Nevermore (30 page)

Desperate, Sir Arthur reached up at whatever enclosed his head. It was a sort of eyeless mask, fastened from behind with buckles. The harsh chemical whirled through his brain. Clumsy fingers fumbled at the straps. Catherine wheels and kaleidoscopes spun before his bound eyes. The knight reached under his flouncy clown shirt for the hanging revolver as he plummeted forward into unconsciousness.

Conan Doyle had no notion of where he was or how he got there when spasms of nausea brought him back from the lost, black depths. A candle flickered on the floor by his feet. He sat on a narrow concrete ledge, one hand chained to a water pipe running along the wall above his head. Only this kept him from falling on his face.

Sir Arthur squinted into the pale corona of light, groggy from chloroform. Beside him on the ledge stood a squat amber wine bottle with the cork drawn. He heard a metallic clink. Looking up, the knight confronted a rising brick wall two arms’ lengths in front of him. It stood eight or nine courses high. The Red Death worked with a trowel, smoothing a layer of mortar before setting another brick in place.

“Ah, Sir Arthur, so good to have you awake again.” The fake voice rasped behind the macabre mask. “I trust you had a peaceful rest.”

Conan Doyle groped for his revolver and found the lanyard dangling free beneath his arm.

The Red Death held up the Webley-Green, pinching the barrel between his fingers like a greengrocer showing off a prize carrot. “I’m certain you appreciate the necessity of relieving you of this.”

Sir Arthur heard the pistol clang off in the darkness like a piece of discarded iron pipe. Another course of bricks rose before him. “This addition was scheduled for completion a month ago …” The masked stranger talked on as he worked. “Then, the supervising engineer was fired. Now, there’s disagreement between the new firm and the city building inspectors. Be at least another month or two before the issue is resolved and any work resumes …”

The knight made no reply. He felt thick and drugged. The Red Death set the final row, wielding his trowel delicately as a pastry chef icing a wedding cake. Only one brick remained to complete the wall. “Should you get thirsty …” The hideous skull peered through the aperture. “I’ve left you a very nice wine.
In pace requiescat
!” The final brick slid into place.

Sir Arthur was alone. Far off, penetrating the deathly silence, he heard the steady drip of what he presumed to be water. He rubbed his eyes on the loose sleeve of his absurd Pierrot costume. Be more appropriate if he’d worn Harlequin’s lozenge-patterned motley. That costume even had bells to jingle.

He picked up the bottle beside him, sniffing the fruity amontillado. Doubtless poisoned. It would be to the killer’s advantage for him to die as quickly as possible. Less risk of premature discovery.

He set the bottle down. Perhaps in a few days’ time, he’d welcome a drink. Best thing not to panic, he told himself. It seemed preposterous that he shouldn’t soon be found. He resided in one of the world’s great hotels, not some forgotten Italian catacomb. Surely those laundresses would hear him.

“Halloo!” he shouted. “Is anybody there?” No answer. He sat very still, listening to the distant dripping.

Conan Doyle lurched to his feet. Even stretching his chain out full-length, he was unable to touch the new wall with his other hand, the wet mortar inches from his fingertips. Don’t go yelling your head off before hearing someone approach, he thought. Must conserve my strength.

Stooping, he picked the burning candle off the floor, raising it for a better look at his surroundings. He was immured within a narrow masonry-walled niche twice as long as it was broad, his right hand fastened to a water pipe on the rear wall by a pair of steel handcuffs. He tried tugging on the chain, although attempting to bend the pipe appeared a futile exercise.

Taking a closer look, Sir Arthur noticed the broad arrow and crown marking the, case-hardened steel. Jersey Giants! By God, these were Scotland Yard darbies! The knight rapped the handcuff soundly against the stone wall as Houdini had taught him. The lock snapped open at once and his wrist came free.

Wasting no time, Conan Doyle stepped to the fresh-laid wall. The mortar had not yet dried. He leaned his full weight against the bricks and the wall began to bulge. He pushed harder. The bricks sagged outward and Sir Arthur raised his hands above his head as, all at once, the wall collapsed around him.

The knight staggered through the darkened alcove. He pushed the tarp aside and stepped into the corridor. Not a soul in sight. Not a sound.

