Magician's Fire

by Simon Nicholson

  “Billie?”

  He swung around. Billie’s arms were crossed, and those Princess Moldo glasses glared. But even worse, for the first time Harry could remember, Billie seemed to have nothing more to say. She just stood there, wobbling a bit on her heightened shoes, the peacock feathers on her bonnet sticking out at odd angles. Then she flopped down into the nearest chair.

  “Confound it, I say!”

  Harry turned and took in the hurled umbrella and the smashed porcelain. He thought about Arthur, back on the fire escape. Enough of that in my life already… Harry could hear those words as if they were echoing around him, and he winced again. “Listen, Billie. I’m sorry—”

  He broke off when he saw the briefcase.

  “Oh, no you don’t, Harry! That’s mine!”

  It stood by a desk on the other side of the room. Boris Zell’s briefcase, the same one that Harry had seen on the bulky magician’s knee, the one with the telltale wisp of smoke. Harry was already gripping its handle. But Billie’s hand was gripping it too, her Princess Moldo spectacles just an inch away from his nose again.

  “I saw it first!” she sputtered.

  “But—”

  “Saw it the second I got in here!”

  “Well, I saw it before that! Last night in the theater! Remember?”

  Harry couldn’t let go. If anything would reveal the truth about what had happened to Herbie, it would be the contents of that briefcase. Later on, I’ll sort things out with Billie, and with Arthur too, he decided. For now, the briefcase was what mattered, and nothing else. He tried to tug it free, and tugged harder and harder still, and then wondered, too late, if that was a good idea.

  “Watch out!”

  He stumbled back. The briefcase had split open. A monkey skull, two candlesticks, and a heavy book tumbled onto the floor. But he wasn’t worried about those. He watched as a corked jar of purple powder spun out of the briefcase, slammed onto the floor, and cracked. A flash of light, the room thundered, and he was thrown straight into a wall.

  Purple smoke everywhere. Harry tasted the chemicals in his mouth again. He heard the sound of tinkling glass and knew the window had blown out. At least he had ended up in a more comfortable position this time, sliding down onto the hotel room’s rug rather than crashing into the sidewalk. Struggling up, he groped through the fumes, among which he made out Billie’s face, along with a finger pointing at him.

  “Now look what you’ve gone and done!”

  “You should have just let me open it carefully!”

  “Why? I’m the one who’s investigating this hotel room! Me—Princess Moldo, I mean.”

  “Well, at least I was right about Zell.” Harry knelt over the shattered remains of the jar. “He’s behind the explosion in Herbie’s dressing room. We know that for sure now.”

  “Don’t know too much else though.” Billie peered through the plumes of smoke. “So Boris explodes something in the dressing room—but how’d he get in there? How’d he get out again, dragging Herbie? No one saw nobody go in or out, remember?”

  It was true. Harry sniffed the smoke. That was all it was—smoke. Billie was right. It told him nothing. Zell had kidnapped Herbie, and Harry knew the magician’s motive, thanks to the telegram from Chicago. But how had he done it? That was the true mystery, and the smoke, still drifting around him, revealed nothing about it.

  The plumes swirled. And the smoke did reveal something. Harry flinched, and the smoke he had sniffed flew out of his nostrils in two little clouds. Across the room, Billie was looking alarmed too.

  There right in front of them, materializing out of the smoke, was Boris Zell.

  Chapter 15

  “You! Boy from theater!”

  The huge magician’s eyes glittered in the smoke. His accented voice boomed through the drifting plumes, making them thrash and swirl. Harry wondered if he really did have some sort of magical power. How else had he managed to appear so silently, as if summoned by the smoke? How had he managed to track Harry and his friends down at the library? But there really wasn’t time to worry about any that, because Zell, magical or not, was lunging through the smog, a burly hand outstretched, and it was time to run for it, as fast as Harry possibly could.

  “Quick, Billie!”

  No need to tell her. She was already running. Together they dodged through the smoke, ducked past the lunging arm, and tried to get through the doorway, tangling up in Billie’s billowing silk dress and peacock-feathered bonnet. A knot of arms, legs, feathers, and genuine Peruvian spectacles, they thudded out onto the corridor floor.

