Magician's Fire (14 page)

The water churned, and the iron stairs shuddered as the crowd raced out of the dungeon. Harry jumped off the cage and was swept along by the jostling bodies. He saw that the same thing was happening to his friends. Together, they hurtled along with the furious crowd as it poured out into Wesley's office and surged back into the theater, all the way to the props room, where, as Harry's speech had made clear, Wesley and Arnold had been so cleverly imprisoned.

“They've gone!”

“Smashed their way out!”

“Used a palm tree as a battering ram!”

The door hung off its hinges, and one of the larger props, a fake tropical plant, lay nearby, snapped in half. Standing around were the various performers—Bruno the Strongman, the Cossack dancers, the juggling acrobats, the man who told jokes—looking confused. But most confused of all was the small, frail figure standing with them.

Herbie Lemster. His eyes were wide, taking in the scene before him. He was staring at the smashed-down door. He was staring at the crowd. His legs were weak, but his fellow performers kept him upright. When he spoke, it was clear he could hardly believe what he was saying.

“They have fled!” the old magician gasped. “Just a minute ago. None of us knew what was happening! They smashed through the door and raced up toward Mr. Jones's office—but they came racing down again when they heard you coming.” Bewildered, he pointed at the stage door, which was still rocking on its hinges. “Ran off into the night! None of us could make head or tail of it…”

“Catch them! Bring them back!”

A section of the crowd broke away and swept out through the stage door. But Harry paid no attention to that. Instead, his gaze was fixed on Herbie. He was still unsteady on his feet, his face was still wearily wrinkled, and yet it seemed, from what he was saying, that he was finally starting to understand what had just happened.

“You mean to say…we're free?” Tears trickled down his face. “Free from our dreaded owner and his terrible trapeze artist stage manager? Free of the Cruel Theater of Wesley Jones? It's not possible. And yet…it is! Thanks to…”

The crowd gasped. Herbie had lifted a trembling hand, and for a moment it seemed as if he was about to perform some magical act. But instead, Herbie just extended a finger. Tears flooding, he faced the crowd, pointing in the direction of Harry and his friends.

“Thanks to these remarkable young people here! This boy. His friends too. They've set us performers free, ladies and gentlemen!
Free
!
”

The crowd was out of control. Hands gripped Harry, and he rose into the air. Glancing across, he saw Billie being held aloft too, and Arthur. Then the throwing began, the hands beneath Harry and his friends powering them up into the air and catching them again, while the whole theater throbbed with cheers.
Heroes, all three of us
, thought Harry, as the crowd threw them higher and higher. And Billie and Arthur's twists and turns in midair, he noticed, were every bit as spectacular as his own.

“We did it!” Billie waved at him as she flew upward again.

“We really did!” shouted Arthur, his tie flying wildly around him.

“The Rescue of Herbie Lemster!” Harry yelled back. “It really is our most spectacular trick yet!”

He gazed around at the crowd's faces, whooping, cheering. And he noticed one face toward the back. White hair, white eyebrows, a pair of staring eyes. Harry thought nothing of it, but found himself looking at the face a second time, and a third time too.

I've seen him before.

He looked more closely. The man wore a pale, neatly tailored suit, and his hair was perfectly white. Otherwise, there was no reason to pick him out. But Harry kept staring, as he flew up and down.

The tightrope walk at the Hotel Crosby. He had glimpsed the man then. A flash of paleness in the windowpane, a face, white hair, a piercing stare. Harry couldn't be absolutely sure, but the longer he looked, the surer he became. It was the same man—but what was he doing here in the crowd at the Wesley Jones Theater? The Hotel Crosby was on the other side of town. Why would he be in both places, with just a few hours in between? As if this wasn't odd enough, why was the pale-suited man making notes? He was scribbling in a leather notebook, which appeared to have some sort of white bird on the cover. Even more strangely, wisps of white mist seemed to be rising from the pages…

Harry tried to look closer. But the crowd cheered even louder and threw him so high in the air that he spun around. When he landed, he was facing in the other direction.

And when he looked back, the man in the pale suit was gone.

The man slid out through the stage door and hurried down the dark Manhattan street.

His pale suit fluttered as his long legs carried him along at high speed. His steps were perfectly regular, and the soles of his polished shoes hit the sidewalk noiselessly, neatly.

