Theater of the Crime (Alan Stewart and Vera Deward Murder Mysteries Book 6)

by Неизвестный

  “He’s quite entertaining,” said Vera. “I’ve not seen that before.”

  “I haven’t a clue as to how he did it,” said Ben.

  Without the gaudy robe, Wang Tao wore a loose peasant tunic over silk pants and plain slippers, in stark contrast to the brightly colored outfits of the assistants and stage extras. An assistant brought him a tray and bowed in front of him. From the tray, Wang Tao tore strips of red tissue paper, reducing it into dozens of tiny bits, and then he rolled and wadded the pieces into a single ball at his fingertips. He blew on the torn bits as if extinguishing a candle, and as he opened the bundle, ever so slowly, he revealed the pieces were whole again. He held the sheet so that all could see it in once piece, and then he let it float elegantly to the floor, like a miniature magic carpet he no longer needed.

  Wang Tao displayed the skills of a master at pantomime, as well as magic. He had a flair for dramatizing every illusion with expressive gestures and well-practiced poses, conveying his thoughts with a crooked smile or cocked eyebrow, like when he stuffed his mouth with white cotton balls from a large glass beaker. After his cheeks filled and his eyes bulged wide, Wang Tao stuck the tips of his fingers in his mouth and began withdrawing silk scarves tied end-to-end, pulling out several yards of them, as attractive assistants followed him about and collected his cast offs. He bowed when he finished, and the assistants danced off the stage to loud applause.

  Liu Yang stepped into the spotlight, wearing a less cumbersome outfit. She bowed appreciatively to the applause that greeted her. She had forsaken the headdress and formal attire from the previous century for something much lighter, which more closely resembled the silk harem pants Yvette had worn for St. Laurent. Liu Yang wore a short jacket over a bustier that covered her midriff, and her movements were more agile.

  “For our next trick,” said Liu Yang, “we have asked the theater’s owner to join us on stage to assist us. We understand there are concerns about the portion of the show involving shooting, so we’ve asked Mr. Ivanovich to inspect our equipment to ease his fears and yours.”

  As Nikolai Ivanovich re-entered the stage and stood near Wang Tao, Liu Yang spun around and skipped across the stage and stood in front of a large target, with painted concentric circles on it. She stopped about two feet away from the target, while a second spotlight followed Wang Tao and Ivanovich to the other side of the stage, where they stopped next to a small cannon that resembled a harpoon launcher. Wang Tao held up a white rope attached to a large tipped arrow, which he presented to Ivanovich, who scowled doubtfully and crossed his arms in front. With Wang Tao nodding encouragement, Ivanovich unwound his arms and touched the arrow point. He quickly withdrew his fingers and rubbed them together, demonstrating the arrow’s sharpness. Wang Tao then loaded the arrow and rope into the front of the cannon, down the barrel, tamping it in with a special ramrod. Satisfied with the loading and adjustment, he bowed to Ivanovich and then to Liu Yang, who dutifully covered her eyes with only her hands, while a musician in the pit began tapping out the press roll on a snare drum: firing squad music.

  Wang Tao stepped behind the cannon and lowered the barrel to sight it in. Ivanovich stepped around toward the front of the cannon and with gestures indicated Liu Yang in front of the target across the stage. Wang Tao nodded that he understood and motioned for Ivanovich to come back and join him behind the cannon. Ivanovich again pointed at Liu Yang and made a waving motion, indicating she should move out of the way of the target. Wang Tao shook his head and placed his hands on his hips, indicating his satisfaction with the set up.

  Ivanovich stretched his neck, shook his head slowly, and stepped behind Wang Tao, out of the spotlight. Wang Tao stood erect, nodded at the audience a final time and tugged on a lanyard connected to a trigger device. Black powder flashed from the barrel of the cannon as it banged, and sent the loaded charge across the stage, where it passed through Liu Yang’s midsection, impaling itself into the target behind her. Liu Yang let out a sharp scream of surprise, which is exactly how the audience reacted, seeing the rope threaded through her body and the base of the arrow sticking out the target behind her.

