The Last Illusion

I opened my eyes to pitch darkness. By the way my head was throbbing, I surmised that I had been struck on the back of the head as I . . . as I what? I tried to remember. Rain in face. Jumping . . . and then it came back to me. I lay still, hardly daring to breathe. At least I’m still alive, I thought. They must be keeping me alive for a reason. I tried to find that reassuring. Where was I? The floor beneath me was rough and cold and the place smelled damp and musty with a hint of sawdust and turpentine that made me want to sneeze. Then I remembered where I had been recently with a similar sort of smell. I was in the basement of the theater.

I moved my hands and feet experimentally. I didn’t appear to be tied up and I wondered if I was alone and had just been dumped here while the German agents made their escape. But why then had they bothered to take the time to capture me? I had obviously been brought here for a purpose, and given their past behavior, the outcome was not likely to be good. I attempted to sit up and the whole world swung around as nausea overcame me. My head was throbbing violently. I would have to wait a while before making a dash for freedom then.

As I lay back down again I heard voices coming toward me in the darkness.

“Why didn’t you get rid of her immediately?” It was a woman’s voice with a trace of foreign accent, possibly German. “What on earth made you bring her here of all places?”

“We have to find out what she knows and what she has already told Wilkie. She was living with Houdini, after all. He may have confided in her.” This voice sounded like Anthony Smith—clipped, well-bred, and arrogant. They came toward me, bearing a small lamp. I lay back and closed my eyes.

“You must have given her a good whack for her to be out this long,” the woman said. “Are you sure you haven’t killed her?”

I felt my arm being lifted, then roughly dropped. “The pulse is steady.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” the woman said, and she laughed. So Lily and Summer were present.

I wondered if I played dead any longer, they would leave me again and I’d have a chance to escape or at least hide. If I could hide for long enough the theater would come to life for the evening performance and any noise I made would attract attention. Then I remembered that the man in the trunk had presumably been killed and Houdini spirited away while a full theater watched the show go on.

“Wake her up,” the woman said. “We haven’t got all day.”

Then suddenly I was hit in the face with cold water. I sat up, spluttering.

“What’s happening?” I asked, looking around me in bewildered fashion. “Did I faint?” Then I looked around, pretended to study each of their faces in turn, and asked, “Where am I? Is this where Mr. Wilkie is going to meet me?”

“I think that’s hardly likely,” Anthony Smith said with something like a smirk.

“Then who are these people?”

“That is irrelevant,” Lily said. She held the lamp up to my face. Close-up I could see that she had light eyes that didn’t go with her dark complexion. That was why she wore the cat mask on stage. “What we need to know is how much you told Wilkie.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

She slapped me hard across the face. “Don’t be foolish. Of course you know. Wilkie is coming to New York to meet with you. You and he had a long, private conversation on a train and let’s just say that Mr. Wilkie doesn’t waste his time in idle chat. You have information he wants and obviously you haven’t given it to him yet or he wouldn’t be coming here.”

“So what exactly have you discovered?” Summer asked in a gentler tone. “We have no quarrel with you. If you tell us what you know then you can go free.”

“I hardly think that’s likely,” I said, “since you’ve already killed one, possibly two men who were on your trail.”

He laughed. “The young lady has a keen wit. I like that.”

I was trying desperately to come up with something to tell them. If I mentioned the design for the submarine device, there was nothing to stop them from going to Houdini’s house to retrieve it. As that thought crossed my mind I realized something else. They were the two so-called spiritualists who had come to Houdini’s house. No wonder my instincts had prevented them from entering. But what could I give them that might satisfy them yet not aid their cause?

“All right,” I said slowly. “For one thing, I discovered that Scarpelli has probably gone up to Boston, and that he’s somehow involved in forged money.”

This made all three of them laugh. “I’m sure that is important news,” Lily said, “but nothing to do with us.”

“He is not working with you?” I asked, my mind going to the forged banknotes.

“Not on this particular assignment.”