Magician's Fire (12 page)

Everything Herbie had said about Arnold's strength was true. With a single lopsided stride, the stage manager was on Harry, his spindly limbs locking him in a hold. Harry fought back, but every move was blocked by a steely hand, and he realized that he was upside down, the water and the iron steps flying underneath him as he was effortlessly carried up the stairs. A flash of light and he was back in Wesley's office. The slam of a cupboard door and it was dark again.

“Thought you'd help out ol' Herbie, did ya? And all the other no-good performing folk who work here, I'll be bound! Well, you ain't doing no such thing. Me and Mr. Jones, we're who decides what goes on around here. Now don't you say a word, boy!”

A bony hand over Harry's mouth made sure of that. Arnold had slammed himself in the cupboard too, but his face could just be made out in the gloom, those normally wide-open eyes tightened into narrow slits, staring furiously. Harry stared back. His heart was pounding faster than he had ever known. It felt like a knife, jabbing into him with every beat.

Billie
and
Arthur.
He saw them, their blurred faces as they tumbled together down the fire escape. Desperately, his mind flew back over that strange, muddled conversation again, thinking of every word that had been spoken, of every tiny gesture that had been made. Had he said anything about where he was going?
No, nothing at all.
As far as Billie and Arthur were concerned, he was just off on another bit of the investigation. They would have no idea…

That
he
needed
their
help
very
badly
indeed.

“I daresay you know I ain't been so pleased with you, Herbie.” Footsteps, and Wesley's voice was heard through the cupboard door. “A day in the Punishment Chamber tends to make people aware of how I see 'em.”

“Yes, Mr. Jones…” Herbie's broken voice managed a few words.

“But I never stay in a funk for too long.” A well-oiled clunk as the mantelpiece swiveled shut. “That boy wasted his time in so many ways. I was always intending to release you around now. Why, I need my star act to take the stage again…
don't
I
?”

The thud of a plump fist on a desk. From Herbie, a wheeze.

“Yes, Mr. Jones! Of course!”

“Now, that boy. Friend of yours, is he?”

“Yes…”

“He's going to have a lucky escape. As we speak, that very boy is running as fast as he can down the street outside, our stage manager right after him. Arnold'll give him a fair licking, but he'll let him go. 'Course he will. Friend or not, I don't think that boy's gonna be troubling us again, do you, Herbie?”

“No, Mr. Jones… Thank you…”

Herbie's voice was a gasp of fear but also of relief. But Harry knew something far worse than a licking was in store for him, and he fought against Arnold's grip with even greater force, his heart jabbing so hard that his eyes watered with pain. His muscles strained, his limbs tried to wriggle their way out of Arnold's grip, and his mind was wriggling even faster, going through those last moments on the fire escape.

They
won't even have been surprised
, he thought.
It's not as if they're not used to me running off, is it?
In the cupboard's darkness, Harry felt his face burn again as he thought of everything that had happened. The hurled umbrella. The smashed pieces of porcelain. Worst of all, Arthur's outburst on the fire escape.
“Enough of that in my life already…”
Harry shook his head from side to side, but the memory of those words stayed in there, painfully lodged.

The cupboard door flew open. Herbie was gone, and Harry was out of the cupboard, Arnold's trapeze artist limbs still wrapped around him. The mantelpiece slid open on its hinges. Harry fought, but Arnold bundled him back into the dark. The candle stub flickered, the black water rippled, the cage door slid shut with Harry inside. He flung himself against the iron bars. He pried at the lock. His eyes flicked about, his fingers twitched, as a tiny part of him wondered if he could play that little game, the one where he searched out some stray bit of metal, one that he could bend into the correct shape to pick a lock. But he wasn't going to find any bit of stray metal, was he?
Not
trapped
here
in
a
water-filled cage
. Staring at the spiral staircase, he saw Wesley Jones making his way down, rotating his pink top hat between his thumbs.

“The Punishment Chamber is my usual name for this place.” Wesley was at the foot of the stairs. His face was as plump as ever, but the lips were slightly apart and the teeth behind were surprisingly sharp. “You interfered with my theater, boy. Do you have any idea how hard it is, running a theatrical establishment in this city? Many would say I manage things the only sensible way.”

“You told me Herbie was happy!” Harry heard a voice ring out, unusually high-pitched, and could hardly believe it was his own. “You said he was a friend of yours for ten years! You said he and all the other performers love working here but—”

“Sure, I lied.” The lips revealed a few more teeth. “You haven't been in New York very long, have you?”

A lever clanked. Arnold was next to the foot of the stairs, knee-deep in water, and he was tugging a lever while making various adjustments to it with one of the wrenches from his leather bag. Another clank and water flooded out of the various pipes that sprawled around the room's clammy walls. Churning, the black water began circling the cage. And it wasn't just circling, Harry noticed.