The street was dark apart from a gas lamp's flickers. But the man's eyes tracked every one of those flickers, studying the complicated shapes of every shadow they threw. His eyes swiveled about, checking the reflective surfaces of windows, metal railings, puddles on the sidewalk, for any information they might provide. The man was walking even faster now, but those eyes simply sped up, monitoring the surroundings flying past with even greater care.

He swung to the left. He marched up some steps and pushed through a heavy, gleaming door. Those polished shoes snapped over a marble floor, a chandelier glittering above. The man spiraled up a mahogany staircase, his palm just touching the balustrade, skimming beside him. He reached the top, opened another door, and walked to a desk on which a telephone stood.

His hand lifted the receiver. On the underside of his wrist, a pulse twitched. As the receiver rose past the man's neck, a further pulse could be seen twitching just above his collar. The telephone crackled to life.

“A candidate,” he said. “Three of them, I now believe. I have been conducting my research with care.”

More crackling. The man listened and spoke.

“I quite agree. Clearly, we need to test them. That is critical. We need to select an investigation suitable to their skills without delay and…”

The crackling went on for quite some time. Complicated pops and buzzes interwove, and the pale-suited man's eyes narrowed, as if he was deciphering complex code. But at last the crackling ceased, and he spoke again.

“Very well. I shall begin the preparations.”

Time to escape from
Wesley
Jones's deadly device once again.

Harry stood before the cage. Hands tore through his clothes, removed his boots, explored his mouth, searching for the tiniest hint of anything that might assist him. The hands hoisted him up and dropped him into the cage. The lid clanged down, and the key soared into the gloom. Harry saw faces in the darkness, hundreds of them, distorted with fear, thrill, and glee. But he concentrated on Billie's face, pushing up to the bars.

“Ready?”

“Like always.”

A rope hoisted the cage upward. Arthur stood at the front of the stage, his arms swirling as he addressed the crowd. Swinging around to the small cluster of invited audience members, he politely asked if the search they had just conducted had revealed anything suspicious. Heads shook. Arthur flung out an arm, and the cage, a little smaller than Wesley's original, swung over a water-filled vat. Harry tightened his grip on the bars. The audience bayed, but then their noise vanished as the cage plunged into the vat. Water engulfed Harry, the cage's locked lid solid over his head.

Concentrate
.

His fingers flexed. His left foot rose. The earring was lodged between two of his toes. Billie had let it fall from her ear as their faces grew close, and the toes of Harry's left foot, stripped of sock and boot, had gathered it up. It was in his hands now, bending into shape, diving into the lock. Too bad about the Princess Moldo spectacles, but the metal arms had weakened too much, and anyway, the earring was much smaller and easier to pass. As the lock sprang loose, he clanged open the lid. Clambering out, he dropped onto the stage and lowered himself in the usual bow, while Billie and Arthur ran to join him.

“Behold! He has escaped once more!” Arthur finished off his speech. “Doomed to a watery grave! Yet he has survived to tell the truth about Wesley Jones!”

The
new
trick
. The idea for it had hit all three of them at the same time. The whole of New York was talking about the amazing rescue of Herbie Lemster, so why not let them see it unfold, night after night? As the applause roared, Harry took in the stage. To the left loomed a painted flat of Herbie's dressing-room window, from which the disappearance itself was staged with a puff of purple smoke. Forty feet high, a rope spanned the stage, on which Harry reenacted the walk into Hotel Crosby, and then there was the cage and water-filled vat, a practical way of staging the investigation's climax in Wesley Jones's deadly chamber. Best of all, there were Billie and Arthur, who helped him with every aspect of this dazzling show, Billie managing the tricks and Arthur narrating from his own script. Regarding Arthur, there was something else too, something that had only been added to the show in the last couple of performances, but which was going down very well indeed.

“Behold the latest escape…” Arthur was shouting it out as grandly as he could. “Of Harry
Houdini
!”

The new name. It had been suggested by that conversation with Arthur, which felt like such a long time ago. An invented name to catch attention: half-borrowed from a famous French magician of the past, with a touch of Hungarian. Harry liked it, and so did his friends. Most importantly, the audience seemed to like it too.

“Houdini! Houdini! Houdini!”

The name thundered out of the auditorium's gloom. Harry bowed to the cheering audience again, and on either side of him, Billie and Arthur took bows too. Then they swapped places, Billie taking the central bow, then Arthur, then Harry again. The applause swelled, the curtain fell, and the three friends headed off into the wings.