  Ivanovich stepped back into the spotlight, scowling angrily as Wang Tao crossed the stage, his swagger a little less confident than before. When he reached Liu Yang, still covering her eyes, he leaned close to her ear and whispered something. She lowered her hands, opened her eyes in surprise, and tugged at the white rope passing through her midsection. Chia took the rope from Liu Yang and tugged it back and forth through her body, demonstrating that it had passed through her completely. He unlatched the rope from the arrow base and pulled it free, out the front of her body, and let it fall to the stage floor, where assistants hurriedly coiled it up and carried it away. Now free of the rope, Liu Yang smiled, bowed, to the audience, and skipped off stage as the curtain closed, while the audience applauded enthusiastically.

  Ivanovich stepped through the curtain as it closed around him. “One moment, if you please, while the amazing Wang Tao Chia and his company prepare the stage for their next illusions.”

  The orchestra segued from playing Oriental music to contemporary western, as Ivanovich disappeared, stepping through the closed curtain.

  “Bravo,” said Vera. “I totally didn’t expect that.”

  “Have you ever seen anything like that before?” Alan asked Ben.

  Ben shook his head. “It seems on the dangerous side, if you ask me.”

  “Yet you felt safe wrestling behemoths trying to snap your head off?” said Vera.

  “Most of the time—and that’s my point. Even as well-rehearsed and scripted as we were, accidents happened and a nose got broken...or an arm. But if an accident happens when you’re playing with firearms, it’s nearly always fatal.”

  “We didn’t have those kinds of accidents in burlesque,” said Vera. “Occasionally a dancer dropped her fan or a G-string broke, but no lives were lost on stage.”

  “Your G-string broke?” asked Alan.

  “Just checking to see if you were paying attention, Champ.”

  “Dang,” said Alan. “I’m going to be thinking about that all night, now.”

  After a moment, the orchestra struck up again, but the tone of the music shifted to something darker, still Asian but more somber than before. The burgundy felt curtain pulled open to reveal an interior silk screen with a large green and gold dragon emblazoned with red eyes. The size of the silk screen obscured much of the stage behind it. Chinese drummers on stage picked up the orchestra’s foreboding march and continued with it, marching in step, lights shining more brightly to reveal them as Chinese soldiers in leather and brass plated armor, coursing through an East Asian archway toward the audience. Two in their midst carried long, antique rifles, pressed against their shoulders and pointing into the air. The soldiers stopped their march and spread out as additional performers passed through the same archway carrying a single seated palanquin between two men, with ornately carved details in gold and black. The men set the palanquin down, and one of them held the door open, as Wang Tao climbed out, wearing an elaborate headpiece and the quilted robe of a Chinese warrior, conspicuously different from the soldiers, the dreaded Chinese Boxers. Wang Tao took on the somber expression of an unhappy man lost in thought over his foreboding future.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Liu Yang, standing to the right of the stage in the shadows, “if you please... Wang Tao will now demonstrate for you how the Boxers condemned him to die during the rebellion, before executing him by firing squad. But Wang Tao will recreate for you tonight how he defied their bullets, and he will do it again for you just as he did in Peking many years ago.”

  Wang Tao took several steps back as Liu Yang took several toward the center of the stage, moving up to the edge of the apron. “Two gentlemen who know something about old guns, come to the stage please. Two men who have loaded bullets and are willing to assist.
Do we have American soldiers who are willing to help?”

  Liu Yang looked across the klieg lights, holding a hand over her eyes to shield the glare. A man in an olive drab uniform with breeches and brown riding boots stood up, as did an older man wearing a lighter colored uniform with breeches and spats, holding a crumpled slouch hat. Liu Yang pointed at both of the men and waved them forward, encouraging them to approach the stage. The younger of the two handed his hat to a woman sitting next to him and whispered something to her, while the older man put his hat on, pressed his shoulders back, and marched gracefully toward the stage.

  “Very good,” said Liu Yang, “or as Wang Tao prefers, ‘Much good.’ We don’t always have soldiers in the audience to draw from.”

