The Masquerading Magician

by Gigi Pandian

  In this way, the gargoyle’s unique personality became apparent, convincing Robert-­Houdin that Dorian was as much a man as any other. Robert-­Houdin was happy that some of Dorian’s preferences mimicked his own. Like his father—which is how Dorian came to think of the man who had given him life—Dorian devoured great books. Authors like Flaubert, Baudelaire, Molière, and Dumas opened up a whole new world to him. He grew into a proper French gentleman.

  Thirty-Five

  I jumped up. “Dorian!”

  The gargoyle descended the stairs with a limp so pronounced it was painful to watch. He thought of himself as a self-reliant gentleman, so I knew how much it pained him emotionally to show such physical weakness. Staying still in stone must have sped up his progression back into stone.

  As he reached the bottom of the stairs I threw my arms around him. “You escaped!”

  Tobias handled the appearance of a living gargoyle better than I could have hoped. He broke only one mug as he pushed back from the table to stand defensively. The solid oak dining chair remained in one piece as it hit the floor with force.

  “Don’t be frightened,” I said. “He’s a friend.”

  “Ah.” Tobias chuckled nervously. “Channeling Georges Méliès, are you?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “He’s not an automaton.”

  Tobias’s face clouded. “Damn, Zoe. What are you messing with? You can’t control a homunculus. Surely you know that. You need me to help you kill it? Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

  Dorian’s eyes opened wide with distress. “Zoe?”

  “Nobody is killing anyone,” I said.

  “You sure?” Tobias said.

  Dorian pinched the ridge of his snout and shook his head. “I am not a homunculus, nor am I a golem, a robot, or an automaton. I am a gargoyle.”

  Tobias stood in a fighting stance as he stared at Dorian.

  “Tobias Freeman,” I said, “meet Dorian Robert-­Houdin.”

  “A man trapped in stone?” Tobias asked, his shoulders relaxing slightly.

  “He’s a good soul,” I said. “The two of you are among the best men I’ve known in my life.”

  Tobias stepped forward hesitantly, then stuck out his hand for Dorian to shake.

  “We are not sure what I am,” Dorian said, “yet I appreciate and will accept your gesture of friendship.”

  The formerly stone gargoyle and the former slave shook hands.

  “Amazing,” Tobias said, gripping Dorian’s rough gray skin. “You didn’t think this little man was worth mentioning until now, Zoe? I thought he’d be the first thing you told me about when we walked through your door.”

  “Speaking of which—” I ran through the house to make sure the curtains were drawn and returned a minute later, breathless. “It’s no longer safe to stay here.”

  “What have you pulled me into, Zoe?”

  “We should tell him,” Dorian said to me, then looked up at Tobias. “I believe you are trustworthy, Monsieur Alchemist.”

  “You heard him praise your cooking, huh?” I said. If the gargoyle continued to use an endorsement of his cooking as a signal to trust people, we were in big trouble.

  “Mais oui. From the bannister above, I spied his reaction.”

  Tobias looked from the half-empty platter to the gargoyle. “This little fellow cooked all this? You’ve gotta give me the recipe for the oat cakes. The muffins too.”

  Dorian puffed up his gray chest.

  “Don’t encourage him,” I said.

  “You’re right. I don’t know what came over me asking about food when there’s a living gargoyle in front of me.”

  Dorian blinked at Tobias. “That makes more sense than anything that has befallen me, Monsieur Freeman. Food is the key to understanding the soul—”

  “Dorian,” I cut in.

  “Oui?”

  “Why don’t you skip the philosophy and tell Tobias what’s going on. You also need to tell me how you escaped. Did anyone see you? Do they know you’re gone?”

  The gargoyle sighed. “Americans. Always so impatient.” He flexed his shoulders, causing his wings to partially unfurl.

  Tobias’s jaw dropped.

  “Let’s get upstairs into the attic,” I said. “If the police raid the house in search of their missing statue, you can crawl out the hole in the roof to hide where they won’t find you.”

  “But I wish to go to the kitchen,” Dorian protested. “I am hungry. They did not feed me—”

  “I’ll bring food,” I said. “Tobias, can you take Dorian and this book up to the attic?”

  I joined the two of them five minutes later, carrying a platter of day-old bread along with curried hummus, sliced cucumbers, and olives. They had their heads together over the alchemy book, and Dorian was pointing at the disturbing woodcut illustration of bees swarming around dead animals.

  “No fruit?” Dorian asked, looking up.

  “He’s a particular little fellow,” Tobias said.

  “One who’s about to tell us how he escaped from police custody.”

  “The police in this town know about him?” Tobias asked.

  “Not exactly.” I briefly told Tobias how Dorian was brought to life with the backward alchemy book, then explained how he could shift back into stone at will, and that it was his stone statue form that was thought to have been used in a crime. “But what I don’t know,” I finished, “is how he found his way back here from police custody.”

  Tobias and I looked expectantly at the gargoyle as he finished eating a mouthful of bread slathered in hummus.

  A small burp escaped Dorian’s lips. “Pardon.”

  “Amazing,” Tobias whispered.

