Magician's Fire

by Simon Nicholson

  Arthur’s eyes narrowed again. His jaw clenched, and a row of teeth bit down hard on his lower lip. Harry glanced at Billie, worried again. Artie tapped the letter in his hands, swung around, and kept marching away.

  “So what’s the next step, Artie?” Billie asked as they walked out through the park gates and cut across the street. “We’ve got the letter, but how are we going to keep you from ending up at this boarding school? Bad enough, your father acting like you don’t exist, but we definitely can’t have him sending you 452 miles away. How are Harry and I supposed to cope without our best pal?”

  “It’s all right, Billie.” Arthur slid the letter into his jacket pocket. “Now that I’ve got this, it’ll all be easy. I’ve been borrowing books from the library about forgery, copying signatures, that sort of thing. All that research will come in useful now.”

  “You’re going to write to the school calling the whole thing off?” wondered Harry.

  “Cleverer than that.” Arthur led them around a corner. “Look, I’ll let you know how it goes, but don’t worry—I’m staying around.”

  “That’s good,” said Harry. “I agree with Billie—we don’t want you disappearing anywhere, especially now there’s this stuff with Herbie to sort out.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way, Harry,” said Arthur. “After the way you were last night, I wasn’t so sure.”

  For the second time, Harry felt his face grow warm. Arthur had turned away, so Harry couldn’t quite see his expression, but his friends were talking about something—he could hear their mutterings even if he couldn’t quite make out the words. Think of something to say, something that will make it better, he told himself, and he tried to do just that, but it was difficult, and it grew even more difficult the nearer they came to the destination where they would start work on their vital task. Hadn’t Billie herself said, just a few minutes ago, that nothing mattered more than that? Harry thought again of that left-behind walking cane in the dressing room, surrounded by a few wisps of purple smoke.

  “It’s all right, Harry. I know you didn’t mean it.” Arthur tugged his friend’s sleeve and swerved to the left. “Anyway, it’s time to get started.”

  They walked a few blocks, and then across the street was the New York Library. Pillars towered at the top of wide marble steps, and Arthur led Harry and Billie up them, through a pair of huge bronze doors, and into the enormous entrance hall. It dwarfed his tiny tweed-suited figure, but there was something impressive about the speed with which he marched across the hall, his fingers clicking at his sides, his tie flapping over his shoulder.

  “I dropped in here earlier actually, checked a few things, made a good start. But I’m going to need you to draw that mustache again, Harry.”

  “No problem, Artie.” Harry followed his friend.

  “The snake and sword design too. Maybe you’ll remember something else about it this morning. Every detail counts if we’re to find out who he is…”

  Arthur led them into the reading room, with its high windows and hunched figures scribbling at desks. A swerve to the left and he pushed through a door. Scampering down a corkscrewing staircase, he led them to the library’s musty basement and started weaving his way through its maze of corridors, each one lined with thousands of books. Fingers still clicking, he didn’t hesitate even slightly as he found his way through.

  “You sure do know this library well, Artie,” said Harry.

  “Certainly spent enough time here. Remember, before I met you guys, there wasn’t exactly much else for me to do.” His voice had gone quiet. Harry peered at him in the gloom and knew that the quietness had nothing to do with the various signs saying “Silence” and hanging nearby. “Anyway, who cares about that? We’re here.”

  “I’ll get drawing,” said Harry.

  They were at the end of the corridor. A desk stood covered with carefully stacked piles of books and papers, and Harry immediately sat down at it. Pinned to the wall behind were the various drawings that he had sketched for Arthur the previous night, different attempts at the curling mustache and silver brooch. Immediately, he grabbed a fresh sheet of paper and a pencil, and started drawing again.

  Nearby, Arthur climbed a wheeled ladder and started leafing through books on a high shelf. Billie pushed the ladder along so that he could make his way through them at high speed. Harry worked away, trying to remember what he had seen with even more care. Once the drawings were done, he held them up. Billie was beside him immediately, snatching them out of his hand and springing up the ladder with them.