  Both men climbed the steps to the stage and met Liu Yang in the middle, where the older man removed a thick riding glove to shake hands, while the younger man conspicuously checked out the old soldier’s uniform, from head to toe, before shrugging toward the audience, as if never before having seen the type of outfit the Teddy Roosevelt Roughrider wore.

  Please introduce yourselves to the audience.

  “Sergeant Daniel Oliver from Fort Lawton,” said the younger man in a strong voice.

  The audience applauded politely as Liu Yang smiled up at the gray bearded older man wearing spectacles and in need of an upper denture plate.

  “I am Captain Quentin Black of the United States Volunteers. One of the last men standing from Teddy’s Roughriders. I fought alongside him on San Juan Hill, back in ‘98.”

  The audience applauded enthusiastically, with a few older souls shouting “Bravo” for the aging captain, who nodded and saluted back to them.

  Although the younger sergeant had already shaken the man’s hand once, he again approached the senior captain and shook it again and patted him affectionately on the shoulder.

  “Much good,” said Liu Yang, “and now if Nikolai Ivanovich would be so willing, I would like him to assist us again, this time with the marking of the bullets, if you please.”

  The audience applauded as Ivanovich came out from the wings and joined Liu Yang and the soldiers at the middle of the stage.

  “Have you ever loaded one of these before?” asked Liu Yang as the Chinese soldiers handed their muskets over to Sergeant Oliver and Captain Black.

  Oliver shook his head, while Black slowly nodded his, as if recalling an ancient memory. “It’s been fifty years or more, but yes, I have loaded and fired one of these before.”

  “Much good,” said Liu Yang, turning back to acknowledge Wang Tao, still standing in the shadows. “Then we know we have someone here to make sure we are doing it right.”

  A small assistant brought a tray out and stopped in front of the two soldiers.

  “Now please select two bullets from the box on the tray and mark them with the stylus,” said Liu Yang.

  Each soldier took turns scratching their initials into the soft lead of a bullet about the size of a marble. When completed, they dropped the bullets into a small cup.

  Another assistant brought a second tray and stopped next to the first. On it sat a tin painted with the word “Gunpowder.”

  “Is it real gunpowder?” asked Liu Yang, as she used a small spoon to dip out some of it and hold it close to the soldiers.

  Each man leaned forward and sniffed at the powder, nodding their heads in turn. Liu Yang shook the spoonful into a shallow pan, stepped away from the group, and extended her arm away from her body. Another assistant struck a wooden match and handed it to her. The powder in the pan exploded instantly with a white flash, leaving an acrid smell.

  “Yes, real powder,” said Liu Yang. “I should know, because we are Chinese, and after all, we invented it.”

  With Ivanovich holding the barrels of the rifles upward, less than a foot apart, the two soldiers watched closely as Liu Yang poured a charge of gunpowder into each barrel, followed by pushing in a cotton wad with her fingertip. The soldiers removed the ramrods from beneath the barrels, inserted the blunt ends into the barrels, and tamped down the charge and wadding.

  “Most good,” said Liu Yang. “You did that as if you are old pros.”

  Liu Yang then rolled the marked bullets from the cup, held them in the air so the audience could see, and tapped them into the tip of the barrels of the muskets in front of the two soldiers. She followed this step by adding more cotton wadding on top of the bullets. The soldiers again used the ramrods to tamp down the bullets and wadding. As soon as she finished, an assistant took the ramrods from the soldiers, set them aside, while the participants huddled around the muskets as Liu Yang positioned percussion caps onto the firing mechanisms connecting to the barrels of the muskets.

  “Gentlemen, are the rifles ready to fire?” asked Liu Yang.

  “Locked and loaded,” said the younger of the two soldiers, giving his musket a final once over, before passing it along to a Boxer soldier standing nearby.

  Captain Black picked up his musket, tossing it over in his hands and inspecting each side, before drawing the firing mechanism up to his eye for a close inspection. “Most curious,” he said, shouldering the stock and swinging the barrel around the stage, drawing near to Ivanovich, who had just turned back around to face him. “Conspirators and saboteurs!” he shouted. “Watch your flank, men—”

  Sergeant Oliver caught the barrel with an open hand and redirected it firmly toward the rafters. “Careful, sir!”