  “I do not wish to relive the humiliating ordeal,” Dorian said, “but for the sake of our investigation, I will. The first indignity was a fine powder they dusted over my whole body.”

  “Looking for fingerprints?” I asked.

  His eyes narrowed. “Oui. They did not find any. This frustrated them. They were not very nice when they carted me to a storage facility. It was from this room that I escaped.”

  “You were careful?”

  “Am I not always careful? I took care of myself long before I met you, Zoe. It took me quite some time to make all of my limbs move again after being still for so long. Once I was confident I would be able to walk, I took a blanket and covered myself, in case there were video cameras. This was shortly before sunrise—”

  “That was hours ago!”

  “Yes, I made it to my attic entrance before the sun rose.”

  “You’ve been here this whole time? Why didn’t you come downstairs?”

  “I could not get my legs to move,” Dorian said slowly, his wings wilting at his sides. “You see, Monsieur Freeman, I am dying.”

  “I’m going to find a way to save you, Dorian,” I said. “I’m getting closer.”

  “That’s why you wanted my help,” Tobias said.

  I nodded. “But now a murder has gotten in the way—”

  “A murder?” Tobias repeated. “What on earth is going on here, Zoe?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “Ah!” Dorian said. “I nearly forgot.” He scampered, lopsided, to a corner of the attic. He retrieved a gallon-size plastic bag with a shiny object inside, which he then handed to me.

  “A knife?” I said, a horrible realization dawning on me. “You took this knife from the evidence room?”

  “Oui. This is the knife used to kill Monsieur Mason. You did not wish the police to learn the secret of the alchemist, and this is his knife—”

  “He’s not an alchemist, Dorian!”

  “Pardon?”

  “I was so worried about you that I went to confront him last night.” I explained how Peter Silverman was the son of Franklin
Thorne, and that although we were right that Peter and Penelope had returned to Portland because of the discovery of the sapphire necklace, the real reason they wanted to come back was to clear Peter’s father’s name.

  “He’s just a regular guy who can’t help us with your book,” I concluded.

  Dorian’s wings crumpled. His whole body seemed to deflate, from his horns down to the stone foot that was missing its toe.

  “Why did you think this man in particular would be able to help you?” Tobias asked. “I get that you thought he was an alchemist, but it sounds like you thought he was a special kind.”

  “You did not tell him what is peculiar about my book?” Dorian asked.

  “Tell me what?” Tobias asked.

  “Perhaps,” Dorian said, “I should leave the two alchemists to discuss matters further.”

  “You’re staying right here in the attic, Dorian. And keep the knife with you. If the police come and you have to flee, take it with you. You can’t let the police find it—or you—here.”

  “So,” Tobias said, “our only chance to save this little fellow is to keep him out of sight while the two of us figure out what’s going on with his book. Shouldn’t we get started?”

  Thirty-Six

  I led Tobias to my basement alchemy lab. The light switch at the top of the stairs turned on a solitary twenty-watt light bulb. It was one of my many failsafe’s to make sure nobody looked too carefully at what I was working on in the basement. I’d removed bulbs from the other light fixtures in the basement and used a combination of kerosene lanterns and candles to light the laboratory for my work. They served the dual purpose of keeping prying eyes from easily seeing what was there, and providing the natural energy of fire that fueled my alchemy.

  I found a match and began lighting lanterns and candles.

  “How is it possible that Dorian is dying?” Tobias asked. “Isn’t he made of stone?”

  “Dorian was once a piece of stone. He was a gargoyle carved by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, as a prototype for a gargoyle on the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.”

  “Wait. Robert-­Houdin. You said that was his surname. Like the French magician?”

  “One and the same.”

  “You’re telling me that magician was an alchemist who somehow transformed himself into a gargoyle during one of his experiments? It certainly gives a whole new meaning to his being the Father of Modern Magic.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. Jean Eugène Robert-­Houdin was Dorian’s father—in a way. He was reading from a book of ‘magic’ as a prop for an illusion he was creating. He didn’t realize it was alchemy, or that it could bring a piece of stone to life.”

  “It can’t.”

  “That’s what I thought too. But you saw Dorian with your own eyes.”

  “There’s got to be something else going on with him.”

  “I think there is.” I finished lighting candles and swept my arm across the room. “That’s why I’ve resumed practicing alchemy after decades. I was planning on setting it up properly and easing into it, but Dorian sped up my plans.”

  “None of this is very stable for laboratory experiments,” Tobias commented, eying the folding tables serving as countertops. “It isn’t very secret either.”

  “The best laid plans … ” I murmured to myself in the flickering light.

  “What was that?”

  “When I bought this place at the beginning of the year, I did it with the intention of fixing up the whole house. It’s so rundown that it was the perfect cover for doing extensive renovations. I hired a jack-of-all-trades contractor to fix the roof, patch up the house, and create a true alchemy lab in the basement.”

  “So what happened?”

  “It didn’t work out.” I didn’t need to distract Tobias by telling him about how the handyman ended up dead on my front porch.

  “What you’ve got here is what you did yourself?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “In that case, you’ve done a pretty decent job.”