The two electric torches sat on the shelf. Sir Arthur took one and returned to the alcove. After searching for a few moments, he found his revolver. He picked it up, carefully using his pocket handkerchief. Another twenty minutes’ probing revealed no further clues. The knight had learned one thing with absolute certainty: the killer was no ghost. The diminutive assailant who tackled him from behind had been very corporal indeed.

At 6:00 a.m. the following morning, Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Çonan Doyle breakfasted together in the restaurant at Central Station in Buffalo, New York. The knight’s telegram had reached the magician at the Statler in Detroit just as his troupe was making the jump to Chicago. Houdini arranged for them to go on ahead and caught the next eastbound train. Sir Arthur spent the night on the New York Central “Wolverine.” Both of them had the rumpled look of men who had slept in their clothes.

Houdini listened intently as the Englishman told his story a second time. Hearing about the Jersey Giants made him grin, although his eyes remained grim and brooding. “Think there’s any chance the police might find fingerprints on your revolver?” he asked.

Sir Arthur shook his head. “I didn’t call the police. I sent you a wire instead. It was my conclusion the authorities would assume I’d made the whole thing up for the sake of publicity. I can assure you there are no fingerprints. The Los Angeles County sheriffs department gave my boys a fingerprinting kit as a gift. I confiscated it when I found their bed sheets smeared with ink. Last night, I made use of it, dusting the revolver with silver powder. Sorry to say, the only prints I uncovered were my own.”

“Let me play the devil’s advocate,” Houdini said, “and this is not meant to take anything away from what you experienced, but what makes you so certain this really was the Poe Killer and not just some drunken prankster?”

“Because unless it was a policeman versed on the case, which I sincerely doubt, only the actual killer would be privy to such a telling detail as the absence of blood. You didn’t know about that. Nor did I.”

“Maybe the prankster made it up?”

Sir Arthur pounded his huge fist on the tabletop. “Damn it! This was no prank!”

“Relax. I believe you.” Houdini prodded a bit of cold scrambled egg with the tip of his fork. “You’re sure it was a woman?”

“She was very strong. But, judging from her size and the way she disguised her voice, I feel reasonably certain in making this determination.”

“It’s Isis,” Houdini muttered. “Has to be.”

“Might well be. But you can offer nothing but conjecture. It’s proof we need.”

“Remember the tone in her voice when she made her dire predictions about Halloween?” Houdini pushed his plate away. “She was threatening us, and she knew it. Easy enough to be a prophet when you carry out the predictions yourself.”

Sir Arthur filled his pipe. “I have a séance scheduled with Mrs. Fletcher. Six in the evening, November third.”

Houdini’s eyes brightened. “I have a plan. Who all knows what happened to you?”

“Only yourself and my wife.”

“Perfect.” The magician permitted himself a thin smile. “As far as the murderer is concerned, you are a dead man. Nothing must occur to alter that perception. You have to stay out of sight for the next two days. Take a hotel room here in Buffalo. Use an assumed name.”

“My dear fellow, what you suggest is preposterous.”

“Hear me out. The murderer thinks you dead. I’m safe until I return to New York. Longer, really, because I’m sure the killer won’t strike again until after your body is found.”

“Whatever are you talking about? There’s no body to find,”

“Of course not, but the killer doesn’t know that. By not revealing yourself in public, she’ll continue to believe you’re walled up in the subbasement of the Plaza. Send your wife a telegram so she won’t worry. Better yet, have her announce you’ve turned up missing.”

“That’s absurd! I could never ask Jean to do such a thing.”

“All right. Have her say nothing. Just don’t show yourself. Then, when you arrive for your séance with Isis, you’ll know immediately by her expression whether she’s guilty or not. If she is the killer, she won’t be expecting you. She won’t have made any preparations for the séance.”

Sir Arthur grinned. “What an excellent idea. If Mrs. Fletcher is the woman who attacked me, I’ll see it instantly in her eyes.”

“Be on your guard.” Houdini consulted his watch. “I have a train to catch if I’m going to be in Chicago for tonight’s performance.” He placed a half-dollar on the table. “Breakfast’s on me. You still have that revolver?”

“I’m carrying it now.”

“Good.” The magician pulled on his overcoat. “Make sure you’re armed when you go for the séance. If Isis tries any funny stuff, don’t hesitate to shoot her.”

