrows and shake of his head. “Let’s take a brisk walk before it gets too warm. I need to clear my head from the captain’s cheap cigars and immature brandy.”
We walk briskly, indeed, with me almost running to keep pace with his long legs.
After a complete lap around the ship in stony silence, I wait until we are out of ear reach of others and then stop to get my curiosity satisfied.
“What happened last night? What went wrong?”
“Two things. The first is that Murdock chose to add what is considered magic’s most dangerous conjuring trick to his simple sharpshooting act. And he got careless.”
“Is it the first time he tried to catch a bullet?”
“No, he’s done it a number of times over the past few months. But it only takes one error to end a life. Do you know how the trick is done?”
“No, but I think Von Reich does.”
“Yes, he volunteered to assist the captain in the investigation because he is an amateur magician. However, Mrs. Murdock explained the trick and we examined the weapon to confirm her statements.”
“Which were?”
“There was a malfunction. There are different ways to perform the trick, but with some common features. A member of the audience is asked to mark the bullet so it can be identified later.”
“As you did.”
“Yes. In most cases the magician uses sleight of hand to substitute the marked bullet for a fake one that will not fire because it has an insufficient load of powder, or is made of wax, or is otherwise rendered impotent. The fake bullet is fired and the magician, who has palmed the real bullet, pretends to catch it and spit it out into his hand.”
“But I watched closely. Murdock never touched the weapon. And you fired it to make sure it was real.”
“I put a cartridge with a lead bullet head into the gun and fired it. The cartridge I placed next into the weapon, the one Murdock is supposed to catch in his mouth, is also real, but the lead head has been altered so the wife is able to slip it off.”
“How could she slip the head off the cartridge? It was in the gun.”
“There’s a trick to cocking the gun that permits the cartridge to drop out, into her hand. The cocking action brings a blank into the chamber to be fired.”
“How does the bullet get to his mouth?”
“He had a bullet hidden in his mouth when the act started. When the blank is fired, he spits out the bullet as if it’s the one I marked.”
“How does he get the one you marked to show to the audience?”
“As he steps forward with the wet bullet in his hand, his wife gives him a handkerchief to wipe it. The handkerchief—”
“Has the real bullet in it. And he switches bullets. Clever. It’s sleight of hand, after all. Handing him the handkerchief would be a natural thing for her to do. What went wrong?”
“It appears that Murdock had been negligent in preparing the weapon. He placed a live bullet rather than a blank in the secret chamber. It’s quite easy to do, they look alike. It’s not the first time a mistake like this has happened. A moment’s lack of concentration will do it, and from what his wife said, he had been indulging lately in not only liquor, but what the French call ‘white angel.’”
“Cocaine.”
He gives me a surprised look.
I shrug. “You’d be surprised at what a crime reporter has to deal with. What did the wife say was driving him to drink and worse?”
“She intimated at financial problems, but naturally we didn’t probe any further.”
“Naturally.”
He doesn’t miss the sarcasm in my tone and he becomes noticeably stiffer.
�
�All right, Nellie, why don’t you tell me why we should have stretched the poor woman on a rack to get a confession out of her for killing her husband.”
“I don’t know that she killed her husband. Maybe she didn’t, but someone did and she may have information that leads to the killer.”
“Come now, blank cartridges are made to look like real ones. It’s not that difficult for a mix-up to occur.”
“A deadly mistake.”
“With a trick that has a history of going astray. Von Reich said that of the nine magicians who’ve regularly performed the act over the past half century, five have died. Because it’s so complicated, it is inevitable that something will go wrong if the trick is performed enough times. And when it does, the result is deadly.”
“Hmmm,” I say, a response that makes his eyebrows arch. To keep the conversation going, I add, “I would think that since she pulled the trigger, and everyone on board knew she was angry at her husband over whatever he had going on with the pretty young assistant, at least the notion of the wife shooting her cheating husband might have been discussed.”
“That thought was bandied about last night and, in fact, the captain bluntly asked her.”
“What was her reply?”
“If she had been in a killing mood, she would have shot the bullet into the assistant’s mouth and not into her husband.” He grins. “The captain found the logic rather convincing.”
So do I, but I’m not ready to admit it.
He clears his throat. “Nellie, my advice to you is to not go any farther with your suspicions than you have with me.”
“Or you will once again police my actions?”
He stops and confronts me. “I believe I have apologized profusely for my clumsy attempt to do what I thought was the right thing for my country in Ismailia. For some reason, since we left Colombo, you seem to have had … shall we say, a change of heart from the warm relationship we were developing.”
He is getting tight jaws but I don’t know how to defuse the situation without lashing out with an accusation about intrigues involving Sarah and the rude sailor in Colombo.
“Nellie, it is inevitable that you will attempt to make something out of this event that already antagonizes the captain. There is nothing here but an accident of the sort that has happened before. Do you understand that?”
His authoritative tone makes me fume because I know it is his way of chastising me and he has no right to do so.
“Maybe if you can see beyond your nose, Mr. Selous, you might learn something. I observed several unusual incidents in regard to Mr. Murdock, the most obvious being the marital difficulties. But he also recognized someone at the dock who didn’t acknowledge him in return.”
Frederick throws up his hands in exasperation. “Perhaps the person didn’t hear him, maybe he was mistaken about who he was hailing, and just maybe you are making the proverbial mountain out of a molehill.”
“I overheard him making a demand on the person.”
“A demand for what? From who?”
“I … I don’t know.”
“And your interpretation of this demand you know nothing about?”
“He wanted money.”
“That’s a giant leap.”
“Hardly. It fits nicely with his wife’s admission that they needed money.”
“And from this you have constructed a murder plot?”