  “Not the world’s most ringing endorsement. I put a lot of effort into this.”

  “You know there’s still a garage sale tag on that card table. And it smells like beer.”

  “Touché.”

  “And what’s that on the ceiling?”

  I sighed. “I couldn’t get all the nettle spurs off the ceiling, so I’m pretty sure it germinated.”

  Once Tobias stopped laughing hysterically, his mood shifted. His hazel eyes flecked with gold could show great warmth, but now their brightness turned fierce. The transformation was jarring. Tobias grew more serious than I’d seen him since picking him up at the airport that morning.

  “This isn’t like you, Zoe. The haphazard nature of this lab. It’s not true to alchemy. It’s not true to you. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with that little gargoyle gourmet? What are you holding back? What’s really going on?”

  I hesitated. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words backward alchemy out loud to another alchemist.

  “This is why you’re sick, isn’t it?” His angry eyes flitted across the laboratory. “You’re practicing alchemy, but you’re not doing it right. Is he forcing you—”

  “No, it’s nothing like that.”

  “What’s going on, Zoe?”

  “This isn’t what I wanted. I haven’t practiced true alchemy in ages. You saw my trailer parked in the driveway. I was living out of it, for most of the time, since the fifties.”

  “Since we can never stay in one place for too long … ”

  “When I came through Portland, I felt such a longing to put down some roots, at least for as long as I could. For a few years at least. I thought I could at least have that.”

  “As much as I’d love to get caught up properly and discuss all the things I can’t talk about with anyone else, that’s not why you asked me here. I’ve gotta tell you, you’re even better at avoiding the subject than your stone friend. Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on with him?”

  I looked up at the nettle hooks on the basement ceiling. “Whatever is killing him, it’s only affecting his body. Not his mind. You saw his limp. He used to be able to turn from stone into flesh and back again with ease. Now it’s getting harder and harder for him to do so. But when he’s trapped in unmoving stone, he’s perfectly conscious. If I don’t figure out a way to save him, he’ll be awake but trapped in a stone prison.”

  “Damn. Not dead, but trapped in a stone coffin. That’s worse than death.”

  “I know, Tobias. I know.”

  “You two go way back?”

  I gave a weak laugh. “I only met him three months ago. He hid out in my shipping crates when I had them sent from a storage facility in Paris. The only thing he had with him was an old book.”

  “The alchemy book the magician read from?”

  “At first, I didn’t think it was alchemy.” I paused and lifted it from the bookshelf. “Non Degenera Alchemia. Which roughly translates to Not Untrue Alchemy.”

  But Tobias wasn’t paying attention. Instead, he picked up the framed photograph of Ambrose.

  “I wondered about him,” Tobias said.

  I froze. What was going on? Tobias couldn’t have known Ambrose. I hadn’t yet met Ambrose when I knew Tobias. A tickling sensation ran from my spine to my nose. “What do you mean? I know different alchemists are sensitive to different things, but I didn’t realize any of us were capable of being psychic.”

  “What’s my knowing him have to do with being psychic? We’re scientists, Zoe. There ain’t no such thing as a psychic.”

  “When I was helping the Underground Railroad, I hadn’t yet met Ambrose. You couldn’t have seen this photograph.”

  Tobias gave me a strange look, a cross between bewilderment and enlightenment. A look common to the face
s of alchemists.

  “I mean,” he said, “I knew him in person.”

  “How wonderful! So you knew him in the late 1800s, before I did? We didn’t meet until 1895. I knew he’d spent some time in America, but I didn’t realized he worked with other alchemists.”

  Tobias shook his head. “It had to have been the 1950s.” He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then nodded slowly. He opened his eyes and snapped his fingers. “1955.”

  I felt myself shiver. “That can’t be right. Ambrose killed himself in 1935.”

  Tobias gave a start, then looked intently at the photograph. “I didn’t mean to shake you, Zoe. You know that over time, faces begin to blur together. I must be mistaken.” But his words were too quick, stumbling over one another. Whatever Tobias really thought, he didn’t think he was wrong.

  Was it me who was mistaken? Was there any way that Ambrose could have survived? The asylum had shown me his body. Unless it had been an illusion. My stomach lurched. Why would they have lied? There was no reason for them to have done so.

  There had to be another explanation. Ambrose had had a son, Percival, who hadn’t taken to alchemy. But maybe Percy had fathered a child, unbeknownst to us. He had never married, but it was the kind of thing the cad would do. It must have been a family resemblance that Tobias had seen in the man he met in the 1950s. After all, that had been the case with Peter Silverman. It was the easiest explanation. Was it the right one?

  Thirty-Seven

  “Zoe, you with me?” Tobias’s voice pierced through my confused thoughts.

  “What? Sorry. I was distracted.”

  “I feel wretched that I rattled you so badly because I thought I recognized the man in the photo. I’ve seen so many faces over the years. I was wrong in this case.”

  “I know. It’s just been a long time. I miss him.” I set the frame down and turned it away. “Let’s get back to work. With your interest in alchemical codes, you might be able to shed some light on this. I had the text translated by an expert, to make sure I had a good handle on it.”