The Last Illusion

“Sure you have. The other night at the theater.” She looked across at me. “I used to know her years ago, before I met you. When I was touring.”


“When you were part of the Floral Sisters, Bess?” Harry asked.

“Of course when I was part of the Floral Sisters. Molly was a sweet little kid in those days. Her parents were in the business, isn’t that right, Molly?”

Her eyes were pleading with me to agree with her so I had no choice but to nod.

“I’m so glad we chanced to meet up again,” Bess went on. “And you know what, Harry, she’s trying to get back into the business. I thought we could help her. And now I wake up and find you’re trying to kill her.”

“How was I to know, baby?” he said sheepishly. “I see a strange woman standing over you. All I can think is that she’s come to finish off the job that she started last night. She’s come to do harm to me and my wife.”

“Well, this is my dear old friend Molly Murphy. And you better apologize to her. Look at her. You scared her half to death,” Bess said angrily. If my throat hadn’t hurt so much, it would have been funny. Bess, lying frail and tiny in her bed and Harry, whose one hand could have crushed my throat, cowering at her attack on him.

“How was I to know?” he repeated again. “I’m only trying to protect you, babykins. You know that.”

“Apologize to her, Harry.”

Houdini held out his hand. “I’m sorry, miss, but what was I to think?”

“That’s all right. I do understand,” I said. “Especially after what happened last night.”

His handshake nearly crushed my hand. This was one extremely strong man. I tried not to grimace.

“I hope I didn’t hurt you too much,” he said, still looking sheepish. “All I thought was that someone had gotten in here to kill my wife.”

“So someone has really been trying to harm you?” I asked.

“Someone sure as hell tampered with that trunk last night,” Houdini said. “I got out with no problem, the same way I always do. Those locks on top, they’re really just there for show. They should snap open real easy, but one of them wouldn’t budge.”

“I told you, Harry. Someone jammed that lock,” Bess said, propping herself up on one elbow. “And how come the only key was upstairs? What happened to the one you normally carry in your pocket? Someone was trying to kill me, right enough.”

“Someone certainly fixed that lock.” Harry nodded his head vehemently. “Just like someone tampered with that poor sap Scarpelli’s equipment on Tuesday.”

“That was awful, wasn’t it?” I said. “You haven’t heard what happened to her, by any chance, have you? Did she live? I’ve been looking in the papers but I haven’t seen a thing after that one first mention.”

He shook his head. “Everyone in the business is talking about it. No one knows what happened or where he went to. Some say he just ran off because of the shame of it, and some say that he ran off because he killed her deliberately and the cops are after him. Some guys even think he stole the body and disposed of it.”

“What do you think?” I asked.

Houdini ran his hand through his thick black curls. “What do I think? I think he was rushing to do a trick he hadn’t perfected, if you want my opinion. When he heard I was coming back to America and was going to be on the same bill, he knew he had to do something out of the ordinary. As far as I know nobody’s tried to saw a lady in half onstage since some guy did it in France years ago. And there are no records of how he did it or whether it was always successful.”

“You think it was an accident? A stunt gone wrong?” Bess demanded, her voice rising with hysteria now. “After what happened to me, Harry? Someone is out to get us. Isn’t that obvious?”

Houdini nodded thoughtfully. “That certainly was no accident last night,” he said. “Bess and me, we’ve done that stunt every night for the past nine years and never had a problem with it. It’s as easy as pie.”

“So how did Bess get into the trunk, if the lock was jammed?” I asked.

Bess looked suddenly coy. “We can’t give our secrets away. Let’s just say it wasn’t through the lid.”

“And you couldn’t get out the same way?”

“Not without revealing to the whole world how it’s done. It’s our bread-and-butter piece, you know,” Bess said.

“So you’d rather die than reveal how it was done?” I looked at her incredulously.

“I thought Harry had the key in his jacket pocket.”