Magician's Fire (4 page)

“Follow me!” Harry called back.

“We're trying!” Billie sputtered.

“
Ow
!
” Arthur gasped.

Harry ducked between people's legs in the crowd. A fair chunk of the audience was already bustling around the stage door. There was no chance of him being able to push his way through, so he had dropped to the ground and was crawling instead. Angling his shoeshine box through with him, he saw, farther back, his friends trying to follow. Arthur was tangled up in a lady's dress, while Billie was squashed between two heavy-looking suitcases.

“Stuck! This is like the Tennessee Stagecoach Squeeze! Bumped the whole journey on the stagecoach roof, jammed between two suitcases.” Billie tried to pull herself loose. “I thought that was bad but—”

“Hurry, Billie!” Harry reached back, grabbed her hand, and tugged. She lurched forward but then snagged her smock on a nearby boot's riding spur and got stuck again, while Arthur was still trying to free himself from the dress.

They'll catch up
, thought Harry, and he wriggled onward until, at last, he popped out of the crowd, right by the stage door.

“The performers will be emerging soon! Autographs will be available—all included in the price of your ticket, naturally!” A plump gentleman with a flamboyant pink top hat squashed onto his head was bustling around in front of the crowd. Harry recognized him from his previous visits to the theater, when he had seen the man in the foyer welcoming the audience as they arrived—Mr. Wesley Jones himself. “What a show we had tonight—wouldn't you say, Arnold?”

“It was a swell 'un all right, Mr. Jones!” Loping after Wesley was a tall, gangly, wide-eyed young man, whose left leg dragged slightly behind him. Papers spilled out of a folder stuffed under his arm. “Herbie was powerful spectacular, I thought!”

“Ah, but he always is.” Wesley snatched off the pink top hat. “Regarding Herbie, I'd pay close attention to Arnold if I were you, folks! He's my stage manager and he's seen the acts a thousand times. Why, he might have picked up a few clues about how old Herbie does his tricks!” The pink hat twirled between two thumbs. “Well, Arnold?”

“I don't know about that, Mr. Jones.” The young man rearranged his papers, adjusted his left leg, and stood at attention as best he could. “Anyway, Herbie'll be down here soon enough. He's just up in his dressing room, taking a rest.”

“Ah—but is he?” Another twirl of the hat, and Wesley winked over its rim. “Maybe, right at this very moment, he's up there carrying out preparation work for his next
incredible
trick. He never stops, y'know. He works on them endlessly…”

Intrigued cooing came from the crowd. Harry swung around and peered up at the rickety theater building. Seeing brightly lit windows running up the theater gave him an idea. He began wriggling back between the shoes, trouser legs, boots, and riding spurs, and nearly collided with Billie and Arthur, who were still only halfway through the crowd.

“Where are you going
now
?” Billie disentangled herself from an umbrella.

“Maybe it'll be easier, Billie!” Arthur was already trying to swivel around. “Going in the other direction, I mean.”

It wasn't. It was much harder because the crowd was pushing toward the stage door, not away from it, and even Harry needed to wriggle with all his skill before he managed to tumble out onto the cobblestones. He sprang to his feet, crossed the street, and peered back up at the theater. And he saw exactly what he had hoped for.

In each of the theater windows, silhouettes of the various performers flitted as they changed out of their costumes. Two stories up, neatly framed in its window, was a silhouette that looked recognizably frail.
Herbie
. The old man was moving about, the shadows of his spindly arms fluttering in the light. Spotting a drainpipe running up the side of the theater, Harry ran across and started shimmying up.

“Harry? What are you doing?”

It was Arthur. He was staggering across the street, his tie crooked, his tweed suit a mess. Behind him, Billie scrambled up from the cobblestones with a puzzled expression on her face. They stumbled toward Harry, staring up at the window.

“There's Herbie!”

“I know! I'll climb up and see him. Who knows how long it'll be till he makes it down to the stage door? I know he doesn't want us inside the theater, but this isn't about tricks anymore!” Harry's arm shot up and pointed at various other drainpipes, windowsills, and gutters, a more-or-less possible route up the side of the theater. “Come on!”

They didn't look convinced.
Perhaps
that's for the best
, thought Harry. A fair number of passersby were drifting along the street, so someone would be sure to notice three children clambering up the side of a theater. But alone and climbing with skill, he might make the journey undetected. Gripping one of the drainpipe's brackets, he continued shimmying up through the shadows.

“Harry! Look!”

“What's happening?”

Harry swung around. He saw Billie and Arthur, their arms pointing up at the window. Farther down the street, some of the passersby had stopped and also were staring up. Harry leaned out from the drainpipe, gazed up, and saw why.

The silhouette in Herbie's window was no longer just moving about. It was tripping, staggering. Not only that, but someone else seemed to have entered the dressing room. A shadow lurched into view, a thick, burly one, with arms lunging. Whoever it was, Herbie Lemster clearly wasn't happy to see them. The old man's spindly shape was flailing, trying to fend off the shadow, and Harry heard feeble muffled cries, followed by a louder, gruffer shout.

