Carter Beats the Devil (29 page)

But the idea of that prickles at me, so while I visit Japan I want to turn you loose in the realm of international property law. I have an idea about a charitable organization . . .

The rest of the file set up the paperwork for the Home for Retired Performing Animals. Griffin wrote the co-ordinates of the island down on his notepad. He wrote “Annabelle, again” next to that.

In May 1914, there were several small articles from the
Call
and the
Examiner
.

CARTER THE MYSTERIOUS RETURNS
FROM JAPAN SECLUSION

World traveling sorcerer supreme Charles Carter, yclept Carter the Mysterious, has made a startling discovery that makes the news from Europe seem mild indeed. The Japanese have a horrifying secret weapon: a means of propelling their infantry through solid matter. It is apparently how they achieved victory over both China and Russia.

Griffin frowned. He’d attended the Naval Weapons Treaty negotiations with Japan and he hadn’t heard anything about a secret weapon. He kept reading.

Carter promises that in his show a person is put into a special armament, a modified cannon, and is launched through a brick wall, landing in a net on the other side of the stage. “I have leased this equipment from the Japanese military for a brief time, and I’m very concerned about safety. In showing me its use, the Japanese misadjusted the controls, and they accidentally killed three of their own men!”

Griffin, overcome by revulsion for the Japanese, wrote “secret Japanese weapon,” but even as the last word was drying on the page, he was suddenly unsure. Sending someone through a brick wall? That sounded ridiculous. But then again, so did radio waves. The Black Chamber had decoded all of Japan’s secret documents, and something this big couldn’t have escaped notice. And what had happened to Carter’s voyage to the Carpathian Mountains?

He turned the page, expecting to see reviews of the show, perhaps another indication that the run had been extended, sure proof that this
limited lease of military equipment—and why would the Japanese let any foreigner use it?—was just a ruse.

But the next clipping, in sequence, was from October 1917, three years later. Griffin checked: there was the May 1914 clipping, then, two blank pages later, the 1917 clipping. Facing the latter clipping was a rectangular piece of paper, light blue, heavy stock, embossed with the library seal, and stamped with the words “For other articles, consult special collections.” He considered asking Miss White about the special collections. The
excited
Miss White. He concluded he would rather read the rest of this volume first.

The 1917 clipping was a review of a benefit at the Hippodrome in New York for the families of the men of the
Antilles
, which had been torpedoed by a German U-boat. Griffin scanned the article three times with growing puzzlement.

. . . the largest gathering of professional magicians ever to occur. When the cause is just, and the organizer is Harry Houdini, no one dares be a spoilsport. Most notable, Kellar, King of all American magicians, was lured from retirement for the first time since 1908, and after his show, women dashed onstage to shower the old magician with baskets of red and yellow chrysanthemums. The 125-piece Hippodrome orchestra played Auld Lang Syne as 6000 spectators sang along and Kellar was carried offstage in a sedan chair by the greatest magicians currently performing: Houdini, Thurston, Jansen, Nicola, Raymond and Goldin.

Near the bottom was this paragraph:

Also, Charles Carter, a San Francisco magician, came out of the retirement enforced by an incident. But there were no hard feelings among these men of magic and he was welcomed with open arms . . .

Retirement? What incident? Griffin flipped through the remainder of the book, and found nothing to explain what had happened between 1914 and 1917.

The articles after the Hippodrome benefit were all dry: reviews of shows, promises of spectaculars that sounded interchangeable. There were no mentions of Annabelle.

He brought the blue “special collections” card to Miss White, who was sitting at her table and reading under a small, bright desk lamp.

“Oh, you startled me,” she said, hands jumping to her chest.

“I’m sorry, Miss—”

“I was just reading a dreadful article about a nanny. A man kept calling her to ask if she’d checked the children.”

“Yeah, I read that.”

Miss White accepted the blue Special Collections card from Griffin. “You know, I believe the very same thing was reported last year, only it was in Atlanta, Georgia.” She put her hand to her mouth. “I wonder if it’s the same man.”

Griffin shrugged. “It’s a pretty unusual m.o.”