  “Useful,” said Arthur, studying the sketches. “I’m definitely onto something.”

  Clever stuff, thought Harry, watching his friend tear through books at an even greater speed. It was one thing to be able to spot so many details—and another to know what to do with those details. Billie was hard at work too, leaping up and down that ladder, and transporting tottering piles of books back to the desk. Sitting back, Harry gripped the pencil in his fist and wondered if there was anything else he could draw.

  The face itself? But that would be much harder than simply drawing a mustache or a snake. It would take a highly experienced artist to capture the glimmer of those eyes, the shadowiness of those features, the cruelness of that mouth, all of which had combined to make that face so unsettling. Who was that sinister, bulky figure? Harry’s grip on the pencil tightened as he thought back to that exact moment, halfway up the aisle, when he had noticed the wisp of smoke and looked up to see that piercing gaze…

  “We’re just getting started.” Billie was taking a break, sitting cross-legged on the table, her boots propped on the edge of Harry’s chair. “It’s one thing to work out who he is. But then we’ll have to figure out where he might be—he could be anywhere in New York by now!”

  “There’ll be a way.” Harry looked up at the blur of tweed-suited arms and fluttering pages high on the wheeled ladder. “We just need to let Artie do his stuff.”

  “Sure, sure.” Billie’s boots swapped places. “But there’s an even bigger thing to figure out—and that’s why. Some guy breaks into Herbie’s dressing room and makes off with him in a puff of purple smoke—why’d he do that?”

  “That’s what no one knows.” Harry lifted the pencil to his mouth and gnawed at its end. “Herbie doesn’t have an enemy in the world. They said that over and over again.”

  “Doesn’t have an enemy in the world that anyone’s heard of. But if you’ve got an enemy, you’re not likely to go around telling people, are you? Might be safer to keep it quiet.” Billie frowned. “I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’, Harry. Did Herbie ever say anything to us that might be some sort of clue? Something about his past?”

  “I’ve been thinking too.” Harry took the pencil from his mouth. “If only we’d tried to talk to him yesterday. Asked him why he was acting so odd. He’d have let something slip. I’m sure of it.”

  “I’ve got something,” said Arthur, thudding a book onto the desk.

  Gentlemen’s Fashion in Eastern Europe. Harry lifted the cover and flicked through a few pages. Various inked drawings of hats and coats. Not what Harry had expected—but Arthur was already explaining.

  “So I started with the mustache. Mustache styles are totally different the world over. As soon as you described this one to me, I knew it wasn’t from anyone brought up around here. I fetched out a load of books on fashion and barbering, and flicked though. Made a list of likely contenders and, once I had your sketch, went for the closest match. Turns out this curled, oiled style is fashionable among men in their fifties from Bulgaria, Eastern Europe.” He riffled through the book and planted a finger on a page. “Is this the mustache you saw last night?”

  There it was, the same mustache, neatly illustrated. Impressive—and already Arthur was hurrying back up the ladder and stumbling down it again with a new pile of books.

  “So the fact that he
’s a Bulgarian doesn’t get us very far on its own. But then there’s the snake-and-sword brooch, and that’s what I worked on next. It could just be a decoration obviously. But that’s unusual for men—generally, if they wear a brooch or badge, it’s because they’re part of some sort of organization and that’s the emblem.

  “Now, there are a lot of societies and organizations in the world, but ones with snakes or swords for an emblem are rare. Bulgaria narrows it down even more. I’m pretty quick at flicking through books, plus your drawings are dead accurate, Harry, particularly the one you did just now.” Another open book thudded onto the table. “The badge you saw last night is worn by members of this society, based in Gabrovo, Bulgaria.”

  Halfway down the page, a snake coiled around a sword—exactly the same as the one on the lapel the previous night.

  “The society’s official title is the Grand Gabrovo Order of Magical Illusionists.”

