The Last Illusion

I picked up the food basket from where it had been left on the table. “I’ll put this in your kitchen then, shall I? The pork and the salad should go in the ice chest or they’ll spoil.”


He took it from me. “You’re good to me sometimes.” He leaned toward me and kissed me gently on the lips. Then he kissed me again, not so gently this time. “September, Molly. My next day off we’ll go up to Westchester and set a date.”

“Westchester?”

“You’d like to be married from my family home, wouldn’t you? It would make a lovely setting in the garden and there’s St. Benedict’s Church close by.”

“You want us to get married in the Catholic Church?”

“Well, I thought—my mother will probably expect it and we were both raised in the faith.”

“I’ll have to think about it,” I said.

We left the house together and parted with an amicable kiss. But inside my head was whirling. Did I want to get married in church after having rejected it for so long? Did I want a wedding in Daniel’s house, where it would be his family, his friends? I had pictured a wedding in the city, with Sid and Gus as my bridesmaids and Ryan looking flamboyant in a long black cape and all my other friends in attendance. But Daniel was picturing the traditional wedding in the country—at his mother’s house, no less! As I had said, I’d have to do some thinking about this.





Eleven


After I left Daniel I went straight to the theater. I didn’t expect to find the Houdinis there, but I hoped that there might be some activity at this hour and someone could tell me where they lived. The Bowery was a regular hive of activity, with women doing their morning shopping, pushcart vendors crying out their wares, and small boys dodging between carts as they played some game. The street itself was clogged with a jam of horse-drawn drays, hansom cabs, the occasional automobile, and trolley cars. The smell of fresh manure and the slops tipped into the gutters were overpowering in the sticky heat, and I was glad when I saw the theater marquee rising above the shops and saloons. The front doors were locked but I went down the alley to the stage door and found Ted, the doorkeeper in attendance.

“You again?” he said. “You keep turning up like a bad penny—and speaking of bad pennies, I’d keep well away from Mr. Irving, the manager, if I were you. He was in some fearful bad temper last night. Not only did he have to stop the show for the second time in a week, and give some people their money back, but it turned out that someone had unloaded quite a few forged banknotes on us. My but he was hopping mad.”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “So what was everyone saying about the accident last night?”

“You know theater folks—superstitious, that’s what they are. They were saying that the place is jinxed. First Lily and then Bess.”

“And what do you think?” I asked him.

“I’m not paid to have an opinion,” he said, “but if you really want to know, I think these illusionists take crazy risks and something’s bound to go wrong sometime. Give me a nice song-and-dance act any day.” He realized he was chatting with me, stopped, and frowned. “Now what did you want this time?”

“I was upset about what happened to Bess Houdini last night. I wanted to go and see her to make sure she’s all right. She quite took to me, you know. So I wondered if you could tell me where they are staying?”

He looked at me appraisingly. “I’ve been doing this job for a good while and I’ve learned a thing or two about people and there’s something about you I just can’t quite fathom out. Something that doesn’t quite add up.”

“What do you mean?” I asked innocently.

“The first time you showed up, you came back here to collect your lost shawl,” he said. “A shawl that had been used to cover a dead girl. What young lady would want her shawl back after that? Any young lady that I know wouldn’t want to touch it again, even if it wasn’t covered with blood. And then the next time you show up you’re supposedly the bosom buddy of Bess Houdini. And you know what else?” His eyes narrowed as he squinted at me. “Every time you’ve been at this theater, something’s gone wrong. So I’m thinking that maybe someone has sent you here—someone who has it in for our theater.”

“You think I might be the one who caused the accidents?” I demanded.

He shrugged. “Wouldn’t surprise me. Some of these criminal types, they’ve used pretty young ladies to do their dirty work before now. So perhaps someone’s paid you to settle a score with Houdini.”

I glared at him. “Settle a score with Houdini. Who might want to do that?”

He touched his nose in a confidential way. “Remember that affair with Risey on Coney Island? That left bad blood, didn’t it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I haven’t been in this country for long. Who is Risey?”