The Floating Lady Murder (4 page)

“
HARRY
,”
I SAID, AS OUR HORSE-CART TURNED ONTO BROADWAY
, “would you care to explain why you’re rubbing beef fat onto your shoe?”

“Uh...” he gave me a sidelong glance. “For luck.”

“For luck? You’re slathering animal lard onto your shoe for luck?”

“An old show business custom.”

We were riding in the back of the neighborhood milk cart, having bribed the delivery man, Bert, into hauling our magic trunk down to the theater district. Along the way Harry had insisted that we stop at a local butcher’s shop, where he had darted inside in a state of high animation. Moments later he had emerged carrying a small brown parcel, which proved to be a strip of moist beef tallow. “Just the thing,” he told us, as he energetically rubbed grease into the leather of his shoe.

“Harry,” said Bess, with a note of exasperation in her voice, “there is no show business custom involving beef tallow. Would you please tell us why you’re doing that?”

“Very well,” said Harry, tossing the brown wrapping aside, “but you may think it a bit odd.”

Bess peered up at him through the netting of her hat. “Odd? Do you suppose so?”

Harry wiped his hands on his handkerchief and settled
himself against a milk canister. “It has to do with Brownie.”

“Brownie?”

Harry nodded vigorously. “The story goes that when Kellar was a boy, he ran away from home and worked a series of odd jobs—selling newspapers, sweeping offices, delivering parcels.”

“Sounds familiar, Harry,” I said.

“Yes,” Harry said. “Mr. Kellar seems to have spent his boyhood working various jobs as an errand boy, just as you and I did. At one stage he was working as a farm hand in Buffalo when he saw a notice in the local paper announcing that the Wizard of Kalliffa needed a boy assistant. Young Harry was terrified that someone else might get the position, so he ran all the way to the wizard’s home—two miles, as I recall.”

“We know the story, Harry. What has that to do with beef tallow?”

“I’m just getting to that part. When young Harry arrived, a small terrier ran from the house and began wagging its tail. A moment later, the Wizard of Kalliffa himself stepped from the house and told young Kellar that the job was his. It seems that the wizard placed enormous faith in his dog’s ability to judge character. The dog had barked and growled at each of the previous applicants. Only Kellar seemed to meet with the dog’s approval.”

Bess grasped for the railing as the milk cart clattered around a sharp corner. “Are you saying that Kellar had rubbed his shoes with animal fat? Is that why the dog appeared to like him so much?”

“No. Not as far as I’m aware. But I cannot afford to take any chances. If Mr. Kellar has a dog, and if he considers that dog to be a good judge of character, you may be sure that dog is going to be positively ecstatic when the Great Houdini enters the room.”

“Harry,” I asked, “do we even know that Mr. Kellar owns a dog?”

“Well, no,” Harry allowed, “but it stands to reason, doesn’t
it? Kellar’s big break came as the result of a dog’s judgment. It only makes sense that he would choose his own successor in the same manner.”

“Harry,” Bess began, “all the newspaper notice said was ‘Staff required.’ We don’t want to assume that Mr. Kellar is—”

“Who is Brownie?” I broke in.

“Brownie?”

“You said that the story had to do with someone named Brownie. You can’t mean that Brownie was the name of the Wizard of Kalliffa’s dog! How could you possibly know that?”

“Well,” Harry said, burying his chin in the collar of his furry astrakhan cloak, “I don’t know for certain. I just always imagined that the dog’s name would be Brownie. It struck me as a good name for a wizard’s dog.”

Bess and I exchanged a look. “Harry,” I said, “perhaps you’d better keep quiet about your, uh, your expectations of Mr. Kellar. We wouldn’t want to—”

“Nonsense!” he cried. “Mr. Kellar is obviously seeking a successor to carry on his illustrious legacy, and I am clearly the only man who could shoulder this heavy burden. It makes perfect sense, does it not?”

“Harry,” Bess began, “let’s not—”

“Do not concern yourself, dear,” he said, reaching over to pat her hand. “Our worries are at an end. We’re nearly at the theater now.”

I had already been down to the theater once that morning to set up an appointment with Mr. McAdow, the manager of the Kellar organization. From what little I had been able to gather, it was clear that Mr. McAdow wished nothing more than to “have a look” at his prospective employees, and I was assured that a formal audition would not be required. “Maybe a couple of card tricks,” I was told. “McAdow likes card tricks.” In spite of this, Harry decided that he would favor Mr. McAdow with a performance of his most elaborate effect—the Substitution Trunk Mystery.