  “Out of my way, Harry!”

  “I’m tangled up!”

  “Bad enough you not letting no one else break into this place! Now you’re not letting no one but you escape from it neither!”

  “Just run!”

  “Don’t you tell me what to do!”

  “Run!”

  “I’m not taking orders from you no more!”

  “Run!”

  Zell’s arm swooped into the corridor. Billie scrambled along the hall, hopped onto the banister of a nearby staircase, and slid down it. She crossed her arms, and those Princess Moldo spectacles remained fixed on Harry, glaring with rage as she gathered speed.

  “Boy! You come here!”

  No time to think. Zell was nearly upon him. The burly magician had lurched through the doorway, and Harry took off in the opposite direction from Billie, racing up the corridor. He could hear heavy gasps behind him, could feel the tips of those huge fingers touching the back of his jacket, but his legs sprang to life and he flew down the corridor. He slammed into the stairwell and scrambled upward. Spiraling up the steps, he heard a door slam below and knew Boris was in the stairwell too, but he flew up the last flight of stairs to the ladder, burst through the hatch, and ran between the chimney stacks.

  He saw the roof’s edge and the tightrope stretching away, and his heart throbbed again at the thought of the walk that lay ahead—but he knew he had no choice. With a leap, he was up on the railing, a foot on the rope. He was ready. A single step would send him off on the journey across the street. He swung around for one last look at his terrifying foe.

  Zell didn’t seem quite so terrifying now. Across the roof, he was stumbling toward Harry but slowly. Sweat poured off his face, winding into his mustache and making it droop. His burly arms drooped too, sapped of strength. Tottering, he gripped a chimney stack to keep himself upright.

  “You were there that night!” He pointed feebly at Harry. “The Wesley Jones Theater… Maybe you saw something… Help me…”

  “Why would I help you?” The words just flew out. “You—you’re behind it all! The smoke, the explosion, everything! You’re the one who kidnapped Herbie.”

  A mistake. Harry’s lips clenched tight. But it was too late. The words were already trembling through the air, and now Zell would know how much had already been discovered. Better get on with the escape. He turned back and took his first step along the rope but then froze as he heard Zell’s next words.

  “Kidnap Herbie? Why would I do that? Why would I do anything of the sort to a man who is my oldest, dearest friend?”

  Harry toppled. His feet fumbled and slipped.

  And he fell straight off the rope.

  Chapter 16

  Harry’s hand caught the rope as he dropped. He jerked to a halt and hung there, dangling. But his grip was already weakening. He stared down and saw his feet swaying over the far-below street. He stared up and saw his fingers steadily losing their hold, the strength draining from them one by one…

  He flew up through the air. A burly hand had circled his wrist, and he was being hoisted up onto the roof. He collapsed in a heap and looked up to see Boris Zell releasing his wrist and sinking onto the roof too, looking more exhausted than ever. Harry tried to scrabble away.

  “You’r
e lying! Herbie’s my friend! Not yours!”

  “Believe what you like…” The heavily accented voice was a feeble gasp. “What do I care? You were my only clue, boy… But I was mistaken. I see that now…”

  “Me? Your…clue?” Harry kept scrabbling, but his back was against the rail at the edge of the roof.

  “The boy must have something to do with it, I think… Herbie disappears, and the next day I see a boy who was at the theater when I visit a library… Strange, I think…”

  “Not really! We had every reason to go to the library. We needed to find out information about you, didn’t we? How come you were there—that’s the strange thing!”

  “I went to look up books about disappearing acts.” Zell shrugged. “I cannot understand how Herbie was snatched away… I think maybe a book will tell me…”

  Not a bad answer, thought Harry. The library would be full of such books. It might have been clever to have looked at a few himself.

  His eyes kept darting around, searching for a way to escape. There were plenty of other things that needed explaining, and they would need answers every bit as good.

