“Failed trapeze artist? But Wesley Jones said he was a successful one who injured himself years ago.”
“He injured himself trying to outdo all other performers.” Herbie glanced fearfully around the gloom. “Fell from the trapeze and damaged his left leg beyond repair—but that doesn’t mean the rest of him isn’t strong and fit. Every one of Arnold’s limbs, apart from that left leg, harbors a trapeze artist’s strength—a strength gone wild from frustration at his thwarted performer’s ambition.” The voice kept going, a tangle of whimpers and sobs.
“Unable to thrill audiences any longer, he nurses a profound hatred of anyone who can. If any of us dares step out of line, Wesley sends Arnold to their dressing room, and they quickly regret it. As for any of us who dares to go near another theater to discuss possible work—why, Arnold finds out and the regrets are more pitiful still! The sorry offender is dragged down to this terrible place…with its terrible words…”
“Words? What do you mean?”
“Why, the motto Wesley snarls at us, his enslaved performers, every day.”
A terrified finger pointed up. Harry looked up at the iron letters on the cage. They gleamed in the candlelight, and now he could make them out quite clearly. “What’s yours is mine and always shall be.” Harry stared and remembered hearing those words trembling through Herbie’s dressing room window as the mysterious intruder grappled with the spindly old man. His fingers tore at the intricate knots with even greater speed.
“Wesley’s control is total. Like a gangster, his menaces hold us in line. I tried to shield you from it, Harry. Why else do you think I never let you backstage? Or met you after a show at the stage door? Were you to have accidentally discovered Wesley’s secret…why, who knows to what lengths Wesley would go to protect himself? I would never have even befriended you were it not for the memories you, a budding young trickster, brought back to me of happier times…” Herbie’s words gasped on.
“For years I suffered this grim existence. I wasted my talents on Wesley’s brutal stage. A couple times, I tried to find other work in New York but Arnold found me, and my punishment was swift—four days down here the first time, a week the second. Once, I even tried to flee the city, but both times Arnold snared me before I even reached the train station, and I was down here for another week. After that, I resigned myself to working at Wesley Jones’s cruel theater forevermore.” His head sank, gray hair trailing. “That was until late yesterday afternoon when…”
“Your old friend Boris Zell left you a letter.” Just one knot left.
“A miracle! Normally, Arnold checks all letters, but Boris, purely by chance, had tucked the letter inside a parcel containing a jar of his Magician’s Fire, a gift to me. Arnold tore open a bit of the wrapping, assumed it was merely equipment, and let me have it. And indeed, a jar of Magician’s Fire was a most welcome gift, but it was the letter, and the offer in it, which caused me most delight.” Feebly, Herbie looked up.
“The thought of returning to the freedom of a life on the road again with my dear, old friend Boris by my side…why, it awakened hopes and desires that I simply could not contain. Despite Wesley, despite that tyrannical trapeze artist, I foolishly decided to risk it all one final time…”
“You decided to escape after the performance last night!” Two fingernails gripped the last loop of knot. “Was that why you looked so strange when we saw you before the show? You must have just received Boris’s note! You were trembling and pale and…”
“Of course I was! I was terrified! But I was also determined, fool that I am. I packed my bags. I didn’t say a word to a soul. I cleared my room of all props and equipment I might need to take with me. My feeble hope was to sneak out through the front of the theater while Arnold was distracted at the stage door. He always liked to show off there with Wesley after a performance—”
“But Wesley sent him up to find you! So…” Just a couple strands remained, but they were stubbornly intertwined. “But I was watching your dressing room. I saw what happened! And the man I saw with you was big, Herbie. Not thin like Arnold.”
“The slant of the light, boy.” Herbie shook his head. “Any decent magician would tell you that a shadow cast upon a window is far larger than its source. No, it was Arnold all right. He burst in just as I was about to leave—the trapeze artist’s grip had me once again!” More tears trickled along the wrinkles. “I was forced to the ground, and I heard him scream his master’s words…”
“What’s yours is mine and always shall be! You remember that, Herbie Lemster!” Harry repeated the words as his fingernails worked the final strands.
“He forced me to the floor! Desperate, I thought of all I would miss, of a life with my dear friend Boris. The sheer misery gave me the strength to fight back the only way I could. With—”
“Boris’s jar of Magician’s Fire! You threw it at Arnold. It exploded and—”
“Smoke everywhere! The window shattered! Arnold was thrown to the ground and knocked his head, and for a few seconds, I thought I might be free. What madness!” The tears overflowed the wrinkles, seeping across Herbie’s face. “But even through the purple mist, he found me. Out of my dressing room I was bundled—”
“And the other performers saw you. Of course they did!” The final strand broke loose, and the ropes slithered away. “But they were too terrified to say anything. They knew the same thing would happen to them.”
“Along the corridor, into Wesley’s office…” The last remnants of strength faded from Herbie’s voice. “Down, down, down here…”
It all made sense. Harry hurled the ropes away. No magical disappearance—just the brutal bundling of a feeble old man down a corridor. Bruno the Strongman and all the others had sworn they hadn’t seen a thing, but only because they were as terrified as Herbie. As for everyone who had searched the theater—who would have thought to look beneath the mantelpiece in Wesley Jones’s office or have had fingers nimble enough to detect that hidden switch? Weak from being tied so long, Herbie slithered off the chair into the water. Harry grabbed the old man’s arm, pulled him up, and together they stumbled out of the cage.