It was rising.

“You didn't really believe that you, a mere boy, could bring down the Wesley Jones Theater?” The pink hat twirled once more. “A theater which I, an experienced vaudevillian, have engineered to operate with precision. Patiently, expertly, I have broken my performers' spirits, while carefully preserving all that makes them so valuable, namely, their skills. Less a theater, more an ingeniously assembled machine—and I am powerfully proud of it. The idea that you could bring such careful work crashing down is absurd.”

“I'll tell everyone what you're doing!” Harry heard that high-pitched voice again.

“Well, yes, that
might
bring it all crashing down.” Wesley put his head to one side, as if finding the idea genuinely intriguing. “But my point still stands because there is no chance whatsoever of you doing that, shoeshine boy.” He nodded at Arnold. “The second lever, Arnold.”

“Right away, Mr. Jones!” Arnold held up another wrench, loped up the stairs, and went to work.

“As I mentioned before, the Punishment Chamber is my usual name for this contraption.” Wesley turned back. “Every now and then, however, a different title is needed. Wesley's Whirlpool, that's what I call it then.”

Halfway up the stairs, Arnold grabbed another lever. He twirled the wrench, loosened a bolt, and crunched the lever down. The whole staircase shuddered, and in the middle of the swirling, rising water, the cage shuddered too.

“I never liked that boy, Mr. Jones!” Arnold dropped the wrench back into his bag, sneering. “Remember how he talked to me about being such a great fan of the theater? Dreams of being a performer himself, I'll be bound.”

“Ah, but it is one thing to dream of a life upon the stage, and another thing to achieve such a life!” Wesley nodded. “Or, in the case of this boy, to hang onto any life at all.”

The cage was still shuddering. The bars were throbbing, and when Harry gripped them, they turned his fists to white blurs. Something directly under his feet thudded, and the cage began to grind downward.

“Now, I daresay, theatrical fellow that you are, you are expecting this machine to be a spectacular one. A fanciful contraption against which you can pit your wits—deadly piranhas or electric eels, perhaps? I'm sorry to disappoint you. This machine is merely a plumbing device.” Wesley headed back up the stairs.

“All theaters, no matter how carefully run, require occasional cleaning. Once in a while, they get clogged, if you like, by an unwanted item, a foreign body—something that needs to be flushed out. You, my boy, are such an item, and Wesley's Whirlpool is the plumbing tool that will flush you away, while Arnold and I attend to a far more important affair—the preparation of this evening's show.

“The cage you are in is moving downward and the water, you will have noticed, is swirling upward in whirlpool-like style. I am sure you understand the result regarding yourself. Afterward, sluices will open, and this room and all its contents—including those that remain in the cage—will sweep straight out to the Hudson River and flow away from this great city of ours toward the sea.”

“You can't do this!”

“Is that what you think? You really
haven't
been in New York for long.” Wesley returned his hat to his head. “Nor, by the process I have just described, will you be for very much longer.”

He trod up the stairs and, together with Arnold, disappeared into the gloom.

Harry flung himself at the bars. He pulled at them and kicked them, but the cage kept grinding steadily down.
Think
of
something.
He watched the cage's lock sink below the surface, ducked down, and peered at it in the watery darkness. Was there a chance, the ghost of a chance, that he might be able to find some bit of metal after all? Something to bend into a pick?
Impossible
. The only metal was the cage itself, welded and bolted together.

Beneath its base, Harry made out a steadily turning iron cog, its teeth levering the contraption downward. Reaching through the bars, he tried to stop it with his fingers, but the teeth tore through his skin, and a trembling bubble flew out of his mouth, a shout of pain. He burst back to the surface, his hand bleeding. His body cold and numb, he could no longer feel his heart jabbing. He just shuddered as it slammed against the inside of his chest.

Billie
and
Arthur.
He saw their faces again, hovering in the blackness.
What
would
they
be
doing
now
if
they
had
any
idea
what
was
happening
? he thought, and he knew the answer immediately. Despite everything, they would be racing across Manhattan and making up a plan, and it would be a good one too. He could see them now, their determined expressions, and he could hear their voices…

He heard other sounds as well, the clatter of plates and spoons, and even more strangely, he felt a patch of warmth on each of his hands, even as they gripped the icy bars. He saw his friends again. They were at a table now, the one in that grimy diner, crumbs of chocolate sponge cake scattering on the cloth. Billie and Arthur were holding each other's hands, and they were holding the hands of their other friend, the one across the table…

The
one
who
they'll never see again.

The water was up to his chest. He ducked back under it and reached for the cog again, but the teeth tore through his skin even faster this time. Another bubble of pain, and he shot back up out of the water, so fast that his head hit the bars at the top of the cage. He gripped them, and the vibrations shuddered through his bones.

