The Last Illusion

“Bess said that strange men have been coming to your house,” I ventured, taking this further. “Making what sounded like threats. And at the theater one night I overheard you talking to a young man—well dressed, light hair. Clearly didn’t belong in the theater and the doorman had no idea how he got in.”


“Oh, that.” He stopped abruptly, then he shook his head. “That was something quite different altogether.”

I decided to take the risk. “It sounded to me as if he might have been delivering a threat from his boss.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “I want to meet with his boss. I had hoped to do so by now but there has been no time. I can’t think why—” Then he gave me an exaggerated smile, took my hand, and patted it.

“So let’s assume that all will be well. Only one more night here, then new theater, new show, new people.”





Seventeen


I woke on Sunday to a lovely morning—not too hot, blue sky, exactly the right sort of day to spend in the country or on the seashore. That thought prompted another one. Coney Island. As a detective, did it behoove me to take a trip to Coney Island and ask questions about the infamous Risey and his threat to get even with Houdini? Much as I hated to go back to that place because it was connected with such horrific memories, I decided that today would be the day to do this. It would be crowded with city workers escaping from the heat and toil of the city. So I put on an inconspicuous shirtwaist such as a factory worker would wear and off I went to catch the trolley across the Brooklyn Bridge.

The trolley and then the train to Coney Island were packed and I regretted that I had ever had such a foolish idea. Memories came back to me of the time I’d had to find a killer lurking in the funfair and had had a nightmare experience in a freak show. I found that I was sweating and not just from the heat. Did I really want to go through with this? However, when we descended at the terminus the crowd streamed toward the amusement parks and the beach and I felt my spirits lifting a little. The sea was sparkling, everyone was having a good time, and what’s more, a new amusement park had sprung up since I was there last. I could hear screams and laughter as fairgoers were swung around on the new rides.

I tried to remember where the Cairo Pavilion had been, then did remember—along a street called the Bowery, after the well-known thoroughfare in the city. It was a shady kind of place with legitimate amusements side by side with girlie shows, bars, and dance halls. I was propelled along with the crowd, my hand firmly on my purse because the place was notorious for pickpockets, and came to the Arabian arch that led to the Cairo Pavilion. I recalled that the fire-eater had stood outside it, luring in the crowds, and to my surprise, there he was.

“Step right up, ladies and gentlemen!” a voice was shouting through a bull horn. “All the wonders of the mystic East—ride a real camel, take a forbidden peek inside a harem . . .”

The man who had been introduced in the theater as Abdullah ran a firebrand along his bare arm, making a passing girl scream and grab on to the young man she was with. The fire-eater glanced in her direction, then he spotted me and his dark eyes flashed recognition.

“Hello,” he said. “Didn’t expect to find you here. You with somebody?”

I was surprised to find he spoke with a New York accent. I didn’t like to admit that I was there alone. “I’m supposed to be meeting some friends,” I said, “but I don’t know how I’m going to find them in this crowd.”

“I get a break in a few minutes,” he said. “Stay around and I’ll buy you a soda.”

“All right.”

This was working wonderfully—maybe too well to be true. Daniel had told me over and over that a good detective never goes anywhere alone and never without telling someone where he is going. I, with a detective agency of one, had to work alone all the time and consequently had gotten myself into too many difficult situations—including one in this very place. But I couldn’t pass up a chance to interview someone who had appeared on the scene right before Houdini’s act went wrong, and a soda fountain, in the middle of a crowd could hardly be classed as dangerous, could it?

I waited out of the sun beside a shooting gallery, watching young men trying their hardest to impress their lady friends by shooting down a row of ducks. The crowd surged past me—working girls from the factories, courting couples, families with excited children—all making the most of a day out of the heat and oppression of the city. But the waiting also gave me time to think. My own memories of this place were so tinged with horror and regret that I began to wish I had never come here. In fact I was just deciding that I was acting stupidly and should go home when Abdullah appeared from the Cairo Pavilion and came to join me.

“So your name is Molly, is it?” he said as we walked down the Bowery together. “I heard the announcer say it.”

“That’s right. And is yours really Abdullah?”