by Lisa Tuttle
It was Mr. Jesperson. Distorted though it was, I recognized his voice, and my heart soared with joy. In a flash I understood: He was here now, as he must have been earlier, making his careful preparations to disrupt Chase’s plans: drilling holes in this statue for me and setting up the apparatus to make a “ghost” appear on stage. From my sister I had learned that there were several ways to produce this impression, but the most usual involved a large sheet of clear glass and careful positioning of lights and the calculation of sight lines.
Mr. Chase must have come to the same rapid understanding of the situation. After the first moment of stunned shock had passed, as he turned and saw the spectral, semi-transparent figure behind him, he knew exactly where the sheet of glass must be, and he responded with one of his own tricks.
A metal cymbal flew up out of the orchestra pit, went whizzing through the air, and struck the glass with sufficient force to shatter it, sending shards across the stage. Some of them struck the row of statues, sounding like a short, sharp rain of hail.
“Mountebank?” Chase howled after the destruction of the glass had vanquished the ghost. “You are the only fraud, sir, with your cheap theatrical tricks!”
“I admit, I use stage magic. I make no pretense. Whereas you claim to have spiritual powers, which is a lie. The only powers you use are stolen from others.” The ghost was gone, but the voice still boomed out sternly, its source impossible to guess. I watched Mr. Chase, whose eyes darted about the stage until his gaze found some biddable backstage boy whom he directed with a jerk of his head to deal with the intruder.
To the audience, of course, this was all part of the show. They imagined the conflict to be a dramatic invention under the direction and control of Mr. Chase.
“Show yourself!” Chase shouted. “Do you dare accuse me to my face?”
There was a dramatic pause, and then a man flew down from above, to swoop across the stage. He was dressed entirely in black, even his hair beneath a knitted cap, the better to stay hidden in the shadows. As he flew past Mr. Chase the challenger slapped him smartly across the face with a black leather glove and shouted, “J’accuse! You are a thief, a fraud, and a craven pretender.”
The audience gasped and moaned, happily thrilled by this development. From their perspective, the flying wire was invisible.
Chase stared, mouth hanging open, after his attacker. He was out of my range of sight by then, so I did not understand the gasps, chuckles, and whistles of appreciation from the audience until Mr. Jesperson flew back into view, approaching Chase with a fencing foil in each hand.
“Will you fight, sir?”
Moving quickly, Chase managed to catch the weapon by the pommel, but then he frowned and made a show of throwing it down in disgust. “You insulted me,” he shouted. “Therefore, choice of weapons is mine.”
“As you wish.” With a quick flick of his wrist, the flyer made his own foil vanish and won a smattering of applause. “What is your choice?”
His lips curved in a sinister smile, Chase paused deliberately before saying, “Psychic powers.”
Compelled as I was by the drama unfolding before my eyes on stage, I had been only vaguely aware of a series of scratching and creaking sounds from behind me, until I felt a cool draft and heard an urgent whisper: “Miss Lane, I’m here to rescue you. Stand and lean forward, please, so you don’t fall when I lift the back panel.”
I did as the voice said, and in a few seconds found myself being gently pulled backward out of my prison. The back of the hollow statue had been cut away, but the front was still facing the stage and the audience beyond. To them and to Chase it would not appear that anything had changed; I was still hidden by Aphrodite.
The statue that hid me also blocked my view of the stage, so I had no idea why the audience was applauding. Finally able to see my rescuer, I was startled to recognize Mr. Sims, the agent from whom the Jespersons rented the house in Gower Street, and the brother of Mrs. Creevey.
He put a finger to his lips and gestured to me to follow him off the stage.
I came to a halt in the wings, unwilling to go farther, concerned about my fellow prisoners. I struggled to find my voice, to tell him—
Mr. Sims patted my arm and whispered, “It’s all right. The others are safely away. You are the last. Don’t worry, Miss Lane; it is over.”
I felt a burden lifted from me at his words and knew I would now be able to speak. But it was not over.
