The Last Illusion

He actually laughed this time. “Those two are on this train with us returning to Washington. No, it will be a new man, one you’ve never seen before. It doesn’t do to leave operatives in one place for too long. The opposition is too darned clever.” He paused, looking at me long and hard. “I won’t say there isn’t some degree of danger involved. But we hope that you are only seen as a friend of Bess Houdini, keeping her company. And the house will be guarded, as it is possible that someone may try to break in if they think there is something vital to be found there.”


“They did try to break in once,” I said. “Bess told me that Houdini scared a burglar off.”

“I rather wish the brother hadn’t gone back to Atlantic City,” Wilkie said. “He was a male presence in the house. An extra defense.”

“You will check into him, won’t you?” I said. “Just to put my mind at rest that he wasn’t the one working for the other side?”

“You’re saying that I should pay attention to your feminine intuition?”

“Nothing of the sort,” I replied hotly. “Just that you should pursue all suspects.”

“Spoken like a true detective. I can see that Sullivan has trained you well.”

“Indeed he hasn’t trained me at all,” I retorted. “In fact he’s desperately against my being a detective. Everything I know I’ve learned the hard way, and I still have a lot more to learn.”

“I think you’ll do splendidly,” he said.

“So does Captain Sullivan know about our meeting?” I asked. “Does he know that Houdini was working for you as a spy? Is that why you really came to New York when I met you at his apartment the other day?”

“He knows nothing of it,” Wilkie said. “And I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention your meeting with me to him. Not that I don’t trust him, of course. Splendid fellow. Sound as an oak. But in these cases, the fewer people who know the facts, the better. He is searching for Houdini, which is good, but I rather fear that he’ll not find him, or that his body will turn up weeks from now, probably quite unidentifiable.”

“Oh, dear,” I said. “Poor Bess.”

He nodded. “It will be hard for her, I agree. And it’s always harder not knowing, isn’t it? I’m glad you’re returning to her today. You can provide comfort as well helping us.”

I plucked up courage to mention something that had been going through my head, but that I hadn’t dared to ask before. “I don’t want to sound crass, but am I to be paid a fee for my services or am I supposed to be doing this for the good of the country?”

Wilkie threw back his head and laughed. “I do like you, Miss Murphy. You have none of the usual female sensibilities. Find us what we’re looking for and there will be a handsome fee.”

“Do you have any idea at all what you’re looking for?”

He shook his head. “None whatsoever. All we know from Houdini was that he’d discovered something important in Germany and that he wouldn’t share his news with anyone but me. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but I don’t know whether this was information or something of substance like papers or drawings that he wanted to hand over.”

“You’re not giving me much to go on,” I said.

“All I can say is that some of the information may be contained in a magazine article he was writing. It may, of course, have been all in his head, in which case it is lost to us, but I suspect he’ll have wanted to show us some kind of proof. Now, these are the magazines I want you to look for.” And he opened his briefcase.

“Magazines?” I took them with interest. Conjurers’ Monthly. Mahatma magazine. The Dramatic Mirror. “I’ve seen these before. There were piles of them in their bedroom.”

“You have searched their bedroom?” He looked impressed, or was he amazed at my cheek?

“This morning. I wanted to see if there was any clue as to where Houdini might have gone. The police suspect that he was part of the murder plot, you see. And I rather thought that he and his brother might have planned it between them. I suspected it was a way to get rid of someone who was bothering them—threatening or demanding money, maybe. As you can see, we were all barking up the wrong tree.”

“So there are magazines in his bedroom,” Wilkie said. “But it’s not an old magazine I want. Those I have. Those we have been through with a fine-toothed comb. I need a new article he might have been writing. One that has not yet been published. Or his notes.”

“If he had such vital information for you, why didn’t he just telephone you?”

Wilkie laughed. “Telephone me? My dear Miss Murphy, do you know how many exchanges a telephone call has to go through between New York and Washington? A telephone message is about as private as shouting from the rooftops. For all I know any telephone call from my headquarters could be monitored by unfriendly ears. In the same way that letters could be steamed open and wires read by unfriendly eyes. In my business you can’t trust anybody.”

“And yet you seem to think you can trust me.”