“
Modus operandi
.” Miss White closed her eyes. “Mr. Griffin, it’s such a pleasure to hear you speak.”

Griffin quickly said, “Can you tell me what’s in the special collections?”

She stood upright, like she’d been called to the head of the class, explaining that when recording the lives of prominent San Francisco families, the library used discretion. “There are so many things in the paper that you don’t want just anyone to come gawk at. Now let’s see,” she said. “1914.” As she peeled back a blanket that was covering a locked file cabinet, she repeated the date to herself. “I’ve seen Carter a dozen times. He’s such a wonderful man. I wonder if I saw him in 1914.”

“He was exhibiting some kind of cannon from Japan.”

She sighed. “The Phantom War Gun.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s it.”

Miss White set her mouth in a silent O, and she began searching through her folders. She was so quiet that Griffin wondered what was wrong.

“Does that mean something to you?”

“Well, yes.” And she looked at Griffin with her bright eyes, eyes suddenly shiny with welled-up tears. “Such a tragedy. Poor Mr. Carter.”

CHAPTER 4

“It doesn’t work yet,” sighed Ledocq.

“I’m certain that it does.” Carter watched the stage, where eight men were busy polishing brass hinges, touching up props with paint, and
arranging mirrors with scientific precision. The cannon, such as it was, lay in a half dozen pieces.

“Carter. Postpone. Just for a week.”

“No,” Carter said with a pleasant smile.

“When you get so sure of yourself, I could kill you.” Ledocq squinted at his pocket watch. He had recently reached the age where people began to describe him as vigorous. Carter had met him in England a year before, spiriting him away from quiet days at Maskelyne & Devant and promising him a second childhood. “Charlie, the sun goes down in an hour. I don’t know how much longer I can work on it.”

“It’ll be fine. Trust me.”

“I trust you, I just don’t trust that
furshlugginer
hunk of junk over there.” He scratched his nose, leaving behind a grey smear of grease.

The show was divided into three acts: First was “The Artist’s Model,” in which Carter painted a portrait of a beautiful woman that came to life and fought off thieves who clubbed Carter over the head. After an interlude where she—for of course, she was Annabelle—played piano and the stage was struck, Carter launched into the second act, “Cornucopia,” which he called a salute to American bounty. He poured from an inexhaustible blue glass bottle any drink requested by the audience—beer, Coca-Cola, water, apple juice—and then, from an empty teak cube three feet to a side, suspended in the middle of the stage and lavishly painted with fleurs-de-lis, he produced flowers, balloons, doves, and a girl dressed in red, white, and blue, holding sparklers. The third act was “The Phantom War Gun,” which did not work, and the show would start in two hours.

Carter might have considered substituting another illusion tonight, even though he’d advertised and sold out the house based on this one. There was, however, a complication: both the Great Leon, in Philadelphia, and P. T. Selbit, in London, had their own versions of the same effect, and would have them onstage within the week. Each magician was friendly enough with the other to confirm he’d come up with his idea independently, but each was also competitive enough to want his illusion unveiled first.

All week, Ledocq had argued that Carter could wait: Leon fired a woman through a
steel
wall, and Selbit had a woman
walk
through a brick wall. Their methods were completely different than the Phantom War Gun. But Carter knew the public’s mind: the first magician to pass a girl through a wall would be the winner. Carter had developed a taste for winning.

“What’s wrong with it now?” Carter asked.

“What isn’t wrong with it?” They approached the equipment, which Carter had designed with a few sketches on a tablecloth, and which Ledocq had spent eight months forcing to conform to the laws of physics. The gimmick, when finished, had mechanics that were ingenious but not quite ingenious enough.

If it ever worked, it would follow Carter’s description in his patent application: “A committee is called onstage to inspect the brick wall. They sign two sheets of paper, 30
”
x 30
”
, and one is pasted to each side of the wall. The woman is lowered into the cannon, which is brought within a foot of the wall. There is an explosive concussion, and the woman is hurled out of the cannon. She passes through the wall. She lands in a safety net on the other side of the wall. The committee is called to examine the wall again. It is solid. Both of their sheets of paper, however, have been ripped by the force of the human cannonball.”