  Captain Black paused, as if startled from reverie and now found himself busy catching up on the happenings around him. He eased his grip on the rifle and nodded to the other soldier, allowing him to take it from him.

  “Right you are, Sergeant. Safety first.”

  The sergeant flashed a painful grin and took the musket from Captain Black, passing it on to Ivanovich, whose eyes were wide, face pallid. He kept a hooded eye on Black while turning sideways and passing the loaded weapon to another one of the Boxers.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” said Liu Yang, “and if you would please stand to the side, we will need you to verify in a minute that your bullets were the ones fired during the execution. For the rest of you, we will need you to be silent for a moment and watch closely. Watch, everyone.”

  The two soldiers moved to the left of the stage apron, all the way over to where the curtain disappeared behind the wall. Captain Black shook his head as they walked and whispered something to Sergeant Oliver. Across the stage, the spotlight focused again on Wang Tao who stepped a few paces backward, to the audience’s right, stopping a few feet inside the curtain at the front of the stage, making himself visible to the entire theater. An assistant tied a blindfold around Wang Tao’s face and handed him a blue and white porcelain plate, which he grasped tightly with both hands, holding it in front of his chest, as if it were a bulletproof shield, a talisman that would protect him.

  The orchestra played a dirge which seemed a blend of sorrowful English and Chinese instrumentation. The two Boxers with the long rifles, shouldered their weapons, fell into formation with the others, and marched to the left side of the stage, where they fell out and stood together, shoulder to shoulder, facing Wang Tao across the distance of the stage, while the remaining Boxers tightened their formation and moved to the back and out of the lights.

  The music in the orchestra pit stopped, and an assistant on stage began the drum roll, as the leader of the contingent of Boxers marched to the center of the stage, taking exaggerated steps like the drum major leading a band. He stopped in the middle, halfway between Wang Tao and the marksmen—but well back of the firing line. He drew his sword, raised it over his head, and said something in Chinese. As he did, the drummer stopped and the theater went completely silent. The marksmen crouched into position, raised their muskets to their shoulders and supported the barrels with opposite arms as they took aim on Wang Tao. The leader gave another command, an
d the Boxers cocked the hammers back on their muskets. After a seemingly endless period of silence, with no sounds at all coming from the stage or audience, the leader barked something irritably in Chinese and dropped his sword sharply.

  CRACK! CRACK! The two muskets fired in near unison. The weapons recoiled sharply, one more so than the other, as the black powder flashed brightly from them, the roar of the muskets ringing throughout the theater, drawing gasps from most everyone in the theater.

  To the right of the stage, Wang Tao thrust the plate forward to catch the round, lead balls, but this time the always impervious plate exploded in his hand, scattering broken shards to the floor. Stunned, Wang Tao reeled backward, and twisted to his side. His shoulders arched and he dropped what little remained of the plate, while his assistants watched horrified, mouths agape and eyes wide, as the hole in the front of Wang Tao’s silk tunic began to ooze blood.

  Wang Tao slumped to the floor as if his legs had been swept out from under him. “Oh, my God!” he said, pulling the blindfold off. “Something’s happened. Draw the curtain!”

  Vera clasped Alan by the wrist. “Oh my word!” she said. “Another one.”

  “Right in front of us,” Alan said, wrapping his fingers through hers.

  Liu Yang ran from the wings and slid to a stop on her knees in front of the prostrate magician, whose eyes remained barely open. Other assistants and stagehands joined Liu Yang at Wang Tao’s side, huddling around their fallen warrior. Behind them the stage manager dressed as a Boxer issued orders in Chinese. The curtain hastily drew closed. Instantaneously, the movie screen began descending in front of the drawn curtain. Instead of waiting for it to drop to its full length the projectionist began showing a newsreel with war footage of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. The screen soon filled with explosions and marching soldiers, the accompanying sound late in catching up to the black and white action.