Magician's Fire (2 page)

Harry ran across the park. Light was just starting to fade from the sky, and the last wisps of soot and engine oil had cleared from his clothes. His boots thudded over the cool grass and a wooden shoeshine box swung from his shoulder, rattling with the cans and brushes inside. Flipping open the box's lid, he checked one of its compartments and snapped the lid shut again. Leaping over a railing, he took a shortcut through a flower bed, ran across another stretch of grass, and joined Billie, hiding behind a rhododendron bush.

“Is it ready, Harry?”

“Sure is!”

“Exactly the way we ordered it? Every last detail?”

“Every last one! Good thing the train trick went down so well just now. We'd never have had enough otherwise.” He tugged out the lining of his trouser pocket, empty of coins. “That's got to be the craziest trick yet, huh?”

“You bet, Harry. No doubt about it.” Billie peered back through the bush. “He's still in there, by the way. Hasn't come out since we said good-bye.”

Harry joined her in peering through the twigs and leaves. A short distance away, a brilliantly white building towered beside the park, its windows shining, marble steps running up to its front door. Harry checked the windows, inspecting them for any sign of movement inside. But, as usual, the whole house was eerily still.

“So how did you find out, Billie?” Harry turned back. “That it's his birthday, I mean.”

“Mentioned it to me a couple of months ago. ‘The seventeenth of September,' he said, and that's today.”

“But how come he didn't say anything earlier? The train trick was all he wanted to talk about!”

“He loves our tricks, doesn't he? Probably grateful we were doing one—must have helped take his mind off it. Still, his mind'll be back on it now. Wait, there he is!”

Harry peered again. Billie was right—the front door was opening, and Arthur was stepping out. And she was right about something else too. Arthur's mind was clearly no longer on anything to do with their tricks. The younger boy's movements were slow and his head was lowered as he trod down the steps, wandered down the sidewalk, and crossed the street into the park. Harry even heard a faint sigh drifting through the air. He glanced at Billie, who nodded, and just as Arthur reached the bush, they strolled out.

“Hi, Artie!”

“Billie? Harry?” Artie stopped and blinked at them. “I thought you were both working this evening!”

“Turns out I'm not due at the factory just yet.” Billie adjusted her cap, which was every bit as glue-spattered as her smock. “And you're not planning to shine any shoes for the next couple of hours or so either, are you, Harry?”

“Thought I'd leave it awhile,” said Harry, shrugging.

“Oh.” Arthur looked puzzled. “Well, I'm not doing anything very exciting, I'm afraid. Just going for a quick walk around the park. Before”—he stared back at the house—“going back inside again.”

“We'll go for a walk with you, Artie.” Billie tugged his arm. “Come on.”

They set off across the park. Billie reached for her ukulele, strung across her back as usual, but seemed to change her mind, and Harry knew why. She, like him, had seen the first signs of that familiar kink forming on their friend's forehead. At the same time, Arthur's left hand was reaching down to his jacket pocket, drawing out a little ribbon of paper with letters and dots running along it. Harry kept walking and tried to think of what to say.

“Heading off to Chicago, is he?” Billie got there first. “Like you expected?”

“First thing tomorrow.” Arthur ran a finger along the dots. “He sent this message through from his office yesterday, telling the servants. The machine in the hallway hammered it out, along with the usual stuff about stocks and shares. Servants read it and left it in the wastepaper basket, as usual.”

“I just don't get it.” Billie put her hand on Arthur's shoulder. “He just got back from a trip to… Where was it again?”

“Washington,” said Arthur. “He was gone three weeks.”

“I mean, it's one thing to spend all your time in an office in the city where you actually live—but traveling all over the country?” Billie shook her head.

“He's got meetings, hasn't he? That's what it's like if you come to America to set up a brand-new bank.” Arthur frowned. “It's been this way ever since we moved to New York, and that's eight months now. Mind you, he totally ignored me in London too. As long as I can remember, he's been just the same. Work comes first, a nice expensive house comes second, and having a bunch of servants who do exactly what he wants is important too.” He swung back toward the house. “Me, I'm just expected to tag along.”