As the applause died away, Mr. Chase said, “You have managed to please my audience with your conjuring tricks, but I did not challenge you to a display of trickery, Jesperson. You proposed a duel, and I say we must use psychic powers as our weapons—those powers you have insulted me by saying I only pretend to possess. But I know that you are the only pretender here, and I will prove it to you in combat. Come down, sir, and face your master.”
Laughter rang out, and although Mr. Sims was tugging at my arm, urging me to come away, I could not resist turning back to see what was going on. My friend was standing in midair, balancing easily on nothingness, arms folded, grinning down at Chase like an impudent elf. “But why should I come down? I have heard that your famous powers include levitation. Why don’t you come up here, Chase? A duel in midair would be a proper show for all these good people who have paid for the privilege of seeing you perform.”
Mr. Chase grimaced; sweat stood out on his forehead; he was clearly uncomfortable. “But your flight is by artificial trickery. You have no psychic powers.”
“Nor have you, Chase. You’re a fraud, whereas I—”
“Whereas you are above yourself, Jesperson!”
His voice had changed; it had become venomous and gloating; he was once more sure of himself, and with that change came one in me—I felt that sense of oppression I had come to recognize during my days in captivity, and I knew I had made a terrible mistake.
“I will bring you down to earth,” said Mr. Chase, just before I heard the whip-crack of wire snapping. There was a loud gasp from the audience as the man in black fell out of the air and hit the stage floor.
Chase laughed. And as he gloated over his fallen foe, his mental grip on me was loosened just enough that, although I felt too weak to move on my own, when Mr. Sims pulled me, almost lifting me off my feet in his determination to get me away, I was able to go with him.
“I don’t call that fair,” Mr. Jesperson remarked, sounding as cool and unruffled as if he’d just stepped off a train, rather than fallen from the air. “By code duello, one man chooses the weapons, and the other names the place.”
What a relief to me it was to hear his familiar voice behind me, to know I had not greatly harmed my friend with my stupid insistence on staying to watch the show.
Applause from the audience covered our retreat, and as we fled through the backstage regions, Mr. Sims assured me all was well. “He landed on his feet. He’s a proper acrobat, that young gentleman. And he has a great many tricks up his sleeve, as I’m sure you must know, miss.”
All the while in our progress to the stage door, I expected to feel again the debilitating grip of that evil man’s will upon my own, and to be pulled back (would Mr. Sims have strength enough to prevent my return?) to be used as his weapon against my dearest friend.
Bursting, almost tumbling out of the door into the narrow street behind the theatre, I was grabbed by Gabrielle Fox, who clutched me to her bosom as she cried, “Oh, my dear, at last. We’ve been so worried!”
In the light from the stage-door lamp I looked into her one visible eye and asked urgently, “Is it safe? Are we far enough away?”
She nodded vigorously. “As long as you are outside the building—I think. Fiorella says that while he doesn’t need to be able to see you, he needs to know where you are—and it must be very close by. In the same room, almost certainly. But never mind now.” She pulled me away from the door, linking arms. “We’ll join the others.”
“Where are they?”
Leaving Mr. Sims be
hind, she took me along the deserted back street and toward the corner that opened on to Leicester Square. “At the police station, with Edith. They’re swearing out complaints and they’re waiting for you.”
We had come to the front of the Alhambra, where quite a few people were still hanging about. These were mostly the sorts you will always see in public places in London, at any time of day or night—an old woman selling flowers, a young girl peddling sweets and cigars, a few ragged urchins, a variety of men idling about or conversing with one another—but there were also a few respectable-looking, well-dressed couples loitering uncertainly, as if, having failed to gain admission to the theatre, they could not make up their minds how else to spend their evening.
I stopped and looked up at the front doors. “But he’s still inside,” I murmured, unable to shake off my anxiety. It was very hard to feel that my place was beside him, but to know that it was my presence that presented the greatest danger to Mr. Jesperson at this moment.