“Don’t worry, Herbie. I’ll rescue you!”
“But how? How will you do that…”
“I’ll get you out of here for a start!”
“All on your own? But…what about young Billie? And Arthur? They are waiting to help, perhaps?”
“Not really…” Harry realized that, for some time now, he hadn’t had the slightest thought of his friends.
“But why? You are always together, the three of you!” The old man’s voice sounded strangely hysterical. “You don’t mean to say you came here alone?”
“Well, yes…”
“At least tell me they know where you are. You told them, didn’t you?”
“I don’t think so…”
“Stop right there, shoeshine boy!” said a familiar voice.
Harry looked up even as Herbie slithered out of his grasp and dropped back into the water. There, standing at the bottom of the stairway, were Wesley Jones and Arnold.
Chapter 20
Everything Herbie had said about Arnold’s strength was true. With a single lopsided stride, the stage manager was on Harry, his spindly limbs locking him in a hold. Harry fought back, but every move was blocked by a steely hand, and he realized that he was upside down, the water and the iron steps flying underneath him as he was effortlessly carried up the stairs. A flash of light and he was back in Wesley’s office. The slam of a cupboard door and it was dark again.
“Thought you’d help out ol’ Herbie, did ya? And all the other no-good performing folk who work here, I’ll be bound! Well, you ain’t doing no such thing. Me and Mr. Jones, we’re who decides what goes on around here. Now don’t you say a word, boy!”
A bony hand over Harry’s mouth made sure of that. Arnold had slammed himself in the
cupboard too, but his face could just be made out in the gloom, those normally wide-open eyes tightened into narrow slits, staring furiously. Harry stared back. His heart was pounding faster than he had ever known. It felt like a knife, jabbing into him with every beat.
Billie and Arthur. He saw them, their blurred faces as they tumbled together down the fire escape. Desperately, his mind flew back over that strange, muddled conversation again, thinking of every word that had been spoken, of every tiny gesture that had been made. Had he said anything about where he was going? No, nothing at all. As far as Billie and Arthur were concerned, he was just off on another bit of the investigation. They would have no idea…
That he needed their help very badly indeed.
“I daresay you know I ain’t been so pleased with you, Herbie.” Footsteps, and Wesley’s voice was heard through the cupboard door. “A day in the Punishment Chamber tends to make people aware of how I see ’em.”
“Yes, Mr. Jones…” Herbie’s broken voice managed a few words.
“But I never stay in a funk for too long.” A well-oiled clunk as the mantelpiece swiveled shut. “That boy wasted his time in so many ways. I was always intending to release you around now. Why, I need my star act to take the stage again…don’t I?”
The thud of a plump fist on a desk. From Herbie, a wheeze.
“Yes, Mr. Jones! Of course!”
“Now, that boy. Friend of yours, is he?”
“Yes…”
“He’s going to have a lucky escape. As we speak, that very boy is running as fast as he can down the street outside, our stage manager right after him. Arnold’ll give him a fair licking, but he’ll let him go. ’Course he will. Friend or not, I don’t think that boy’s gonna be troubling us again, do you, Herbie?”
“No, Mr. Jones… Thank you…”
Herbie’s voice was a gasp of fear but also of relief. But Harry knew something far worse than a licking was in store for him, and he fought against Arnold’s grip with even greater force, his heart jabbing so hard that his eyes watered with pain. His muscles strained, his limbs tried to wriggle their way out of Arnold’s grip, and his mind was wriggling even faster, going through those last moments on the fire escape.
They won’t even have been surprised, he thought. It’s not as if they’re not used to me running off, is it? In the cupboard’s darkness, Harry felt his face burn again as he thought of everything that had happened. The hurled umbrella. The smashed pieces of porcelain. Worst of all, Arthur’s outburst on the fire escape. “Enough of that in my life already…” Harry shook his head from side to side, but the memory of those words stayed in there, painfully lodged.
The cupboard door flew open. Herbie was gone, and Harry was out of the cupboard, Arnold’s trapeze artist limbs still wrapped around him. The mantelpiece slid open on its hinges. Harry fought, but Arnold bundled him back into the dark. The candle stub flickered, the black water rippled, the cage door slid shut with Harry inside. He flung himself against the iron bars. He pried at the lock. His eyes flicked about, his fingers twitched, as a tiny part of him wondered if he could play that little game, the one where he searched out some stray bit of metal, one that he could bend into the correct shape to pick a lock. But he wasn’t going to find any bit of stray metal, was he? Not trapped here in a water-filled cage. Staring at the spiral staircase, he saw Wesley Jones making his way down, rotating his pink top hat between his thumbs.
“The Punishment Chamber is my usual name for this place.” Wesley was at the foot of the stairs. His face was as plump as ever, but the lips were slightly apart and the teeth behind were surprisingly sharp. “You interfered with my theater, boy. Do you have any idea how hard it is, running a theatrical establishment in this city? Many would say I manage things the only sensible way.”