One last time, he saw Billie and Arthur. They were back sitting at the bottom of that fire escape, the Princess Moldo costume in ruins, the dress ripped, the bonnet squashed. Why, thanks to him, Billie had even lost the very best bit of it, the Princess Moldo spectacles, genuinely made in Peru and knocked off by his arm during the fall down the fire escape.

The
Princess
Moldo
spectacles.

Harry's hand flew under the water. He dug inside his jacket, the pocket to the left. The spectacles were still there, where he had slid them, as he rattled away on the streetcar. He hadn't thought about them much then, apart from deciding he would give them back to his friends when he could. But he was thinking about them now. He had never thought about anything so intently in his life.

He lifted them up. The dark lenses were smashed; the frames were bent. But the thin arms were still intact.

Arms
with
curved, bendable metal ends.

Harry sucked in another gulp of air and dove under the water. He tore off one of the spectacle arms and sank toward the iron cog. With his still-bleeding hand, he angled the curved length of metal between the teeth and watched it catch hold. The cage shuddered to halt, although the spectacle arm wouldn't hold long and the water was still rising. But he had won himself a few more seconds, and he shot to the surface, grabbed another gasp of air, and sank back down to the lock. In his hands, Harry was already testing the strength of the remaining spectacle arm to see how easily it would bend.

Could it work? For the Great Train Escape, he had picked the padlock with a nail held between his teeth. He had picked the lock on the library door with a paper clip, and he had picked his way into the hotel manager's office with a fork. But what if the lock on the cage door was unusually difficult? What if the made-in-Peru spectacle arm was too weak to hold the shape? Even worse, it was almost impossible to see in the watery gloom, and Harry could hardly make out the lock's insides.

Using a little guesswork, he twisted the spectacle arm into a new curve. It slid in, and he probed the lock's levers but gave up because his hand was trembling too much. His breath was out, and his heart was making his whole body shake.
Grab
another
breath
and
try
again
, he decided, and he pushed for the water's surface.

Too late. The water had risen too high, and his face slammed against the cage bars. His lips strained upwards, but the rippling surface was too far away. He sank downward, his heart throbbing, his legs, arms, and hands losing their last traces of feeling. The water became darker, more blurry, as his eyelids flickered. The Princess Moldo spectacle arm slid from his fingers. He hung there in the water, icy and black.

His eyes closed. He stopped moving.

One…one…one last try…

An eye opened. He peered down and saw the spectacle arm just vanishing into the gloom. His fingers twitched after it, but it was already gone. With a last quiver of strength, he turned himself in the water, reaching after it. Slowly, he rotated until he was nearly upside down…

With the tip of his fingers, he caught it.

Still upside down, he saw the lock. It was just a few feet away. Feebly, he lifted the spectacle arm. He tried to angle it in, but it bumped against the keyhole's edges. Then it slid in. He tilted it, twisted it. He had to concentrate on keeping his numb hands moving, stopping them from falling limply away. His eyes were wide open, unblinking, but the water was growing darker and more blurry. He could hardly see at all.

But he could hear.

And, muffled by water, he heard…

…
a
click
.

The lock sprang open. Harry tugged the door, but it was stiff, so he had to tug again. It slid across, and he tried to squeeze through, but the gap was too narrow, and he had to wriggle. He wondered if he had already died, if the whole experience of the last few seconds had just been the final flickers of his drowning mind—then a kick sent him racing upward and he burst through the surface.

Air raced into his lungs so fast that it was as if he had been punched, and he nearly sank back into the water with the shock. He struggled on, reached the stairs, and pulled himself up them, gasping, his hands still empty of feeling. Reaching the top, he slammed into a solid wall, the back of the mantelpiece, but he remembered the position of the switch on the other side and found the mechanism. He sprang it, toppled into Wesley's office, thudded onto the rug, and realized what a terrible mistake he had made.

Footsteps. Uneven footsteps, echoing up the corridor outside the office.

Harry tried to get up. His fingers arched on the rug, trying to push, but his strength was gone. The footsteps were closer now.
What
a
fool
, he thought, not to realize that Wesley or Arnold might return to the office. His escape had been for nothing, even with the help of his friends…

His
friends.

“Harry!”

Arthur had slid out from behind the office door. Billie had thrown aside a curtain. They stared at him, but then they swung around in the direction of the footsteps. Arthur sprang toward the mantelpiece, and Harry heard the grind as it slid shut. He felt Billie's hands under his arms, tugging him up, and Arthur was helping her too, dragging him out through the office door. The footsteps were even louder, and Arnold's shadow slanted into view, but Billie flung open another door, bundled them into a cobweb-strewn dressing room, and silently closed the door behind them.

