The Last Illusion

And Stevie Summer swept onto the stage, accompanied by a gorgeous dark-skinned beauty. She was dressed in a startling red satin costume that left little to the imagination, and her magnificent black hair was worn loose, cascading over her shoulders. Over her eyes was a provocative black cat mask. I heard a collective intake of breath from the men in the audience.

The act began. First the usual sort of magic tricks to warm up the audience. Summer took off his top hat and poured a pitcher of water into it. Then he replaced it on his head. Collective gasp from the audience, then applause. I suppose a week or so ago I would have gasped, but I had become used to magic tricks. After a few such stunts the exotic Kitty wheeled an upright cabinet onto the stage. Summer extended his hand to her and she stepped into it from behind. Her face could be seen through a hole in the top section, her hand waved through the middle, and her foot protruded from a hole at the bottom.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Summer announced in his deep, booming voice, “we shall see whether the lovely Kitty enjoys being divided into three pieces.” He started to push the middle section of the cabinet to his left until it was barely in contact with the top and bottom sections. I knew a little about illusions now, but I couldn’t even begin to imagine how this was done. The hand still waved from that middle section, the head and foot still appeared at the top and bottom.

I found I was holding my breath, waiting for something to go wrong. But Summer reassembled her to great applause and she stepped unharmed from the cabinet. I suppose that has to be the deception cabinet I saw advertised in the magazine, I thought. Suitable for the most dangerous stunts?

The cabinet was whisked away by a stagehand and in its place a glass table was carried out. Summer then invited Kitty to lie on the table. He announced that he would put her into a trance and then float her across the stage. As she lay on the table he bent over her. “Look into my eyes,” he commanded. “You are getting sleepy. Your limbs are becoming heavier and heavier. When I snap my fingers you will awake and be completely in my power.”

I was staring at the stage, hypnotized almost as completely as Kitty. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, because I had witnessed this same scene before, on this very stage. Only one of the players had then been an aged doctor and one a dying girl. You can disguise your face with false hair and makeup, but you can never completely disguise your voice or your manner of movement. This man had been the doctor who appeared from the audience to whisk Lily away to a hospital, and—I blinked a couple of times, wondering if my eyes were deceiving me—the brown-skinned beauty who lay on the glass table was in shape and movement exactly like Lily. The hand that draped languidly from the side of the table resembled that long white hand I had held as I put my wrap over her. I almost laughed out loud. The whole thing had been an incredible illusion.





Thirty-one


I couldn’t wait to get out of there and pass along this astounding information to Daniel. He’d be amazed that what we had witnessed was not a crime at all but a brilliantly executed illusion. The question, however, was why? Why make it seem that someone had been killed onstage—unless it was to get rid of Scarpelli, to make him flee from New York. What did they want to do—take over his successful forgery business? I shouldn’t forget that Sommer was possibly German and had been with Houdini in Germany, so Mr. Wilkie might well be interested in hearing about him, although how this tied in with the disappearance of Houdini, I couldn’t fathom.

I shifted uneasily in my seat, longing to make my escape. However I thought it wise not to move while they were still performing, in case they noticed me. In fact I leaned back from the front of the box so that my face was in shadow. I sat perfectly still while Summer apparently hypnotized Kitty/Lily and then removed the table that supported her so that she lay unmoving in midair. It was a wonderfully convincing illusion but I didn’t really appreciate it because my head was trying to make sense of what I had deduced.

If the “accident” during the sawing-the-lady-in-half trick was an illusion, what had they hoped to accomplish with it? What if Scarpelli was in on it? Maybe the forged money was all part of the same plot. Maybe all three were German agents. But he had seemed so genuinely upset and stunned by what had happened. He was a performer after all, so perhaps he was simply a good actor.