Gabrielle squeezed my arm. “He’ll deal with that creature, don’t you worry. He’s perfectly safe now that all the real mediums are away. The star of the show has lost his secret weapons, but Mr. Jesperson still has plenty of tricks up his sleeves—and under the stage!” She giggled. “He’s got the trapdoor rigged. If it all goes to plan, Zeus will pronounce judgment and send Mr. Chase down to Hades. Then the police will take the visiting American conjurer into custody charged with the abduction and false imprisonment of six people.”
She gave me a little tug. “Come along, do. It’s not far. After you give your statement, we’ll come back here with the officers and see the fun.” She paused after offering me that inducement and wrinkled her nose. “Or perhaps we better not. Your Mr. J says under no circumstances are we to let Mr. Chase set eyes on you or any of the others. He’s not to be given the chance, or he might play some final trick on the police and get clean away.”
Still I resisted, frowning as I gazed up at the impressive front of the Alhambra. “What if there are mediums in the audience? There surely will be—some because they hope to pick up some new trick to use themselves, but there will be some with genuine powers, whether they know it or not, and he—”
“Oh, that’s all right. If they’re people he doesn’t know, he won’t be able to sense their power at such a distance, no more than you or I would recognize the voice or the face of a passing stranger in a crowd. He sensed your power and Fiorella’s when he met you both at Lord B’s.”
“Sensed a power I never knew I had,” I murmured and shook my head. “I still don’t know what it might be—and how can someone else use it, when I cannot myself?”
“Psychic energy,” she said promptly. “Now you know you’ve got it, you can work out how to use it. I’m so jealous, Di. I’d always thought that of the two of us, I’d be more likely to develop a sixth sense.”
“So Mr. Jesperson worked it all out.” I was impressed. Even though it had been happening to me, I had needed someone else to explain it.
“He said it was most unlikely…and he resisted the idea…but finally it was the only theory that made sense. He told me all sorts of things about the Chinese system. It’s nothing to do with spirits, apparently, or not the way our mediums explain it; instead, it’s something called chi—a sort of invisible life force that’s everywhere…Oh, I don’t understand it, but when he told me it made sense. You’ll have to ask him. He’s very clever, Mr. J. But come, we can talk about this as we walk.” She gave me a little pull, and this time I did not resist.
Mr. Jesperson had worked it all out. He was in charge now, he was very clever, he understood more than I, and I must obey his instructions. The anxious feeling that still plagued me, that urged me to turn back as we walked away from Leicester Square, was equivalent to doubt, and he did not deserve to be doubted.
But what if, for all his cleverness, he had overlooked something that could put him in danger?
The feeling nagged at me. What was I forgetting?
“Di, are you listening to me?”
“Of course.”
“You were miles away, admit it.”
“Not miles,” I objected. “Only back inside the Alhambra. I wish I could see what Mr. Jesperson is doing.”
“I am sure he would wish that,” she said warmly. “Under different circumstances. You ought to be there; you deserve to witness his triumph. But it is too dangerous. Mr. J was very clear that you and all the others who were kidnapped must stay away from the theatre. He is safe only so long as Mr. Chase has no one else to give him strength.”
As she spoke, I had a sudden, vivid mental image of the pretty, doll-like face of Mrs. Chase, gazing with adoring eyes at her husband as she lent him her strength, and witnessed his triumph on the stage below—the triumph she would ensure.
“We must go back.”
Gabrielle blinked at me, bewildered by being halted so abruptly. “Weren’t you listening? I said—”
“That Mr. Jesperson is safe only so long as there is no one else for Mr. Chase to feed upon,” I said. “What about Mrs. Chase?”
“Oh, we need not worry about her. I hear she does not go out at all.”
But I knew she would not want to miss her husband’s triumphant appearance tonight. Whatever my friends had been led to believe, and however weakened her system, I was certain that Nadezhda Chase was in the audience. Even at this moment she might be lending her powers to enable her husband to defeat his opponent.
I turned around and walked as fast as I could toward the Alhambra.
Gabrielle caught up with me. “Wait! You can’t go back!”
