There would be three thousand people, Young had said. Usually Harry prefaced the stunt by talking for ten minutes or so, then made a great show of putting on the handcuffs and leaning over the railing to examine the water. When he jumped in, it usually took him only a minute to release himself, although sometimes he took longer to increase the suspense.
She looked at her watch. It was a quarter to four. She pictured Harry at the end of the pier, stripping to bathing trunks in the icy cold, holding out his wrists to a policeman to be handcuffed. He liked to chat with the policemen and some of the reporters before the stunt; it put him at ease. John Young, certainly, would partake in the banter. But he would not say, “I just came from your room.” He would not say, “I have seen your wife naked and she is beautiful.” He would shake Harry’s hand with the same hand that had touched her, and Harry would climb over the railing and one of his assistants would hold him in place until he gave the cue, the rush of wind stronger now than before, and the gray ocean churning underneath; then he would be pushed into a free fall, and he would drop, and no one would see him until he emerged again.
She had to go to him. She could not leave him alone down there. She had been to the brink of a betrayal she could not come back from, but she had stopped herself, and if it took that to convince her that she wanted no one but Harry, then she had to think of it as a blessing. He was the love of her life.
She searched through her trunk and found a long gray skirt and blouse she could dress herself in quickly, and without any help to lace. She checked her hair in the mirror. Her watch now read four o’clock. Perhaps he would still be standing on the pier; ever the showman, he enjoyed watching the crowd’s anticipation build. She raced down the corridor and over to the veranda at the end of the hall, which overlooked the edge of the pier. Flinging the doors open, she heard the loud cries of the crowd below. Then, like a fog rushing toward her, came the shrill voice of a newsboy: “Extree! Houdini dead! Extree! Houdini drowned in ocean!”
Bess fell to her knees. She could not breathe. It could not be possible. From the position of the balcony she could not see the spot of Harry’s jump, only the crowd milling about in alarm and, in the distance, the ocean, angry and white with froth. She stumbled, as if drugged, down the stairwell onto the first floor, which led outside.
She could not look anyone in the eye as she pushed her way toward the front of the massive throng. She caught sight of John Young in the distance, leaning searchingly over the railing, and then vomited onto the concrete. Less than an hour ago, she had almost given everything to that man, and now she had lost Harry. How could she not have seen this? She had always thought of the bond between them as something fated, otherworldly—that if something happened to Harry, she would know it. But she felt nothing now but fear.
“Bess.” Someone spoke behind her, touching the back of her shoulder. When she turned, dizzily, she could almost make out Harry’s form, blue and ghostlike, his hair and body dripping.
“Harry?” she choked in disbelief.
Before he could say anything further, the crowd rushed in on him, separating them, pushed apart only by the policemen and two doctors in white coats, with stethoscopes around their necks. Harry was draped in towels and ushered into the building, and then she couldn’t see him anymore.
Harry’s assistant, Jim Collins, put his hand on her shoulder. Jim was the first man Harry had hired, and the only person other than Bess he trusted with the workings of his tricks. “He didn’t come up after two minutes,” Jim explained, his blue eyes soft with relief. “The rope man had to lower himself into the water and go down in search of him. After four minutes the physicians were of the mind that he could not have survived.”
“But the newsboys. I heard them—”
“They were dispatched with bulletins. You know how these things work. Call out the news now, write it up later. But after six minutes we saw the top of his head emerge from the water, then his arms, pulling himself in by the rope.”
“Six minutes.” Bess looked down at the water, stunned. “He’s never held his breath that long.”
“It’s miraculous.” She could see Jim still trembling slightly from nerves. He adored Harry, and she adored Jim in return.
She put her hand on his arm. “I have to see him.”
“Of course.”
Bess looked at John Young, standing by the railing, and caught his eye. Neither of them gave any acknowledgment of what had occurred between them less than an hour earlier. They both were married. Bess had almost lost her husband. John Young had brought in the towels. Nothing more.
Bess found Harry upstairs in their bedroom, immersed in a hot bath, one of the physicians sitting in a chair beside the tub, checking his pulse. She rushed over and seized Harry’s hand. His grip was weak. The doctor excused himself politely.