More footsteps. The sound of papers fluttering on Wesley's desk. Billie tweaked the dressing door open just a crack, and Harry saw the shape of Arnold, papers under his arm, standing in the doorway to Wesley's office. He was staring in the direction of the mantelpiece. A satisfied nod, the faintest waft of a chuckle, and the stage manager swung back off down the corridor. Harry waited until the shuffling footsteps were gone, completely gone. Then, he sputtered out the words that, from the moment he had seen his friends, had been trying to force their way out through his lips.

“I'm sorry… I'm sorry…”

Immediately, his voice gave out. His lungs still ached, his heart still pounded, and the effort of speaking nearly choked him. But nothing was going to hold him back. Gripping the dusty edge of the dressing-room counter, he gathered his breath, all the time aware of his two friends staring at him.

“Pardon?” said Arthur.

“I'm sorry about not listening to you earlier, Artie…” His breath was back, and he struggled on, in between gasps. “When you were trying to tell me all about the Princess Moldo plan…I should have listened. I know that now! Apart from anything else, you were right about having enough of that sort of thing in your life already…” He was still gasping, and he was dripping wet, but he forced himself to meet Arthur's eyes. “Last thing you want is a friend who ignores you too. So I'm sorry, Artie. I really am…”

His voice gave out again. And for a while, nothing more was said. Arthur just stared at Harry across the dilapidated dressing room. But then the younger boy nodded, adjusted his tie, and looked away.

“Fair enough,” he said.

“What about me?” said Billie, drumming her fingers on the counter.

“Well, obviously, I'm really sorry about that too.” Another gasp, but Harry found that his breath came back faster this time. That was fortunate, because Billie was looking straight at him. “You're right. I should have gone along with the Princess Moldo business without interfering. In fact, I should have paid a lot more attention to you and Artie generally, I reckon.” He swallowed.

“You were right earlier, Billie. Each of us, we're not so much, not on our own. Arthur's a rich boy who gets ignored. You're just a penniless street kid, and as for me, well, no one was paying me and my tricks any attention until you two came along. But once we joined together…”

“Exactly,” said Billie.

“Besides, why wouldn't I want to listen to you? You're just as good at thinking up plans as I am! All those stories of the stuff you've got up to, Billie—that proves it, doesn't it? And you're good too, Artie—how could you not be, with all those books you've read! Come to think of it, both of you being here at the Wesley Jones Theater proves just how good you are. I didn't say where I was going—how'd you work it out?”

“If you'd just stop talking, we might tell you.” Billie dropped into a rickety chair and swung her boots onto the dressing room counter. “It was a pretty smart business—eh, Artie?”

“Absolutely.” Artie dropped into a chair too, a tiny smile beginning to curve on his lips. “It wasn't that hard, to be honest. Number 47, that was the streetcar you jumped onto.”

“And we remembered you jumping onto the same number streetcar before, so we just looked up where the Number 47 went and saw it was the Wesley Jones Theater.” Billie's boots swapped places. “Pretty clever, yeah?”

“Brilliant.” There was no third chair, so Harry just stayed where he was, clinging to the wall. “Just brilliant.”

“So we came right here and managed to break in easy enough. Sneaking up just now, we heard Wesley Jones, owner of this place, chatting to some thin guy about—”

“About a boy!” Arthur leaned back in his chair. “About how they'd ‘dealt with him' and how he ‘wouldn't be trouble no longer.' It didn't sound good, Harry!”

“No, it did not,” Billie continued. “Anyway, despite everything you've done recently, Harry, we're still your pals, and someone has to look after you, so we thought we'd find out more—”

“We snuck up here to Wesley Jones's office and started searching for clues. And we'd just started doing that when the mantelpiece swung open and you came in!”

“Exactly. So that's what we've been up to. What about you?” Billie peered at her friend and studied the water trickling from his clothes, the puddle spreading around his boots. “Been swimming?”

Harry told them. He was still recovering, so the first part was a bit of a muddle, but he kept going, forcing out as many words as he could. He told them about Boris, about Herbie, about the terrible truth behind Wesley Jones's theater. He must have been making some sort of sense, because his friends were saying nothing at all, taking everything in. Harry saw Arthur's mouth fall open, and even Billie showed not the slightest sign of interrupting. She stayed that way until Harry reached the bit about stumbling back into the office and collapsing on the rug.

“He tried to kill you? Actually, properly
kill
you?”

“The Cruel Theater of Wesley Jones!” Arthur whistled. “Who would have believed it?”

“And who's gonna believe it even
now
?” Billie was up, out of the chair, pacing the room, twiddling her thumbs behind her so fast that they seemed to propel her along. “That's the trouble, Artie!”

She's right.
Harry was still dripping wet, but he was feeling stronger now, and he could see what Billie was saying. Yes, he had discovered the terrible truth behind Herbie's disappearance. Yes, Wesley Jones had tried to silence him forever, not one to take chances.
But
that
doesn't mean telling the world the truth about this terrible theater is going to be easy
, he reflected—as Billie was continuing to point out.