  A magicians’ society. Harry studied the snake. Its coils were intricate and unfathomable, just like the mystery they were trying to solve. But out of those coils, the snake’s head glared clearly, and out of the mystery, a single piece of information was glaring at him too. The man in the theater was a magician.

  Makes sense, thought Harry. Who else would be able to pull off a trick like making an old man disappear from his dressing room in a puff of smoke? A magician, and a sinister one at that. Those memories flickered again, of Herbie’s fear, of those telltale trembling signs. Harry kept staring at the snake, noticing how it curled around the sword. That wisp of smoke had curled too, in a way that was every bit as unnerving. But most unnerving of all had been that face, with its glittering eyes and its long, thin nose—long and thin as the blade of a knife…

  “Er, Harry?”

  Harry looked up. Perhaps his friends were also thinking troubling thoughts. Their eyes were wide open, their faces even a little pale.

  “I think we’ve discovered something else about that guy you saw, Harry,” whispered Billie, pointing a finger down the corridor.

  “What?” Harry turned…

  “He’s standing right there!”

  Chapter 8

  The sinister magician. The shadowy shape of the bulky figure could just be seen, framed in the doorway at the corridor’s far end. A scrawny library assistant hovered next to him, which only made the magician seem more enormous. A black cape swept down from his bulky shoulders, two huge fists hung at his sides, and those eyes glittered in the corridor’s gloom. But so far, he hadn’t looked down the corridor. He was too busy, stooped over the librarian and muttering. There was still time.

  No sudden moves. A panicky leap would cause that huge head to swivel, those eyes to glint. Harry glanced at his friends on either side of him and decided not to take any chances. His hands shot out, and he grabbed Arthur and Billie. With a single, well-judged step, he pulled them silently back into the shadows behind them, which were just dark enough to provide cover. Just like a trick. Arthur gaped, and Billie sputtered as if about to say something. Harry’s hands rose again, covering his friends’ mouths. He kept moving, guiding his friends stealthily back through the shadows until they reached the doorway at the other end of the corridor.

  “Will that be all, Mr. Zell?”

  So that was his name. After the librarian’s nervous mutter drifted through the gloom, Harry peered back through the doorway. But only by the tiniest amount, because Zell was moving down the corridor now. Dismissing the librarian with a wave of his hand, the huge magician strode toward the table at the corridor’s side where Harry and his friends had been working. He reached it and picked up one of the books that lay there, open at the page with the drawing of the snake and the sword. The magician’s eyes stared at it, then flicked about the corridor even more keenly.

  Billie pushed Harry’s hand away from her mouth. “What’s he doing here?”

  “It just doesn’t make sense!” A muffled hiss from Arthur.

  “We only bumped into him for a second, didn’t we?”

  “So how come he knows we’re here?”

  “I don’t know…” whispered Harry. “I don’t…Watch out!”

  Zell had heard them talking. The huge head snapped around, those eyes glittering straight at the doorway. Harry grabbed his friends’ arms, tugging them off down the corridor so fast that the books on the shelves blurred into one brown smear. Together, they slammed into a spiral staircase, corkscrewed up it, and slanted down another corridor, racing through the gloom.

  “He’ll head for the main entrance,” Harry gasped. “That’s the obvious way to get out. He’ll wait for us there, so we need to get out someplace else—any ideas, Artie?”

  “Not really. I know the library pretty well, but I’ve never tried to escape from it before—”

  “A door that leads outside! A window, anything! There’s got to be one!”

  “Hang on…” Arthur scratched his head as they raced along. “I think I might have seen some sort of service entrance, over on the west side.”

  “Show us!”

  Harry pushed his friend on ahead. Several more corridors, another spiral staircase, endless shelves of books, and they finally arrived at an iron door in the library’s west wall. Billie grabbed its handle and pulled.

  “Locked!”

  “Don’t worry!” Harry was already running back along the corridor.

  “Don’t worry? What do you mean?”