T
HE
L
INCOLN
G
ARDENS ON
Chicago’s South Side featured the hottest musical aggregation in town, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. Catering to a rough clientele, the place served as an informal clubhouse for flashy yeggs from the Capone mob and every night saw its share of fights. Occasionally, the lethal staccato of gunfire punctuated the wailing New Orleans blues. Rather than driving people away, impending mayhem proved an irresistible draw and business was booming.

The gaudy barnlike dance hall had walls efflorescent with faded crepe paper blossoms and bright petals of peeling paint. A balcony corralling small, round tables ran along one side. Body heat, tobacco smoke, the astringent smell of sweat sweetened by a potpourri of cheap perfume and scented hair oil coalesced into a volatile miasma suggestive of sex and betrayal.

Slightly after ten o’clock on a weekday evening, the joint was just beginning to jump when Harry Houdini, still dressed in his stage tux, made a furtive entrance. Very much a fish out of water, he quietly took a table by the railing at the end of the balcony farthest from the bandstand. Energetic gangsters and their effervescent molls shook and shimmied, gyrating wildly through the intricacies of the Charleston and the Black Bottom as the band played “Froggy Moore,” the ‘‘Alligator Hop,” “Canal Street Blues.”

The magician held the opinion that he didn’t care for jazz, although the music he so designated was a corny Tin Pap Alley hybrid bearing only a passing resemblance to this exuberant improvised polyphony pulsating with the shocking novelty of true art. Almost against his will, he found his foot tapping to the robust syncopations.

“Did this place used to be called the Royal Garden Cafe?” he asked a waiter still sneering in disbelief at his order. Lemonade wasn’t the usual bill of fare on the South Side.

“Right. New name. New management,” the apron-wrapped Sicilian replied, turning briskly on his heel.

Houdini pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and smoothed it on the tabletop. A typewritten message read:

Excuse me sir, I beg your Pardon,

 I believe you wish to know

The whereabouts of Edgar Poe.  

Just ask the King of the Royal Garden;

Say the password: Geronimo.

He will tell you where to go.

The magician found the doggerel in an envelope on his dressing room table after the second show at the Lyric Theater. Reading it made his hands tremble, even as he puzzled over the cryptic meaning. He asked one of the stagehands if there was someplace in town called the “Royal Garden” and received a detailed set of directions leading him to the rainbow-hued railing he leaned against.

Houdini studied the band, a Negro septet featuring two cornets, trombone, clarinet, piano, bass fiddle, and drums. The pianist was a lovely light-skinned woman barely out of her teens. The percussionist seemed not much older, a small, laughing man nearly hidden behind his huge bass drum. Their ensemble playing, collectively improvised, formed a seamless amalgam, with four distinct individual voices weaving in and out around the melody.

The leader stepped forward to blow a cornet solo on “Snake Rag.” A dark, formidable man whose rain-barrel physique recalled turn-of-the-century politicians, he appeared almost twice the age of the other musicians. His cheeks puffed as he blew chorus after chorus with such power his starched dickey popped free, curling up to reveal a red union suit. “Oh, Papa,” shouted the bassist, “play that thing!”

Houdini sipped his lemonade, only half-listening. He thought about the mysterious poem, wondering what to do next. Assuming the reference to “the King” must indicate the cabaret’s owner, he waved down a waiter to inquire if the proprietor was on the premises.

“You got a complaint?” If looks could kill, the waiter’s surly scowl might have caused a massacre.

“No. Not at all. I merely want to talk with him. He isn’t a gentleman named King, by any chance?”

The waiter jerked his thumb at the burly comet player. “Only ‘king’ we got around here is him.”

“Oh?”

“Joseph ‘King’ Oliver. Comet king of the Crescent City. Don’t you read? Name of the band is posted outside in big red letters.” The waiter sauntered off, shaking his head. Rudeness obviously constituted a deliberate part of the dance hall’s raffish charm.

Houdini glanced from the crumpled poem to the bandstand. The big man had been joined by the younger second cornet, and the two played a duet in fast, flawless harmony. The magician had performed with the incomparable Bert Williams, but on the whole, Negroes were a rarity on the vaude circuit, although there certainly was no shortage of blackface acts. He marveled at the jazz band’s devil-may-care professionalism, at how much fun they seemed to be having.