His eyes narrowed. Harry swung around too and saw why. As daylight faded, lamps were being lit inside the grand front room of the brilliantly white building. Inside stood Lord Trilby-Roberts, Arthur's father. Tall, stiff, and wearing an immaculately tailored suit, the rich banker was standing perfectly straight and talking on a new invention called a telephone, while staring out through the window with an expression that, even at this distance, seemed cold and aloof. Around him, various servants busily gathered papers and files, no doubt in preparation for the trip to Chicago.

“So he's just going to…leave you again?” Harry turned back. “To hang around in that house?”

“Along with all his other stuff.” Artie kept staring at the window. “Antique furniture, clocks from Switzerland, that sort of thing.”

“Good thing he installed the ticker-tape machine,” Billie said. “Least that way you get warning of what he's planning.”

“I know,” said Arthur. “I know.”

He reached back into his pocket and drew out another ribbon, gripping its end with particular force.

“Actually, the machine hammered out another message this morning.” His hand tightened until the knuckles were white. “Something I wasn't expecting—today of all days.”

“Really?” Peering at the ribbon, Billie looked hopeful.

“Found it crumpled up in the trash, just like the others. Do the servants really think I won't find them?”

“It was from your father in his office? To the servants back home?”

“Of course.”

“And it arrived today? The seventeenth of September?”

“Yes.”

“And it's about you?”

“Certainly is.”

“So what is it? What does it say?”

“It's instructions to the servants about contacting another boarding school,” said Arthur, and he crumpled the ribbon into a tiny, hard ball. His eyes were curiously bright as his thumb and finger gripped the tiny paper ball. Harry wasn't sure what to say at all, and neither, from the look of her, was Billie.

“Boarding school?” She managed something, at last. “Sounds grim. Still, at least that's taking some kind of interest in you…”

“Not really. There are different sorts of boarding schools, for a start. The one Father has in mind is the sort of place you send someone if you specifically intend to take no interest in them whatsoever for as long as you possibly can. Hard for me to be even the tiniest distraction to him if I've been sent miles away.” Arthur held up the ball of paper and glared at it. “The school's in Dayton, Ohio. So that's 452 miles away, to be precise.”

“So what are you going to do?” Billie looked genuinely worried. “We don't want you disappearing anywhere, Artie.”

“Me neither. What, and not see the two people who
do
actually take an interest in me? I don't think so.” Artie flicked the ball furiously away. “I'll use the normal tricks. I've foiled all the other attempts to send me away and I'll foil this one too, don't you worry. It's just it's a bit much, him doing this. On my… On my b…”

He stopped. He sat down on a bench, hard. The paper ball was bouncing down the path, and he stared after it, his hands shoved in his tweed trouser pockets.
As
bad
as
we've ever seen him
, thought Harry, and he turned back to the white house again. The tall, rigid figure was still there, the telephone in his hand, his servants bustling obediently around him. Harry's eyes narrowed, just as his friend's had done. Then he turned back to Billie who, with a determined look on her face, had plunked herself down on the bench, right next to Arthur.

“Don't worry, Artie.” She thumped him on the shoulder. “We've got you a birthday treat. Pass the blindfold, Harry!”

“Birthday—how d'you know it was my birthday?
Oo
f
!
”

The blindfold was from Harry's shoeshine box. A perfectly clean rag, he had bought it specially, and he swiftly pulled it over Arthur's eyes and knotted it around the back of his head. Arthur's hands flailed as Billie hoisted him over her shoulder and staggered off across the park.

“Where are you taking me? What's going on—
Hey!
That tickles!”

“You've always said you wanted to be a magician's assistant!” Harry ran on ahead. “Wearing the occasional blindfold's part of it. Ready to row, Billie?”

