Jim Steinmeyer (13 page)

A great assistant, a loyal assistant, would have protected the magician. After all, Billy Robinson’s job was to advise Leon Herrmann as an expert in magic. But he had more sympathy for the destitute card magician, the total stranger. He might have thought it would be funny, or humiliating, if the sophisticated Paris magician were to be fooled by a published card trick.

The secret of any great con game is the moment when the mark, the victim, constructs a con game in his own mind. The hotel managers accepted Thurston’s cheap watches because they greedily thought they were taking advantage of a desperate young man who had stupidly offered a precious, jewel-encrusted watch in exchange for a modest hotel bill. That’s the point at which the mark becomes complicit, and the success of the confidence game is assured. When Thurston left the Tabor Grand that afternoon, Robinson was ready to serve as the accomplice. Or maybe—this was the most wonderful part of the plan—it now seemed to be Robinson’s con game, and Thurston was the accomplice.

 

 

THURSTON PICKED UP GRACE,
and they both ran to the Palace Hotel, asking for Mr. Herrmann. The magician met them in the lobby, bowing with courtly grace. Thurston was momentarily dumbstruck. Leon showed a definite resemblance to his wonderful uncle, the same dark eyes and expressive, bobbing eyebrows. But something was wrong; it was as if he were a burlesque actor playing Herrmann. Leon spoke with an impenetrable French accent and made himself clear only with a series of cartoonish, exaggerated gestures—shrugging, frowning, or spreading his fingers and then slowly separating his hands, as if he were holding an ever-expanding balloon.

Leon Herrmann was intrigued to hear about the trick, but puzzled when Thurston explained that he couldn’t perform it there, at the hotel. He offered to present it on Herrmann’s stage.

Herrmann grimaced. “Eem-poss-ee-buhl! On my stage? Ziss iss eem-poss-ee-buhl!”

“Mr. Herrmann,” Grace interrupted, talking slowly. “You might think that we would need to move your equipment or touch any of your props. But we wouldn’t.” Thurston added, “Mr. Robinson will supervise everything.” Herrmann reluctantly agreed, telling the couple that he would come to the theater that afternoon.

As they dashed from the hotel, Howard surprised his wife by making a sharp turn and careening through the doors of the Denver Post building. Once his heels reached the shiny terrazzo floor, Thurston stopped, smoothed his hair, stepped over to the man behind the desk, and politely asked for the city editor’s office. “I have a news story,” he announced, catching his breath. The man pointed his thumb at the newsroom upstairs. Howard and Grace bounded up the stairs and pushed their way through the door.

The editor listened to Thurston’s boast and suggested that it would only be a news story if the great magician would actually admit that he was fooled. He thought it was unlikely. But Thurston’s enthusiasm won him over, and he agreed to supply a reporter, who could hide in the wings and watch the impromptu performance.

Howard and Grace circled back to their hotel room and filled their pockets with their special playing cards, a package of small brads, and rolls of fine silk thread. On the way to the Tabor Opera House, they stopped at a hardware store to buy a tack hammer. They couldn’t pick up their tools at the honky-tonk, as by now they’d missed the afternoon performances and couldn’t risk the wrath of the manager.

 

 

STANDING ON
Leon Herrmann’s stage that afternoon, Thurston was momentarily transfixed. There was Alexander Herrmann’s gold-leaf Louis Quatorze table, the one he’d seen the magician use when he was a boy. Thurston knew that the surface was adorned with a sophisticated system of trapdoors and secret compartments. Pushed to one side was the distinctive Artist’s Dream illusion, and hanging from one edge of the framework was Herrmann’s blazing red Mephistopheles cloak. Bolted to the floor, behind the back curtain, was a frame of metal that had been carefully wrapped in canvas. Thurston knew that it must have been the secret device used in Trilby, the levitation illusion he’d seen, in which Madame Herrmann took the role of Svengali’s beautiful protégée. The darkened stage seemed haunted by visions from Thurston’s youthful dreams; the scenery smelled of layers of turpentine and paint, the legacy of seasons on the road, and the wooden floor creaked mysteriously under each step. “So charged was the silence with the personality of the man, all that I remember,” he later wrote, “is that as I stood there, around the paraphernalia that had once belonged to the master of all magicians, I was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of unreality.”