“I must. We both must—to get her out.”
“But…even if she is here, her husband would not dare…Mr. J said that is why she is so ill, because of how he has used her…that if he continued, it would mean her death. So he abducted—”
“Yes, and now that he has lost us, he will go back to using her; depend upon it!”
“Even knowing it might kill her?”
We had reached the grand entrance. “He won’t stop to think,” I said, pushing open the door. “By the time he does, it will be too late. We have two people’s lives to save, Gaby. I know it is a risk, but as long as Mr. Chase does not catch sight of me he need never know I am near, and I shall be careful. There is no time to waste. Hurry!”
Chapter 30
The Fall of the Gods
The foyer looked quite deserted as we entered, and I guessed that the staff, all the attendants, ushers, and ticket takers had taken the first opportunity to slip inside to see the celebrated psychic medium perform.
But just as I had allowed myself a feeling of relief that no one would try to turn us away, a young lad in an usher’s uniform appeared, looking anxious but determined as he informed us that the house was sold out and the performance already in progress.
In view of his youth, I turned upon him my most severely governess-like face and declared, “There is an emergency at Lord Bennington’s home. We must speak to him at once.”
The boy took me at my word, offering to deliver a message to his lordship.
“No, it is better if I—if we—speak to him personally,” I said. I gestured at the large and empty foyer. “Besides…you appear to be on your own here. If you go, who will watch the door?”
He agreed that he could not desert his post—but it would take him only a moment to fetch another—
“You are wasting our time,” I scolded him. “Lord Bennington would not be pleased with you for delaying us. Just tell me where to find him.”
Gabrielle put her beautifully gloved hand on mine. “I know the box,” she said. “I was one of a theatre party there not long ago.” She turned her smile on the boy, who gaped, looking quite stupefied, as we hurried away.
Mounting the stairs, I said urgently, “If Mrs. Chase is there, we must get her out. What shall we say to convince Lord Bennington? She will no doubt protest.”
“I will manage him,” she said and I could only hope
her confidence was not misplaced.
The theatre may have been sold out, but Lord Bennington’s private box had spare capacity, occupied as it was only by the lord himself, his eldest daughter, and three other ladies, one of whom was, as I had feared, the Russian princess.
No one looked around at our entry; all eyes were compelled by the drama unfolding on the stage below. The orchestra, struggling with the complete collapse of the planned program, had gone for another reprise of “The Ghost Melody.”
Within the semicircle of huge, garishly painted ancient gods, the two antagonists were spotlit: Mr. Jesperson was on his knees, head bowed before Mr. Chase who stood unsupported in the air a few feet above him, his arms folded across his chest, smiling with a loathsome smugness.
“Now you acknowledge me as your master. But that’s not much fun for our audience, is it? We must give them a proper show. Get up, sir. We must fight! You are the one who called this duel. Or will you go forfeit and be labeled a coward?”
Mr. Jesperson remained where he was for a few more moments in absolute stillness,, then rose in one graceful movement to his feet and lifted his head to look up at his challenger. How much that movement cost him, whether it was the end of a battle with an invisible force, whether Chase had forced or allowed him to stand, I had no idea.
Chase levitated higher until his feet were at the level of Mr. Jesperson’s head.
“Rise, I said—rise—won’t you face me?”
His voice steady, Mr. Jesperson replied, “I can go no higher. You appear to have the better of me.”
“Yes!” A gleeful smile. “Yes, I should say I do.” Chase pulled back his foot and, with casual, deliberate brutality, kicked his victim in the head.
There were gasps of shock from the audience, a few girlish shrieks, and mutters of disapproval. I heard a man in the next box say, “That’s not cricket!” Another: “There are ladies present.”
Although he staggered, Mr. Jesperson did not fall. He had made no attempt to avoid the kick, and now did not move away or try to retaliate. I had seen him in other fights and was well acquainted with the rapidity of his reflexes, so I knew—even if the rest of the audience did not—that he was being kept prisoner: Chase was using his stolen power to hold him there.