“What's yours is mine and always shall be! You remember that, Herbie Lemster!”

A flash of light. Harry's eyes throbbed with pain. An explosion thundered through the night, the drainpipe shuddered, and he lost his hold. He was falling, the explosion still shuddering as he plummeted. His arms and legs scrabbled about, thrashing at the air, and he slammed into the sidewalk, his body crumpling.

“Harry?”

He lay there. He felt the sting of the sidewalk's grit cutting deep into his hands, his knees, and the side of his head. He lurched to his feet. Stumbling forward, he found a lamppost and grabbed hold.

“Harry? Are you all right?”

“I'm fine…”

It was Billie. Her face peered at him. He saw Arthur coming toward him too. Harry stared at them, blinked, and then swung back to look at the window.

Its glass had been shattered. And corkscrewing out into the night sky…

…were plumes of thick, purple smoke.

Purple wisps drifted down from the window and Harry choked on them, tasting chemicals in his spit. His eyes still throbbed and his body ached from the fall, but he kept stumbling on through the plumes of smog, his gaze fixed on the crowd around the stage door.

“Harry!” Arthur's voice was beside him. “Did you see it?”

“Whole window blew out!” Billie appeared out of the smoke, flapping at the fumes. “And look at all this smoke! What the heck's going on, Harry—
Harry?
”

Help
Herbie
. Harry plunged into the crowd. It was hysterical now, bodies shoving, legs intertwining. He thought of Herbie's strangely pale face before the show.
And
now, a thundering explosion, a shattered window, a load of billowing purple smoke
. The thoughts made him pick up speed, crawling, diving through. Glancing back, he saw his friends, already hopelessly entangled.
They'll catch up
, he told himself again.

“Tell us what happened, Arnold! Speak to me!”

It was Wesley Jones. Harry toppled out between two boots and saw the theater owner, his pink top hat battered, crouching over the slumped shape of the stage manager. He was trying to sit the gangly young man up on the cobblestones, but Arnold's head kept lolling forward, and Harry saw that the stage manager had hit his head, blood trickling all the way down onto his shirt.

“I'd just gone inside, Mr. Jones, sir.” Arnold was gasping. “Herbie was takin' so long, y'see.”

“I know! I sent you!” Wesley swung around to face the crowd. “You all wanted to see Herbie. I couldn't keep you waiting any longer, could I?”

“So I went in, made my way up the stairs…” Arnold choked. “Then it happened, Mr. Jones. The flash of light! The smoke! I lost my balance, see…fell down the stairs…”

“And that's where I found him, ladies and gentlemen! At the foot of the stairs!” Wesley butted in. “He's always a little unsteady on his feet, poor guy. How on earth could he climb the stairs straight into a terrible explosion? To think of such a thing happening, in my theater of all places—”

“What about the intruder?” someone interrupted. It was one of the passersby who had watched the window from across the street. “We saw someone just before the explosion.”

“Intruder?” Arnold's eyes sprang wide. “What are you talking about?”

“We saw him too!” Another voice from the crowd. “A shadow, but someone was there all right.”

“He wasn't just there—he was attacking him! And what about the shout?”

“
What's yours is mine and always shall be!
That's what he said. I heard it, plain!”

“I heard it too!”

“But what does it mean—”

“An intruder in Herbie's dressing room?” Wesley butted in, his face white and wobbling. “But that makes the business even worse than I thought… You see, ladies and gentlemen, I was just about to tell you that…” He clutched his pink hat to his chest. “I managed to find my way to Herbie's dressing room in the end. I stumbled over Arnold here and climbed the stairs to make sure poor Herbie was all right,” Wesley wailed. “But there was no sign of him, ladies and gentlemen. No sign at all! Herbie Lemster…he's
gone
!”

The crowd heaved forward. Harry barely managed to keep himself upright as the surging bodies carried him past Wesley, past Arnold, right into the theater itself.
A
good
thing
—maybe he could discover something that would tell him what was going on.

Backstage in the theater now and surrounded by pieces of scenery, he lodged himself between one of the enormous seaweed plants from the pearl-diving scene and a collection of ropes and iron hooks hung on the wall. He watched as the crowd swarmed.

“Intruder? But I saw no one!” It was Bruno the Strongman, still wearing his leopard skin, his muscles shaking. “I walked up to Herbie's dressing room with him after the show, like I do every night—there was no one in there with him then!”

“We didn't see anyone either!” One of the pearl-diving dancers spoke up, surrounded by a tight crowd of her friends, all in tears. “We were talking in the corridor. We saw Herbie go into his room and close the door—and that's all. No one visited. The door stayed shut. Until—boom! It knocked us all off our feet!”