Thurston regained his senses with a familiar “tap, tap” sound. Grace was using the tack hammer to pound several brads into the edges of the scenery. She had begun to stretch threads across the stage for the Rising Card trick.

They waited, walking in tight circles, whispering to themselves. Herrmann didn’t show up.

The reporter balked; he’d been waiting in darkness at the side of the stage, but wondered if the meeting would ever happen. Billy Robinson assured Thurston that Herrmann must have taken an unexpectedly long dinner. He would have to arrive for his own show that night.

If they were going to perform it just before the show, it meant that the audience would be arriving in the auditorium. Herrmann would be standing on the stage, just a few feet from the trick. Thurston thought it was still worth a chance. He located the electrician, working in the wings. “I’m going to need your help. I can’t have the stage brightly lit.” The electrician stepped away from the tall iron control board studded with porcelain handles. “Tell me what you need, young man.”

“I’m going to call for lights. And I want you to bring up the borders. Slowly. Very slowly. I’ll call for more light. Just keep them coming. But when I put my hand in my pocket, like this, I want you to hold the lights right there. No matter what I say. Even if I call for more light, you hold it right there. Understand?”

“I watch for your hand in your pocket,” the electrician repeated.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Thurston told him. He pulled his hand from his pocket and tossed the man a ten-dollar gold piece. “Get yourself some cigars and a good drink after the show.”

A little after seven-thirty, the stage door swung open with a loud clatter and Thurston heard the sound of raised voices. The company manager, Edward Thurnaer, had just been told about the planned show onstage and he was loudly protesting. They wouldn’t be able to delay the curtain. But Leon Herrmann dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “Yes, yes, I know. If zee man is here now, I will see ziss treek!” Leon, his wife, Marie, and his aunt Adelaide, were still in their coats and hats. They pushed past Thurnaer and strode grandly onto the stage. Grace gasped to see the group pass beneath the stretched threads. Madame Herrmann’s feathered hat almost snagged, but fortunately no one noticed the threads. A small group of stagehands and assistants followed the magician onto the stage, as well as Billy Robinson, who stood at the back of the group.

“Mr. Herrmann!” Thurston greeted him like a long-lost friend. Thurston maneuvered the group so they were standing with their backs to the curtain. He could already hear some of the audience, beyond the drapery, arriving to take their seats. He knew that, in a matter of minutes, Herrmann would be pressed to go to his dressing room to change and apply his makeup, and Robinson would need to set the stage for the performance. He felt his heart racing.

“Let me have some light!” he called out to the electrician. The overhead rows of glass globes sparked with golden pinpoints, then glowed with a cool blue illumination. “More light,” Howard called out. The lamps grew brighter. Thurston pushed his hand into his pocket. “Still more light!” Thurnaer looked nervously at his watch. “We need to hurry,” he said. Herrmann made a casual gesture, flourishing his fingers above his shoulder, as if dismissing the remark.

Howard froze, with his hand in his pocket, “as if he were waiting for a streetcar, without a care in the world,” Grace recalled. “Brighter lights!” he called again. The electrician now understood the ruse. He yelled back, “You’ve now got all the power I can spare for you, young feller!”

He asked four people to withdraw cards from the deck that he was shuffling in his hand. They each looked at their cards and then replaced them in the deck. He stepped back several paces. Grace watched from the wings as he gestured casually with his hand over his head, contacting the first invisible thread. He smoothly lowered it to the edge of the cards.

Thurston asked for the name of the first card chosen. “It was the ten of diamonds,” Marie Herrmann told him. “Ten of diamonds, come forth,” Thurston called. And the card sailed up smoothly through the air. He caught it, and then tossed it forward, spiraling it into the hands of one of the attentive spectators.

He repeated the trick with each card, deliberately stepping to different positions on the stage. One of the stagehands, attempting to throw him, called the wrong card. Thurston knew that the man was trying to fool him; he said that he’d return to that one. He asked Herrmann for his card. “Zee ten of clubs!” “Up, up, up,” Thurston exhorted. The ten rose smoothly to his hand, and he stepped forward to present the card to the magician.