“That new curtain call works well, I think.” Harry led the way up.

“You bet!” Billie snatched up her ukulele and picked out a tune. “Only fair we all get a turn!”

“Which fits in well with how things are these days at the Herbie Lemster Theater, don't you think?” said Arthur, as they reached the top of the stairs.

A quick knock, and they swept into the office. The marble mantelpiece was still there, but new bolts fixed it to the wall and a fire crackled comfortingly in its grate. More comforting still was the sight, across the desk, of Herbie Lemster, writing in a ledger and sipping a cup of tea. His gray hair was neatly combed, he was wearing a brand-new suit, and the wrinkles of his face were arranged in a cheerful expression as he greeted Harry and his friends.

“Come in! Make yourselves comfortable!”

“How's business, Herbie?” Harry dropped into a chair.

“Splendid! Your act in particular is going down tremendously well. Spectacular trickery! Although it's hardly surprising, given that you were taught by an expert.” Herbie winked and pushed three envelopes across the desk. “Mind you, all the acts at this theater are impressive. That's why everyone gets their fair share of the takings.”

“No trouble taking over the ownership, then?” Arthur inquired.

“How could there be? Legally, it still belongs to Jones, but he and his stage manager aren't coming back anytime soon. They're wanted by the police for extortion, blackmail, false imprisonment, and attempted murder. Along with various infringements of New York plumbing regulations.”

“Last I heard, they were in Mexico City, scraping together a living with a street-theater act.” Billie smiled. “Arnold juggles tin cans while Wesley tries to play a half-smashed-up saxophone.”

“A rotten act for two rotten fellows.” Herbie chuckled. “Anyway, I just did a deal with a bank. They purchased the theater on behalf of us performers and, given the publicity surrounding recent events, offered a very fair rate of interest. As long as we manage it well, we'll own the place outright in just a couple years. It'll be all of ours equally, although my fellow performers also suggested we paint my name on the front.” Herbie blushed. “After all, why not take advantage of the excitement regarding my famous disappearance, eh? Wouldn't you agree, Boris?”

“Of course, dear Mr. Herbie! Of course!”

That familiar voice boomed across the office. Harry swung around and saw the burly magician stooped over a tiny table, stirring liquids in test tubes. Plumes of orange smoke rose around his face, but his expression was plain to see. Those tiny eyes twinkled, and a smile curved under that long, thin nose.

“At last, my dream is true! No more lonely life on the magician's road—I have found my home here with my oldest friend! Have I not, Herbie?”

“You have, dear Boris!” Herbie Lemster sprang from his desk and put an arm around the hefty figure.

“We must celebrate our good fortune, Herbie. And we shall!” Boris lifted a test tube. “In honor of the occasion, I have invented a new Magician's Fire. Orange version!”

A happy picture. Behind the two men, the mantelpiece stood, lined with newly taken photographs of the theater's performers—the Cossack dancers, the man who told jokes, Bruno the Strongman, and all the others, all in new outfits and with cheery expressions. But cheeriest of all were Herbie and Boris, reunited at last.

Harry felt a smile curve on his own face as he took in the happy pair and, in particular, the spindly shape of Herbie.
Herbie, who had started everything.
Down by his side, Harry's fingers were fluttering as he remembered that very first meeting in the middle of the New York winter, that trick with the flaming matches…

“Talking of magical powders and so on, Herbie…” Billie was trying to sound casual. “I don't suppose you'd finally consider giving us a few clues about some of those other tricks you do? The Bicycling over Spikes, perhaps? Spider up Sleeve?”

“It would be useful.” Arthur chuckled. “Harry never did work anything out that night. Obviously, I know he's meant to figure them out himself, part of the game and all that. But a few hints would be most useful…”

“Would they, indeed?” Herbie Lemster chuckled as he helped Boris mix the contents of the test tube. “I'll think about it. But it strikes me that young Harry's perfectly skilled at unmasking secrets already. He exposed the truth of Wesley Jones's doings, didn't he? Not to mention making a few other discoveries along the way, I hear.” He looked up. “Not about magic perhaps, but important nonetheless…”

Those wrinkle-surrounded eyes gleamed at Harry. They flicked over to Arthur and Billie, and then back to Harry again. The old magician's expression was mysterious, but to Harry the remark he had made was perfectly clear. Not much else was, because just then Boris chuckled and tilted the test tube, and with a thundering explosion, the room filled with orange smoke, thick and swirling. Billie waved at the plumes, Arthur wheezed, and Harry stumbled to the window, but by the time he had rattled it up and cleared the air, the two magicians had gone.
So
much
for
clues
about
tricks
. He dropped back into his chair and counted the money inside the brown envelope Herbie had given him.