  Harry checked the books on the shelves and found one with a couple of notes attached to it by a paper clip. Removing the clip, he ran back to the door, peered through the keyhole, and started bending that little length of wire into a curve.

  “Been practicing, haven’t I. Any bit of stray metal can be a pick, just have to bend it right for the lock.” He gave the clip a final tweak and slid it in. “Bent the nail for the padlock yesterday, and I had to use my mouth to pick that lock. Using your hands makes it easier and—”

  A click, a ping, and they were out in the pale September light. A short flight of steps led down to the cobbled street that ran along the library’s north side. Harry and his friends toppled down the stairs, their eyes adjusting to the brightness after the library’s gloom.

  “I just don’t get it!” Billie brushed the sleeve of her smock where Harry had grabbed her. “How could he possibly know we would be at the library?”

  “Maybe he’s been following us!” Arthur was straightening his clothes too.

  “But why?” sputtered Billie. “Why would he follow three kids? And how could he have done it? I’d have spotted anyone snooping after me, you bet I would!”

  “He’s a magician. He can probably do all kinds of things.” Arthur swung around. “I say, Harry—you don’t think he might actually have real magic powers, do you?”

  “Now that would explain it!” gasped Billie. “There we are investigating him, and he pops up out of nowhere… Were there any wisps of purple smoke around him just now, Harry? Harry?”

  Harry said nothing. His heart was pounding after the run though the library, but his head was pounding too. He lifted his fingers to it. It was as if he could feel the quivering of so many thoughts flying around inside. Zell, that was the magician’s name, and he was a member of some kind of magicians’ society in Bulgaria. But what was he doing here in New York? Why was he so interested in Herbie? How had he managed, magician or not, to make the poor old man vanish from his dressing room, leaving no trace at all…

  “There he is!”

  Billie and Arthur were up ahead, peering around the corner of the library. Harry joined them and peered too. They had been absolutely right not to head for the library’s main doors because Zell was bursting out through them, that bulky head sweeping from side to side as he glanced around. But he clearly couldn’t see them because after a few more glances, he strode down the library’s marble steps toward a horse-drawn cab that was wheeling
around to meet him.

  A few muttered words to the driver, and he lurched inside, the whole vehicle tilting with his weight. The driver’s whip cracked, the horses’ hooves flung themselves against the cobblestones, and the cab rattled off. Need to be quick, thought Harry, and he leaped off the curb, his eyes flicking around as he tried to work out the best way to give chase.

  “Let’s get a cab too.” Arthur pulled open the door of a nearby carriage. “I’ll pay.”

  “To Hotel Crosby, please,” Billie said to the driver of the cab that had just pulled up. Arthur jumped inside, and she followed, tugging Harry in after her.

  “But…Hotel Crosby? Where’s that? How do you know it’s where he’s going?” Harry bounced around on the seat as their cab rattled away.

  “Easy,” said Billie. “I lip-read what Zell said to the driver. Guess I never told you the story of Sherman Jones, the tramp I bumped into when things were truly tough back on the road, down Virginia way? Sherman couldn’t hear, but he could lip-read perfectly, and he taught me how to do it too. It’s amazing what you can do if you can work out what people are saying without them knowing—explains my brief career as a mind reader at a fairground.”

  She laughed. “We were a good team, me and Sherman. Almost as good as the three of us right now.” She looked at Arthur and then, quite suddenly, at Harry. “That was a pretty good stunt we pulled off back there, don’t you reckon?”

  Sure was, thought Harry. And it was going to take many more stunts, every bit as good, if they were going to see this matter through. Three times he had spotted Zell now, and on each occasion he had seemed every bit as threatening as the time before. What was this menacing figure’s business with poor Herbie? Harry’s whole body flinched at the thought. He wound down the cab window and stared out. Down at the far end of the street, he saw Zell’s cab wheel to a halt outside a tall, drab building about ten stories high. “The Hotel Crosby,” a sign said.