The young magician now took a spot several paces closer to his audience and asked again for the last card. “I was pulling your leg. It was really the jack of hearts,” the stagehand admitted. He had barely finished speaking the name of the card, and the jack of hearts sailed through the air into Thurston’s hand.

A few stagehands applauded. Robinson quickly turned away. “Fifteen minutes! Let’s strike this, and set the entrance drop! Props!” And the group scattered to the wings.

Grace reached up, snagging the threads and pulling them free of the brads. She noticed Herrmann was taking several steps toward Thurston, with an expansive gesture, twirling his hand in the air. She suspected that he was guessing at the secret and feeling about for threads. But she was too fast; he just missed them.

Thurston moved Herrmann toward the reporter in the wings. “Did you like the trick?” he asked.
“Très bien.”
Herrmann shrugged. “Did it mystify you?” “Yes, M’sieu.” Thurston smiled and looked up at the reporter, who nodded. Relieved, Thurston followed up by whispering a few technical details to Herrmann. Yes, the trick was accomplished with threads, he told him, horizontal threads, and a special way of preparing the cards. Herrmann nodded. He was now uncomfortable with the discussion, which was going on too long. He was anxious to get to his dressing room. “Do you want to buy the trick?” Thurston called after him. “Mmm, ees poss-ee-buhl. Call for me at zee hotel!”

Madame Herrmann pushed her way past the young magician. “Very nice. Now please get off the stage. Please!”

He glanced back over his shoulder. The stage had been transformed into an elegant drawing room, ringed with tables full of bright scarves and shiny metal vases, in anticipation of Herrmann’s show.

The stage door slammed on Grace, Thurston, and the reporter and they were suddenly startled by the calm. Howard took a deep breath of the cool air. “Sure, we’ll print it,” the reporter told him nonchalantly. “He said you mystified him. That’s what my editor told me to get. I got it.”

 

 

AT THREE
the next morning, Howard and Grace were pacing outside the newspaper office, waiting for the early edition of the Sunday paper. When the first copies were brought down to the office, he flipped through the pages to find his prize. He had two columns. A neat pen sketch showed Thurston, in profile, performing the Rising Cards for Herrmann and his group; the French magician was distinctive with his homburg and waxed goatee. The headline proclaimed, “Herrmann, the Magician, Mystified by Another Magician.” Thurston groaned. His name didn’t make it into the headline. But the reporter had done his job; the story was succinct and accurate, ending with a brief summation of Thurston’s résumé and the statement, “He had mystified the mystifier.”

Late that morning, Thurston foolishly stopped by the Palace Hotel to meet with Herrmann. Drunk with the excitement of the previous night, he had remembered that Herrmann invited him to talk about buying the trick. By the time Thurston arrived, Herrmann had seen the newspaper and realized that he’d been double-crossed. The meeting, such as it was, must have consisted of some brief, Parisian-accented American obscenities. Thurston slunk back to his room. “How did it go?” Grace asked. “It didn’t,” Thurston growled. “Leave me alone!”

They bought stacks of papers and spent the morning cutting articles to send to agents and theater managers, but they heard nothing from the East Coast agents and remained in the Denver area for months, circling through the same mining towns, honky-tonks, and sideshows, anxiously checking the mail every day.

By early 1899, Thurston had decided upon his plans. He would have his own magic show, one of the world’s greatest magic shows, in ten years. It would be the sort of show to rival Herrmann. He could only do it if he were a success in New York. Howard and Grace counted their money, packed their bags, and headed east.

 

 

THE BACKSTAGE SHOW
at the Tabor Grand Opera House had been a magnificent con game. When Herrmann was fooled, it was because he had been fooled by the sneaky little touches—the multiple threads, the little show with the electrician, Grace’s deft work in the wings. Most of all, he was fooled because he couldn’t imagine that his own stage could have been prepared to deceive him, with his own stage manager supervising.

That strange backstage performance changed the fortunes of every magician who was there.

That night marked the beginning of the end for Billy Robinson, who had acted duplicitously with the Herrmanns. Oddly, he never mentioned the newspaper reporter who had been hidden backstage. It was Thurston’s inclusion of a reporter that should have angered Robinson. If Thurston had really wanted to sell the trick to Herrmann, if he needed the money, there would have been no reason to contact a reporter.