He jumped into the little boat moored at the edge of the pond. Billie tottered up to it and Harry helped her in, catching Arthur and propping him on one of the seats. Billie leaped in and grabbed an oar, and Harry grabbed one too. Together, they started to row, picking up speed quickly and passing various ducks.

“What is going on?” Arthur, still blindfolded, was laughing now.

“You're in the hands of an expert, birthday boy.” Billie sculled to the left. “Not as if I haven't blindfolded someone before. Tied her up too! The owner of my orphanage, down in New Orleans.”

“You've told us this, Billie!” Harry rowed faster.

“Now that was a real rough business, and I'd only just gotten started then—the Knotted Sheet Dangle, that's what I call it—not only did I have to deal with the scariest owner of an orphanage there ever was, next I had to jump out the window and climb down a rope of knotted sheets, all the way down to the street below and—
Watch
out
!”

The boat thudded into the side of the dock. Harry threw the mooring rope, lassoed the mooring post, and helped Billie pull Arthur out. It was Harry's turn to hoist the younger boy onto his shoulder now, and he stumbled out through the park gate and climbed onto a horse-drawn omnibus. He and Billie sat down, and for the next twenty minutes, they clattered across Manhattan, watching the city shudder past the window and laughing at the odd looks the other passengers were giving them, two scruffy street kids with a blindfolded boy in a tweed suit squashed between them. The omnibus tilted to a halt, and together they hoisted their friend and carried him out onto the street. On the other side, they saw their destination.

A small, rather grimy-looking diner.

They burst in through the door, the bell somersaulting above them. They carried Arthur to a table, propped him on a chair, and drew up chairs of their own. Harry nodded to a waitress, who rattled a little wooden cart over to them. She picked up what was on it and lowered it onto the table. At the same moment, Harry and Billie removed Arthur's blindfold.

“Happy birthday, Artie!”

A cake. Chocolate icing spiraled on its sides. Cream oozed from its center, spilling onto the plate, and three layers of sponge cake could be detected, each one sitting on a thick layer of yet more icing. Blinking as his eyes adjusted to the light, Artie took in all these details, but one seemed to affect him in particular: written on the cake's top in sugary sprinkles was his name, along with a skillfully frosted picture of a stack of interesting-looking books.

“But how did you afford this?” Arthur gasped.

“The money from the trick, silly,” Billie replied.

“But…that's Harry's money, really. He stood in front of th—”

“That's not how we do things, Artie. You know that,” Harry interrupted. “You calculated the train time, didn't you? Billie found the chains, and both of you ran around drumming up that crowd…”

“With no crowd, there wouldn't
be
any money,” agreed Billie, grabbing a spoon.

“Exactly. So we split the money three ways.” Harry leaned forward and jabbed a finger on the tablecloth. “Anyway, who knows where I'd have gotten with my tricks if it hadn't been for you encouraging me, Artie. Remember when you saw me trying to cross Sixth Avenue by leaping between speeding streetcars? I was going nowhere then. Just some shoeshine boy, leaping about—no one else was noticing. But then you wandered up and told me all about that book you'd been reading in the library…”

“
Fire
Dances
in
the
Amazon
,” said Arthur quietly.

“Magicians there prove their skills by dancing through pits of fire! Why not do the same, flying through the showers of sparks from the streetcars?” Harry turned to Billie, his finger still firm on the tablecloth. “Same goes for you, Billie. You saw me practicing tightrope-walking along the back of that park bench—”

“Waved my arms around, trying to make you lose balance.” Billie smiled.

“Like I say, at least you noticed. And you also had the idea of stringing a rope way up high between two trees and getting me to walk along it while muttering spells and wriggling my arms free of no less than twenty-five knots. Helped me practice it over and over too, and
that
was how we drew our first crowd.” The finger was hurting now from all the jabbing. “So anyway, that's why we split stuff in three. And because it's your birthday, Artie, me and Billie decided to spend our shares on something you'd like.”

“So that just left your bit. And we decided to throw that in too, if that's all right by you,” Billie added.