  “Who cares about the library? What about the jar of purple smoke powder in your briefcase? The same purple smoke that went off that night in Herbie’s dressing room.” Harry jabbed an accusing finger. “Explain that, Boris Zell!”

  Zell said nothing. He just crouched there, still recovering his breath. His mustache drooped even more forlornly. He wasn’t to be trusted. Harry was sure of it.

  “Purple smoke?” Boris sighed. “The Magician’s Fire, you mean. Very well, I shall explain it. It is a simple enough device. A powder that, when thrown to the ground, explodes into smoke—useful for magicians who wish to hide something from their audience. Other powders do this, but the Magician’s Fire is a variety I mix myself to achieve the attractive purple color of the smoke.” He struggled up. “It is not so dangerous, boy.”

  True enough, thought Harry. He himself had just been caught in an explosion of it, and it hadn’t done any harm. It had just thrown him against a wall, smashed out a window, and clouded things up a bit. Clouded things up like Zell was doing now, perhaps? Remembering something, Harry pulled from his pocket the telegram from Oscar P. Munz, owner of the Chicago theater.

  “So, maybe the smoke isn’t dangerous. But it still belongs to you. And it blew up in Herbie’s room when he disappeared! How come something only you own ends up there that night?” He waved the telegram. “And listen, I may not know how you kidnapped Herbie, but I know why. This tells me, plain as day.”

  “Does it?” Boris stared at the telegram. Those cruel eyes, Harry noticed, bulged with a watery sheen.

  “It’s from the next theater you’re playing, in Chicago. It says you have agreed to perform Herbie’s tricks there. Bicycling over Spikes! The Flying Knives! Spider up Sleeve! You kidnapped him to get the secret of those tricks. You’ve got him hidden somewhere, your prisoner, until he tells you what you want to know.”

  “We will talk about this one thing at a time, yes?” Zell stared intently at Harry. “First, purple smoke. Why was it in Herbie’s dressing room? The answer is simple, boy. I had given it to him just an hour before. A whole jar of Magician’s Fire. A gift from me, Boris Zell, to my dear old friend.”

  “Gave it to him?”

  “Twenty years I have known Herbie Lemster!” Zell said. “We meet backstage in a Prague theater when I was a penniless young magician. For a few weeks we travel together, him teaching me all he knew. ‘Dear Mr. Herbie,’ that is what I call him then, and that is what I call him ever after, whenever we meet again over the years that come, as we travel the roads of Europe. In theaters, in city squares, on platforms waiting for trains—we see each other and ‘Dear Mr. Herbie,’ I always say to him, and he always shakes my hand, he always smiles! To be traveling magician, it is not always easy, boy, and what greater comfort than a friend!” Boris hunched weakly. “But our meetings were not to last.

  “About three years ago, I notice it—I had not seen Mr. Herbie for a while. Another month goes by, then another, then a year—I ask myself, where is he? Is he ill? Does he perform magic no longer? I have no address for him, nor he for me. We are magicians of the road, with no home to our name. I tell myself, I have lost my friend forever!”

  Boris wiped the tears from his mustache. “But my life goes on. My travels continue. In hope of finding Herbie, I journey further. To Moscow, St. Petersburg in the north. To Constantinople in the south. More years go by. Like many magicians, I buy ticket for America, to continue my travels there. I come to this city of New York, arriving just three days ago…”

  Interesting story, thought Harry. Believable too—not least because of the speed at which it had flown from Boris’s mouth, no hesitation or stuttering at all. Besides, a piece of information had caught his attention, a piece of information that, if true, might make this whole business very different indeed. Harry leaned closer and listened with care.

  “I check into this hotel,” Boris continued. “I try to think how to set up business in this new country. I make telephone calls, I send telegram—yes, I will explain that, I promise.” He pointed at the telegram in Harry’s hand. “I make plans to tour Pittsburgh, to Buffalo, to Toronto, to Chicago. All day work, very hard. But then, at four o’clock yesterday afternoon…” For the first time, a smile appeared on Boris’s face.