“And no one came out of the dressing room after that. I swear it!” The man who told jokes was still dressed as a parrot, but the face among the feathers was pale and he didn't look like he'd say anything funny for quite some time. “I was at the very far end of the corridor just as it happened. It knocked me back, but I kept staring at Herbie's door. Sure, it blew open! Sure, there was smoke! But I'd have seen if anyone came out! Particularly if some intruder was tryin' to carry Herbie off against his will. I'd have seen it, I swear…”

Harry stumbled toward the nearby stairs. He joined the members of the crowd who were racing up them, pushing his way up one flight, then another, and along a corridor until he reached a door on which were painted the letters “H. Lemster.” He toppled through and saw the shattered windows, some scorch marks on the rug, and a few wisps of purple smoke still hanging in the air. But his attention was fixed on one item in particular, leaning against the room's solitary chair.

Herbie's walking cane. The stick he had seen in his old friend's trembling hand less than an hour ago.

Harry started searching. His hands raced over the walls, checking for hidden doors or panels, and he crouched and inspected the floorboards. But there was nothing. He was sure of it, not least because everyone else was also searching. Countless hands raced over every inch of the room, finding nothing. Apart from the door to the corridor, the only other way out was the window, and he had been staring at that and would have seen if anyone tried to get out. What on earth had happened? Harry heard more shouts from outside the room and stumbled down to the theater's backstage.

“Poor Herbie! What has become of him?” one of the juggling acrobats asked. She was as upset as all the other performers who had gathered in a sobbing, mournful crowd.

“I'm afraid it's impossible to say.” Wesley Jones wiped at tears with his bloodstained handkerchief. “Somehow, a mysterious intruder found his way into Herbie's dressing room. An explosion occurred, and the next thing we know, both Herbie and the intruder have vanished into thin air!”

“But who was this intruder? What would he want with ol' Herbie?” Arnold wheezed. “Herbie doesn't have an enemy in the world!”

“Never mind that—how did it happen?” A voice from the crowd, a slightly panicky one. “How did two men get out of the dressing room without anyone seeing them? Did they just disappear in a puff of smoke?”

“Maybe it was magic!” Another voice, more panicked still. “Maybe one of Herbie's tricks went wrong. He accidentally summoned this strange intruder and—”

“A demon!” This voice sounded positively hysterical. “Dark forces! That's what's behind this. Herbie Lemster has been claimed by his own magical powers!”

Pandemonium was breaking out. Harry was about to give up on hearing anything when one voice managed to cut through, louder, more hysterical than any other.

“Magic? Dark forces? I've no idea!” It was Wesley Jones. “Only one thing is clear, and it's this: ladies and gentlemen, I regret to confirm to you that”—his voice broke with a sob but kept going—“Herbert Lemster, marvelous magician, has…
disappeared
!”

The pandemonium was complete, the screams blotting each other out. It was impossible to hear anything, and it was becoming impossible to see anything either because the crowd was swarming too fast, too tightly, Wesley and Arnold trying to keep control in the middle. Harry fought his way out. Ducking through the bodies and pushing out through the stage door, he hurried across the street, breathing in the cool night air.

He found a lamppost and steadied himself against it, his hand gripping the iron. He breathed more deeply. The purple smoke had drifted away, so the air was clear, and its coldness was useful too. Harry stood there, sucking in lungful of it as he thought through everything he had discovered about this business so far—and about one piece of information in particular.

The
man
he
had
seen
just
a
short
time
ago
as
he
walked
up
the
theater's aisle.

“Harry! What's going on?”

He saw Billie and Arthur racing after him, even as he marched along the street, swung around the corner, and headed toward the theater's front doors. Had they been backstage in the theater too, somewhere in the crowd? Or had they been out here the whole time, waiting? Harry lifted an arm and waved his friends after him.

“Come on! We've got to hurry!”

“Huh?” Billie hurried after him. “What's happened to Herbie?”

“Tell us!” Arthur cried. “What did you find out?”

“I've got to check something.” Harry slammed through the doors, straight into the deserted foyer. Almost immediately, his friends slammed through after him.

“Check what? Slow down, will you?”

“The man we saw…the one with the briefcase…” Into the auditorium and down the aisle. “Maybe there's some trace of it left behind…some clue…”

“Man? Briefcase? What are you talking about?”

“I'll explain everything. Just let me…”

He turned and stared at a particular seat. He lunged toward it, and his hands explored its back, its arms, and the floor around it, searching for anything that might have been left behind. Nothing could be seen, but Harry felt his nostrils twitch as he leaned close to the seat's left arm. He sniffed the arm's worn upholstery. Faintly, very faintly, he could detect the same chemical odor of the purple smoke that had billowed outside.

“Er…Harry? What are you doing?”

“Since when did you start sniffing chairs?”

Harry looked up. The expression on Arthur's face was very puzzled, and the corner of Billie's mouth had curved into a smile. Harry stood up, straightened his jacket, and pointed at the chair.

“The man who was sitting right there. He's our only clue.”

And he told them. He told them about those piercing eyes. He told them about the oiled, red mustache and how its ends had curled upward. As his words raced out, he found himself remembering other details—the brooch on the cape, the sinister snake coiled around an upright sword—and he told them about those as well. Finally, he told them about the most important, most sinister detail of all.

The man's briefcase.

Out of which had spiraled that tiny wisp of purple smoke.