“There are questions that need to be asked and answered. If that leads to a murder plot, then so be it.”
“You are amazing.” He shakes his head. “Completely amazing. You really do have a lively imagination. I can understand why Lord Warton considers you a rabble-rouser. The pieces you have put together, the tiny fragments that could fit in so many different ways, simply don’t make the picture you have constructed.”
Once again he throws up his hands in frustration. “Next you will be telling me that you believe Murdock’s death is connected to the marketplace murder you witnessed.”
So that he can’t see my face and read my thoughts, I turn away.
He grabs my arm and turns me back to face him. “Don’t you dare attempt to tread that path again. If you start rumors flying about that incident at Port Said, I will personally suggest that the captain lock you in your cabin for the duration of the voyage.”
Jerking my arm free, I take a step back. “To protect whom?”
He flinches. “Why … you, of course.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I do recall that you are the sole witness to Mr. Cleveland being alive. Now you handled the weapon that the sharpshooter was killed by. Is it possible you accidentally substituted a live bullet for a blank?”
His face flushes with anger and I fear I’ve crossed the line. I turn and leave, pedaling my feet as fast as they will go. And groan aloud at my stupidity.
Why does the devil make me do these things?
43
It is the evening of December 23, and I am sitting on deck in a dark corner by myself listening to men singing and telling stories. We are approaching Hong Kong and I will be leaving this ship for another after a several-day stopover.
Plagued by guilt for literally accusing Frederick of murdering the Aussie sharpshooter, I hid out in my cabin until I could not tolerate the screeches of the monkey who appears even angrier at me than I am at myself.
In remorse over my stupidity and rudeness, I had my steward take a sealed chit to Frederick that contained the beautiful sapphire necklace he’d given me in Colombo. My message was simple and to the point: “I do not deserve this.”
In a funk since, I had come out on deck and hid in the darkness rather than stay in my cabin and stare at the walls while the monkey howled accusations.
I’m beating myself mentally when Frederick sits down beside me. I cringe back at the recriminations I deserve and am sure I will get.
He hands me the sapphire necklace. “This was given to me by mistake. It belongs to you.”
“I told you, I don’t deserve it.”
“You didn’t earn it, it was a gift given out of respect and admiration.”
“You couldn’t have respect after my accusation.”
“Your accusation? You mean that little matter of accusing me of murdering a fellow passenger? Don’t worry about it, I simply tucked it away with the ones charging that I’m Lord Warton’s lackey and I talk to dead men on beaches.”
I start to get up to flee and he takes my arm. “Please, I’m only joking. I’m guilty of throwing a few your way, too. I have to keep in mind that you really do know how to punch. The moment I pushed, you lashed out.”
“I had big brothers. I had to learn how to defend myself.”
“May I escort you around the sights of Hong Kong?”
I ponder the question for a moment. I am shamelessly pleased that he wants to be with me and also worried that it is to keep an eye on me.
“Thank you, but I have already made other plans. From the dock, I have to go immediately to arrange passage to San Francisco before exploring the sights. Then I’m going to pay a visit to nearby Canton to see a notorious prison.”
“Excellent. Then it’s settled.”
“Settled?”
“As to you contacting me when you get your passage resolved so I can escort you to the prison, and that you’re no longer angry at me.”
“I suspect we shall both be old and gray before that happens.”
“That’s good. It means we’ll still know each other.” Then he leans over and puts the necklace around my neck and gives me a long kiss. “Good night, Nellie,” he says, and he leaves me once again speechless.
I go down to tell the monkey he will soon be in Hong Kong. “Do you have any idea what Frederick’s motives are for wanting my companionship?”
He gives out a screech as loud as the ship’s emergency siren.
HONG KONG
Day 42
THE BAMBOO TORTURE
44
Our first glimpse of Hong Kong is in the early
morning: gleaming white, castlelike homes terraced on a tall mountainside. The ship fires a cannon as we enter the bay, as this is the custom of mail ships, according to the captain.
The bay is a magnificent basin, walled by high mountains. Mirrorlike in the bright sun, it is dotted with strange crafts from many countries: heavy ironclads, torpedo boats, mall steamers, Portuguese lorchas, Chinese junks, and sampans.
A Chinese ship wends its way slowly out to sea, its strange, broad stern hoisted high out of the water, an enormous eye gracing its bow.
An exotic, graceful thing, I think, but I hear an officer call it awkward in rough seas.
I leave the boat with Frederick and walk to the pier’s end where we select sedan chairs to carry us to the town. I expected to travel in a rickshaw, but until we reach town, the steep roads are not suitable for wheels.
The sedan carriers are as aggressive as the hackmen around railway stations in America, competing for our attention and patronage.
This is my first experience with these strange passenger conveyances that were common in Europe and America during previous centuries. They are literally a rectangular box standing long side up with two poles attached front and rear. Inside the box is a chair one sits in.
We follow the road along the shore, passing warehouses of many kinds and tall balconied buildings filled with Chinese families, on the flat-house plan. Garments are stretched on poles, after the manner of hanging coats so they will not wrinkle, and those poles are fastened to the balconies until it looked as if every family in the street had placed their clothes on exhibition.
Turning off the shore road our carriers go up a road that winds about from tier to tier up the mountain, and then back down it. When we reach the business district, I wave good-bye to Frederick. I have to get to the office of the Occidental and Oriental Steamship Company and learn the earliest possible time I can leave for Japan to continue my race around the world.
Only forty-two days have passed since I left New York and I am in China—halfway around the world. The Oriental not only made up the five days I had lost in Colombo, but reached Hong Kong two days sooner than I expected, and that with the northeast monsoon against her.
The Illusion of Murder Page 20