All week, gunny sacks sixty-four inches long, filled with 122 pounds of sand, had been lowered into the gun and shot through the wall and into the net. Based on the experiments, the angle of the cannon’s mouth had been altered five degrees, and the net raised six feet, and the eight-pound snap-release claws that held the net to its frame had been replaced with eighteen-pounders, for stability and strength. And all week, Toots Becker, American high-diving champion, had been waiting in her hotel room for her turn in the cannon. Sarah Annabelle Carter had never been interested in this part of the show. Being the artist’s model was sweet, beating the tar out of thieves was great fun, but she would under no circumstances come out of the Cornucopia box or be fired out of a cannon.

At Carter’s request, stagehands began to assemble the cannon for a dry run. Carter asked Ledocq, “Is it a matter of safety?”

“Vibration.”

Carter clapped his hands three times; the entire theatre fell silent. “Thank you. We’ll be testing the cannon in two minutes.” At once, his workers set their tasks aside and took places in the house: some in the front row, some at the edges of the farthest rows.

As Carter ran through his patter, verbatim but without inflection, the sack of sand was lowered into the cannon, and a “committee” of his men signed sheets of paper, which were pasted on either side of the wall. The actual committee would be civilians; for the show tonight, Carter had invited four professors of engineering from the University of California to examine the wall. As his own men retired to their positions, Carter spied his wife standing in the wings. She wore a new hat, a shopping bag in each
hand. When Carter made eye contact with her, she crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue; he continued his patter as if nothing had happened.

A dummy instrument panel glowed beside the cannon, and a single band of electric current trembled between two tall filaments. “Because of the great forces about to be unleashed, I advise you men to stand back. On the count of three—no, hold!” Carter stopped his patter. He turned to Ledocq. “Can we station two committee members upstage? That way they can see we aren’t rolling the wall toward the backdrop.”

Ledocq agreed it was a good idea. Carter had them repositioned, and started his patter from the top. “On the count of three, this brave woman will be fired through the wall.” The barrel of the cannon was lowered, and, as the assembly wheeled forward so that the mouth of the cannon was just a foot from the wall, Carter was distressed to see tremendous shudders coming from the wall itself. “Hold!” He approached the footlights, and, knowing the answer, he called, “How does that look?”

“It’s . . . it’s not too bad,” said a young stagehand in the middle of the house. Carter made a mental note never to ask him that question again.

“It wouldn’t fool a four-year-old,” said Ledocq. “A brick wall. A solid brick wall, moving. ‘Momma, why is the solid brick wall moving?’ ‘I don’t know, sweetie, but I’m sure it’s not because there’s a motor inside.’”

After a moment of silence, Carter sighed, “
Oy vey
.”

Pressing his palm to his forehead, he continued, “Fine. Gentlemen, back the cannon up to position one. Ledocq, will anything keep the wall from moving?”

“Sure. If you and I stood there and held it in place, it wouldn’t move. But other than that, I need a week to get more juice out of a smaller motor or make the wall a little bigger.”

Carter brought out a half dollar and started walking it across the back of his fingers. Ledocq had seen Carter think before; he knew not to say anything. A moment later, there were two quarters flipping end over end, little silver tumblers, crossing Carter’s hand. Then they froze. “I am an
idiot
,” Carter hissed. “The answer is right in front of us. We’ll make the marks do our work for us. The
committee
holds it in place.”

Ledocq nodded for three seconds. “You’re worth every penny I pay you, Charlie.”

“Places!” It would take two minutes to take the sack out of the cannon and reload it. Carter walked toward his wife, speaking aloud, “To prove to yourselves that there is no optical illusion involved, sirs, I ask that you stand on all sides of the wall, holding it in place, et cetera.”

“Et cetera,” Annabelle said.

“That would take up less time, wouldn’t it?” Carter made a generous wave to the theatre. “‘Ladies and Gentlemen—et cetera. Good night.’”

“So, who’s your wife?” Annabelle asked, pushing down the brim of her hat so it nearly obscured her eyes.