“Harry,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the trunk as it bounced and rocked on the back of the cart, “are you sure you won’t reconsider about the card tricks?”

“It is certainly true that my card manipulations are without equal,” Harry replied, “but no demonstration of the Great Houdini’s genius can be complete without his signature effect. As you well know, the Substitution Trunk Mystery has won rave reviews all across America. The
Toledo Evening Bee,
as I recall, felt the effect to be ‘the most baffling mystery ever presented on the stages of our fair city.’ High praise, indeed!”

“Uh, Harry—”

“And I seem to recall that the
Chicago Inter-Ocean
also had kind words for my performance. ‘Mr. Houdini and his wife have elevated the conjuror’s art to a new level of elegance.’ Nothing more than the truth, I might add!”

“Uh, Harry—”

“The critic from the
Pittsburgh Post
was moved to write—”

“Harry, for God’s sake!”

“What is it, Dash? I must say you are in a strange humor today.”

“Don’t you remember? I wrote those notices! I was the one who reviewed the act in Toledo! I was the one who reviewed the act in Pittsburgh and Chicago! That’s what a publicity man does! Especially when he’s your younger brother!”

Harry’s eyebrows shot up. “You wrote those notices?”

“Harry, we’ve been over this a dozen times. I’ve been planting items in the press since you were fourteen years old. Remember the
Brooklyn Eagle
?”

Harry spent a moment or two watching the passing buildings. “Well, in any case, what you wrote was nothing more than the truth. And anyway,” he added, as the cart drew up in front of the theater, “I’m sure that if you hadn’t written in praise of the act, someone else would have done so in equally extravagant terms.”

“No doubt, Harry.” I said, as we hopped down off the cart. “Just remember what we discussed. Mr. McAdow is a theatrical
professional. It would be best if you presented the trunk trick without the usual rhetorical flourishes.”

“Yes,” Bess agreed, perhaps a bit too eagerly, “we don’t want to take up too much of the man’s valuable time.”

Harry shouldered the heavy trunk and gave her a wink. “I shall be captivating,” he declared, “as always.” With this, he gave a resounding knock on the stage door.

I should perhaps confess that the Belasco Theater has always held a special significance for me. Its high dome and stately columns had long been a fixture of the New York theater district, and season after season it managed to attract the finest actors and productions. As a boy, I once stuffed myself through the coal chute off the service alley in order to hear Mr. Edwin Booth give one of his final performances of
Hamlet.
I neither appreciated nor fully grasped the drama, but I understood the event to be of great significance in the theater world. I spent the entire first act and much of the second crouched below the rear stairs. I thrilled to the sudden and mysterious appearance of the ghost of Hamlet’s father—who rose from the floor of the stage as though emerging from the sea—and I later described it breathlessly to my brother as the finest magic trick I had ever seen. It was my hope that the effect might be repeated, but during the third act I was roughly turned out by a ruddy-faced theater warden in a striped vest and bowler.

I felt a moment’s unease when that same florid-cheeked gentleman answered our knock at the stage door, but I soon recovered myself, confident that he would not recognize me as the youthful Shakespeare enthusiast of the previous decade. The warden showed us through a maze of causeways and past a series of dressing chambers and property lockers while Harry and I maneuvered the ungainly substitution trunk around a number of tight corners. Finally we rounded a battery of curtain cleats and came onto the main stage itself.

“Mr. McAdow?” the warden called, peering out over the forward lip of the stage.

Down in the empty house, in the front row of seats, a pair of men were huddled over a sheaf of papers. One of them was tall, slender and fair-complexioned, with ginger hair swept straight back from a strong, heavily lined forehead. The other man was smaller and dark-haired, with a flowing moustache. “Yes, Connell?” the taller man said, looking up from his documents. “What is it?”

“These gentlemen and the lady to see you, sir.”

McAdow gave a dismissive wave of the hand. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Wait there. Be with you in a minute.”

Connell gave a courtly little bow to Bess and withdrew, leaving us standing with the trunk at the center of the stage.