How
things
have
changed
. Harry lifted a hand and examined it through the smoke. Traces of boot polish stain could be seen on his fingertips, but that was all. Strange to think of the job he had once had, lugging that shoeshine box around in an attempt to earn a few cents. The shoeshine box was long-ago abandoned, and he had changed his lodgings, leaving behind the rather dilapidated boarding house of Mrs. Mack.
And
it's not just me who's finding things a bit different.

“How'd you think Mawkin's Glue Factory is managing without you, Billie?”

“Don't ask me. Never gone near the place, and I'm not planning to either.” Billie flicked through the contents of her brown envelope too. “I'm done with gloop stirring. Same goes for all the other crummy work I've done—floor sweeping, garbage picking, and all the rest…”

“You really have done some terrible jobs, Billie.” Arthur nodded thoughtfully.

“It's true. Come to think of it, nothing much about the road from New Orleans has been that easy, what with escaping from orphanages, trying to jump trains, and generally having to scratch a living together any way I could. Still, like I always say, it's not the sticky situations that matter; it's how you get out of them.”

Another tap of the brown envelope, and there was a particularly wide grin on Billie's face, even by her standards. “And I don't think I've ever managed to wriggle my way out as spectacularly as this. Ending up in a real, proper job, doing stuff I actually like, and making some proper cash too!”

“You're right. We've found a pretty good earner,” Arthur chipped in. “Not that I personally need the money, which is why I give most of it to the two of you.” He pulled two handfuls of notes out of his envelope and handed one to Harry, the other to Billie. “Although I am going to keep a bit back, if that's all right, to help fund my new special membership cards to the Boston, Paris, and London libraries, in case I need books that aren't in New York. They'll mail them right to me, you know. Might be handy if we get around to thinking up some new tricks for the show.”

“Absolutely, Artie…” Harry hesitated, remembering something. “By the way, the boarding school plan. Went off well?”

“Certainly did!” Arthur fished in his pockets. More paper ribbon spilled out, along with various envelopes and a book, which he thumped onto the table.
Techniques
of
Famous
Forgers
, the title said. “So, that letter we snatched way back was just the beginning. Ever since, Father's servants have been writing letters to the school, and the school's been busily writing back, but none of those letters have ever arrived, because I've intercepted them, obviously.

“Picked up the school's ones as they fell through the mailbox, grabbed the servants' ones just before they were posted.” He reached into another pocket and pulled out a little twisted length of metal. “This pick you made me for the mailbox outside my house came in handy, Harry.”

“No problem.” Harry smiled.

“So anyway, instead of the servants and the school getting the letters they expect, they're getting ones specially forged by me.” As Arthur tapped the book, Harry saw no sign of the shadowy kink on his friend's forehead. “Just yesterday, the servants opened the very last letter from the school, in fact by me. It described all the final arrangements.”

“Which were?”

“A cab called at the house just this morning. I boarded it with all my luggage, looking mournful and all that. But instead of taking me 452 miles away, like Father wanted, it brought me right here.” Arthur jerked a thumb at a couple trunks piled in the corner of Herbie's office. “I thought I might make myself at home in one of the dressing rooms. Until the end of term, that is.”

“What about the school?” asked Billie. “Won't they think it's odd when you don't arrive?”

“Not really because the last letter they got announced that Father had changed his mind and was sending me to a slightly cheaper school down the road from them instead. They'll be so annoyed that they'll just throw the letter in the trash. As for Father himself, I doubt he'll find out anytime soon. He's just set off on yet another business trip. Back to London, this time.”

“London?”

“He'll be gone nearly six months. So it looks like he'll continue to pay no attention to me, boarding school or not.” A frown, but it was a very slight one. “I know, it's a strange business. But the truth is, I've pretty much gotten used to it these days. Is it really such a bad thing, him wanting me out of his way? When it ends up with him accidentally having me sent to a place like this, where I can spend as much time as I like doing the best job in the world?” The frown was gone, and in its place was a grin as big as Billie's. “Not to mention doing it with the best friends in the world, eh?”