The Last Illusion

Someone handed him his frock coat and he felt desperately inside. “Where’s the key?” he demanded. “It’s gone. Someone run up to my dressing room and get the spare key. Go!”


At this point a muffled voice shouted, “Harry, get me out of here!”

Bess was now inside the trunk.

Houdini summoned stagehands to help him. Bess was now pounding from inside the trunk.

“Get me out! I can’t breathe!”

“She’s already been in there nearly five minutes, Mr. Houdini.” The stage manager came to join them. “We can’t wait for the key. Bring the ax.”

One of the stagehands reappeared with an ax.

“Go carefully, that’s my wife in there.” Harry said.

The stagehand swung the ax and cracked the lid of the trunk. Houdini himself tore apart the trunk lid and finally managed to open it. He and the stagehands dragged out the velvet bag, containing what seemed to be a lifeless figure. As the neck of the bag was untied, Bess lay unconscious on the stage.

“My God, I’ve killed her. Bess, baby, honey, don’t die!” Harry shouted, slapping at her cheeks.

Bess gasped, coughed, and tried to sit up. “What were you doing?” she demanded. “Trying to kill me?”

For the second time in a week the theater manager dismissed the audience before the end of the show. A doctor was summoned. I had stood up the moment the ax was brought onstage. Now I dragged out my chair and assisted Bess to it. She sank onto it, still white-faced and gasping. Someone produced a glass of water. Harry was on his knees beside her.

“Sweetie pie, baby, I don’t know what went wrong. I swear I don’t. As if I would want anything bad to happen to you. Are you okay? My God, if they hadn’t had that ax nearby . . .”

“I can’t do this no more, Harry,” Bess said. She was crying now, her body jerking with great sobs. “I can’t live with us risking our lives every night. I want out. I want you to find another profession.”

“Are you crazy?” Harry rose to his feet now. “Just when we’re hitting the big time? Bess, baby, we’re going to be big stars. I mean really big. You want me to buy you a fancy house in New York City? A nice home in the country? Just a little longer, then you can have it. Anything you want, baby. Then I swear I’ll quit. We’ll raise chickens, okay?”

At this Bess laughed through her tears and pushed him away. “You know I hate chickens,” she said.

“Come on, I’ll take you up to the dressing room and you can have some of your calming mixture and lie down,” he said. He swept her up into his arms as if she weighed nothing and started to walk away with her. I stood watching, undecided as to whether I dared follow or not. This option was taken from me by the theater manager who fell into step at Harry’s shoulder.

“So what went wrong, Mr. Houdini?” he demanded.

“The lock jammed. Accidents happen,” Harry said, not turning back to him.

“Two accidents in a week? Are you trying to shut me down?” I heard the manager’s voice echoing in that vast backstage area.

I was left alone onstage, not sure what to do next. Clearly Bess was in no state to see me. Did this now mean I was out of a job before it started? I started to make my way from the stage, unnoticed by everyone. Just my luck that a lock would jam on the night I was supposed to be introduced as her replacement. Then I froze, standing beside a mock pillar in the backstage darkness. Had Bess had some kind of premonition that this was going to happen to her, so had she sought me out to replace her and to be suffocated instead? In which case it was indeed just my luck that the accident had happened too early.

I tiptoed out of the theater, feeling like an invisible ghost. I should make a rule for myself: never deal with hysterical women, I told myself. I remembered the last time I had been employed in the theater by an actress who had lied to me and was using me for her own ends. Was no one in the theater to be trusted? I had been misled and used on two occasions now. Which then brought another train of thought into my mind. Was what I had witnessed just another illusion? Had Bess arranged for the lock to jam so that she could have an attack of hysterics onstage and thus claim to her husband that she was afraid to perform anymore?

I realized I was dealing with a world in which nothing was what it seemed. The smartest thing I could do was walk out of this theater and not look back.





Nine