We were the only people in the entire theater who did not appear to be engaged in some furious activity. All around us the members of Mr. Kellar’s company were busily going about their business, and the air was alive with the sounds and shouts of workers and their tools. Toward the rear, a team of carpenters could be seen lifting large scenery flats onto the braceworks. Overhead, a pair of wiry young men swarmed through the rigging high above the stage, pulling at the counterweights and sashes. In the orchestra pit, a handful of violinists and cellists bent over the pages of a musical score, sending up a few stray notes as they studied their parts. To our left, a matronly property mistress fussed over a bewildering array of wooden cups, houlettes and metal trays.

“This is astonishing!” said Bess, raising her voice to be heard. “Do all these people work for Mr. Kellar? I don’t think I’ve ever seen such—”

Her remark was cut short by a startling sound—the roar of a fearsome jungle creature. We turned to see a crew of four men wheeling a large wooden cage forward on a flat dolley. Inside, a fierce-looking lion paced back and forth in obvious agitation.

“He’ll calm down in a moment,” one of the handlers was saying. “It’s just all the excitement of the travel. He’ll be fine once he’s had his feeding.”

“Can you believe it?” Bess asked. “A real lion! Whatever can Mr. Kellar be planning? Harry, have you ever seen the like?”

Even my brother appeared to be impressed. “A lion would make for a very splendid spectacle,” he admitted. “Very splendid, indeed.”

“Perhaps Kellar is planning to vanish it,” I said. “Or maybe some sort of transposition?”

Harry did not appear to be listening. “I shall need something even more magnificent if I am to achieve the pinnacle of the profession,” he said in a musing sort of way. “A tiger, perhaps? A panther?”

Bess turned to him in surprise. “Harry, whatever are you talking about?”

“An elephant!” he said, as if arriving at a sudden decision. “I shall cause an elephant to vanish!”

“A fine idea,” said Bess facetiously. “And how do you propose to get this elephant from place to place? Do you suppose Bert will be able to give you and the elephant a ride on his milk cart?”

Harry appeared to consider the problem. “The elephant could walk from place to place on its own four legs,” he declared. “However, it would require a special train carriage if we intended to take it on tour. That might be impractical.”

“It might at that,” said Bess with raised eyebrows. “Better to leave him behind in New York. No doubt your mother would be pleased to cook for an elephant.” She turned away and swept her hand toward the enormous jumble of apparatus littering the back of the stage. “Look at all those crates! How does Mr. Kellar carry it from city to city?”

“Mr. Kellar has his own private train,” said a man who had come up from behind. “The equipment alone occupies four cars.”

We turned and found ourselves facing a lean, powerfully-built young man with rolled sleeves and an open collar. He had sandy hair, blue eyes and an affable, lopsided grin that made a striking contrast to my brother’s dark gravity. “Name’s Jim
Collins,” the young man said, sticking out a bony hand. “I’m one of the stagehands, and I guess I know about as much as there is to know about breaking this show down and setting it back up again. I’ve done it often enough.”

“I am the Great Houdini,” said Harry, pumping Collins’ hand. “This is my lovely wife, Bess, and my brother, Dash. We are here for our appointment with Mr. Kellar.”

“You have an appointment with the old man?” asked Collins, frowning.

“Actually, our appointment is with Mr. McAdow,” I put in.

“But Mr. Kellar will want to see us,” Harry said firmly. “You may be certain of that. Tell me, Mr. Collins, how are the plans for the Floating Lady coming along?”

Collins recoiled as if slapped across the face. “The Floating Lady? How did you—” He took a step forward and gripped Harry firmly by the lapels. “See here, little man, if you’ve come snooping for Servais Le Roy, you can tell him from me that he can just pack up and go back to France or Belgium or wherever the hell it is he comes from! Furthermore, you can tell him—”

Smiling, Harry broke Collins’s grip with a strength that clearly surprised the bigger man. “Calm yourself, Mr. Collins. I am not here on behalf of Mr. Le Roy or any other rival magician, though your loyalty to your employer does you credit.”

Collins was not mollified. “Then how in God’s name did you come to know anything about the Floating Lady? We run a tight ship around here, and there’s no possible way—”

“A simple observation on my part,” said Harry. “I am a regular reader of
Mahatm a
magazine, as are all magicians of any worth, and I keep abreast of the news from England. I know perfectly well that Mr. John Nevil Maskelyne has created a sensation at the Egyptian Hall with his levitation illusion, and it seems only logical that Mr. Kellar should wish to follow suit in America.”