  “I pick up a newspaper in the hotel lobby. Just by chance, you understand. I open it, and there is an advertisement for some Wesley Jones Theater. It lists acts—a strongman, dancers, so on. And there at the bottom, I see his name! Herbie Lemster, magician. Dear Mr. Herbie, who I lose for so long, is here! I read his name! I throw newspaper in air! I go and find him. I look him up.”

  “When exactly was that?” Harry walked over to Boris.

  “Yesterday! Six o’clock. Just before evening show. I went to the stage door and asked for him, but they told me that he was busy. But no matter, I go ahead with my plan anyway.”

  “Your plan?”

  “My plan to work with Herbie Lemster. No more meetings on road. We shall travel that road together! I write this to him in a note and leave it for him. I shake when I write, I am so excited! I say we meet after show. I leave a jar of Magician’s Fire too—a gift for dear Mr. Herbie. Then I go watch. I shake when I see Herbie again—I remember what good magician he is. But more, what a good friend he is. He and I, we will make success together, I know it! Show ends and I go to wait at stage door but then—BOOM! Magician’s Fire explode! Herbie disappear!”

  It makes sense. Every bit of Boris’s story fit neatly with what Harry knew. He spotted the snake on the burly man’s cape, catching the sunlight. A brooch, that’s all—for the Order of Gabrovo. Most magicians in Europe probably belong to a society of some kind. Looking down, Harry noticed that the telegram was still in his hands, and he studied it thoughtfully.

  “So the telegram from Chicago…”

  “Ah yes.” Boris took the telegram from Harry. “You think it strange that I say I can perform these tricks. You think, because they are Herbie’s, that I must steal them to make them my own? But why would I need to do such a thing? Herbie train me, remember? He teach me these tricks, one by one! He make me watch him, night after night, and bit by bit I spot things, work things out. It is the ‘great game of magic,’ Herbie says. These tricks, I have performed them all my life! Why wouldn’t I write about them in telegram to Chicago?”

  Harry scrunched the telegram into a ball and tossed it away. Everything he had thought about this business had turned out not to be the case, and he felt his face warm with a blush. But he stood up and walked around, letting the rooftop breeze cool him. No point in worrying about any of that. Apart from anything else, he had already spotted a whole new way of investigating the affair. His thoughts turned again to that little bit of information Boris had revealed just a few minutes ago.


  “Mr. Zell, you say you lost touch with Herbie about three years ago?”

  “Why yes! Three years ago, yes!”

  “Before that, for nearly twenty years, you saw him every few months?”

  “Yes! In theaters. In city squares. In—”

  “And during all that time, you and Herbie—you were in Europe?”

  “Yes! I already say this!”

  “Not America, then?”

  “No! Berlin, Paris, Prague…only Europe! Why you ask this? And why you walk like that?”

  Harry was pacing circles around Boris. He regarded him from every angle, and he considered what the magician had said from every angle. It was the clue he needed, the telltale bulge, the tiny twitch that would give the whole trick away. He thought it through. According to Boris, Herbie Lemster had been working as a magician in Europe until just three years ago. Harry saw no reason to disbelieve him. It fit with everything else he said. But it didn’t fit with something someone else had said, and that someone was…

  Wesley Jones.

  Wesley Jones, owner of the Wesley Jones Theater. The plump gentleman had said that Herbie had been working happily for his theater here in New York for the last ten years. “Why, I count him as one of dearest friends!” Harry thought back to that conversation in the theater owner’s office. He remembered it quite clearly. He was sure of that.

  “Boy? You make me dizzy!”

  Harry was pacing even faster. Boris had become a blur, but he wasn’t thinking about the magician anymore. He was thinking about every word he had heard as he crouched polishing those twenty pairs of shoes. How distressed the theater owner had seemed. How bewildered by what had taken place.

  How forcefully he had said, several times, that he and his stage manager cared deeply for the performers at their theater, how they were even installing a new plumbing system for their comfort. And, most importantly, how one performer, Herbie Lemster, had been so happy at the theater that he had worked there for ten years—which now turned out to be untrue.