“You told me Herbie was happy!” Harry heard a voice ring out, unusually high-pitched, and could hardly believe it was his own. “You said he was a friend of yours for ten years! You said he and all the other performers love working here but—”
“Sure, I lied.” The lips revealed a few more teeth. “You haven’t been in New York very long, have you?”
A lever clanked. Arnold was next to the foot of the stairs, knee-deep in water, and he was tugging a lever while making various adjustments to it with one of the wrenches from his leather bag. Another clank and water flooded out of the various pipes that sprawled around the room’s clammy walls. Churning, the black water began circling the cage. And it wasn’t just circling, Harry noticed.
It was rising.
“You didn’t really believe that you, a mere boy, could bring down the Wesley Jones Theater?” The pink hat twirled once more. “A theater which I, an experienced vaudevillian, have engineered to operate with precision. Patiently, expertly, I have broken my performers’ spirits, while carefully preserving all that makes them so valuable, namely, their skills. Less a theater, more an ingeniously assembled machine—and I am powerfully proud of it. The idea that you could bring such careful work crashing down is absurd.”
“I’ll tell everyone what you’re doing!” Harry heard that high-pitched voice again.
“Well, yes, that might bring it all crashing down.” Wesley put his head to one side, as if finding the idea genuinely intriguing. “But my point still stands because there is no chance whatsoever of you doing that, shoeshine boy.” He nodded at Arnold. “The second lever, Arnold.”
“Right away, Mr. Jones!” Arnold held up another wrench, loped up the stairs, and went to work.
“As I mentioned before, the Punishment Chamber is my usual name for this contraption.” Wesley turned back. “Every now and then, however, a different title is needed. Wesley’s Whirlpool, that’s what I call it then.”
Halfway up the stairs, Arnold grabbed another lever. He twirled the wrench, loosened a bolt, and crunched the lever down. The whole staircase shuddered, and in the middle of the swirling, rising water, the cage shuddered too.
“I never liked that boy, Mr. Jones!” Arnold dropped the wrench back into his bag, sneering. “Remember how he talked to me about being such a great fan of the theater? Dreams of being a performer himself, I’ll be bound.”
“Ah, but it is one thing to dream of a life upon the stage, and another thing to achieve such a life!” Wesley nodded. “Or, in the case of this boy, to hang onto any life at all.”
The cage was still shuddering. The bars were throbbing, and when Harry gripped them, they turned his fists to white blurs. Something directly under his feet thudded, and the cage began to grind downward.
“Now, I daresay, theatrical fellow that you are, you are expecting this machine to be a spectacular one. A fanciful contraption against which you can pit your wits—deadly piranhas or electric eels, perhaps? I’m sorry to disappoint you. This machine is merely a plumbing device.” Wesley headed back up the stairs.
“All theaters, no matter how carefully run, require occasional cleaning. Once in a while, they get clogged, if you like, by an unwanted item, a foreign body—something that needs to be flushed out. You, my boy, are such an item, and Wesley’s Whirlpool is the plumbing tool that will flush you away, while Arnold and I attend to a far more important affair—the preparation of this evening’s show.
“The cage you are in is moving downward and the water, you will have noticed, is swirling upward in whirlpool-like style. I am sure you understand the result regarding yourself. Afterward, sluices will open, and this room and all its contents—including those that remain in the cage—will sweep straight out to the Hudson River and flow away from this great city of ours toward the sea.”
“You can’t do this!”
“Is that what you think? You really haven’t been in New York for long.” Wesley returned his hat to his head. “Nor, by the process I have just described, will you be for very much longer.”
He trod up the stairs and, together with Arnold, disappeared in
to the gloom.
Chapter 21
Harry flung himself at the bars. He pulled at them and kicked them, but the cage kept grinding steadily down. Think of something. He watched the cage’s lock sink below the surface, ducked down, and peered at it in the watery darkness. Was there a chance, the ghost of a chance, that he might be able to find some bit of metal after all? Something to bend into a pick? Impossible. The only metal was the cage itself, welded and bolted together.
Beneath its base, Harry made out a steadily turning iron cog, its teeth levering the contraption downward. Reaching through the bars, he tried to stop it with his fingers, but the teeth tore through his skin, and a trembling bubble flew out of his mouth, a shout of pain. He burst back to the surface, his hand bleeding. His body cold and numb, he could no longer feel his heart jabbing. He just shuddered as it slammed against the inside of his chest.
Billie and Arthur. He saw their faces again, hovering in the blackness. What would they be doing now if they had any idea what was happening? he thought, and he knew the answer immediately. Despite everything, they would be racing across Manhattan and making up a plan, and it would be a good one too. He could see them now, their determined expressions, and he could hear their voices…
He heard other sounds as well, the clatter of plates and spoons, and even more strangely, he felt a patch of warmth on each of his hands, even as they gripped the icy bars. He saw his friends again. They were at a table now, the one in that grimy diner, crumbs of chocolate sponge cake scattering on the cloth. Billie and Arthur were holding each other’s hands, and they were holding the hands of their other friend, the one across the table…
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