Saving Houdini (6 page)

“My father’ll tan me if I steal from him!”

“What about your mom? Maybe tell her I’m borrowing it. I’ll pay you back.”

“With what?”

“I don’t know. How hard can it be to get a quarter?” Walter looked at him like he was crazy. “Come on, will you help me?”

Walt furrowed his brow. “Show me the trick one more time.”

A small crowd had already formed along the sidewalk in front of the Century when Dash arrived at six thirty. Walt had told him that
if
he could get the money, he’d meet him out front. There was still an hour and a half until the show started, but Dash had been too antsy to sit at “home” staring at the walls.

People drifted along the sidewalk. Pretty girls in long dresses, men in evening suits. There was even the odd tuxedo.

He wondered if maybe Blumenthal would come in through the front doors and he could talk to him here, in front of the theatre. Maybe he looked like his grandson and Dash would recognize him. That would be a lot easier, and if Walt didn’t show with the money—

But here was the Gibson kid, coming straight at him. Early himself, and with a manic expression on his face. He was
way
excited. He wore a clean pair of pants, a jacket, and a tie. There was a cloth hat on his head and one in his hand.

“Here,” he said, handing Dash the hat. “To fit in better.”

“Did you get the money?”

“Did I ever!” He opened his fist to show a bunch of shiny coins in his palm. “I know my dad keeps some change in his humidor. There’s almost seventy cents here.”

“Is he going to miss it?”

“When he discovers it, he will. But that won’t be tonight.”

“I don’t want you to get into trouble.”

“Do you need my help or not?”

“I
need
it,” said Dash. “Thank you. That’s cool of you.”

“Cool?”

“Nice.”

Walt smiled. He probably didn’t get called nice all that often.

“And anyway,” Walt said, “your magician guy’ll give me the money back, won’t he? When he learns what kind of trouble you went through to see him?”

“Yeah! I’m sure he will!”

“I have enough for a bottle of mints too.”

Walt walked up to the window to buy the tickets.

The lady looked at him from her glass box. “Sold out,” she said.

Walter’s jaw dropped. “Oh,
gosh
!”

“Watch your
mouth
, Walter Gibson,” the lady said. “Yes, I know who you are.”

Walter lowered his head.

“Ma’am, listen. Miss—” said Dash, coming up to the window.

“Who are you calling miss, young man?” She stuck her head forward on her neck. Her face looked like one of those warty squashes that come out in October. “Are you a
friend
of this one?
He broke my window with a
rock
, you know. Not a baseball, like a normal kid, a rock.”

“Well, I’m sure it was an acc—” Dash started.

“No accident,” she said, with a sour look on her face. “He’s a scoundrel.”

“I
said
I was sorry.”

“You still owe me and Mr. Davis a whole dollar to fix that window. The two of you were planning on coming to the show tonight?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Walter said awkwardly.

“That means
you
must have a quarter, boy. Give it here.” She moved the window block aside and stuck her long, thin hand through the opening. Walter put a quarter into her palm.

“Sorry,” he said to Dash.

“That’s still seventy-five cents you owe me!” She got up and flipped a sign in the window that read S
OLD
O
UT
. People behind them groaned. “Bring a dollar twenty-five if you two want to get in next week!”

She stood up and exited the little box office through a door in the back. Walter’s shoulders sank. “I forgot she worked here.”

“You’re pretty famous in these parts.”

“A buck for a window! I paid
some
of it … jeepers.”

“We can’t give up.”

“Whadder we gonna do?”

“Follow me.”

There was an open alleyway on the east side of the Century and Dash nipped into it. It was dark, but at the mouth there was a sign that said T
HE
F
INEST IN
C
INEMA
P
ROJECTION
and beside that were a couple of painted faces. Dash recognized one of them as Charlie Chaplin’s.

Behind the cinema was a gravel service road. Two young men were unloading ferns in pots and a couple pieces of painted scenery from a horse-drawn cart. They shuttled back and forth between the truck and a door in the back of the theatre.

“Grab a fern!” Walter said. When the coast was clear, they both ducked into the back of the cart and grabbed a plant.

“I saw this in a movie once, I’m sure of it,” Dash said.

They walked the two heavy pots into the back of the theatre and put them down. Dash grabbed Walt’s sleeve and pulled him aside. “In here,” he said. He went through a door into a stairwell.

“What’re we gonna do?” Walt asked.

“Come up with a plan.”

Light filtered under the door and a bulb burned on a landing above. They heard another door open on an upper level, and footsteps came down.

“Follow me,” Walter said, and he led Dash behind and under the stairs. It was darker there, and it smelled of mould. “Shh.”

They sat there in the dark and waited. After a while, Walter gave a single
glurk
of laughter, and then he did it again, and Dash elbowed him.

“You want us to get found?”

“No,” Walter said, but even in the dark, Dash could hear him smiling.

The rest of the time until curtain passed slowly, and every few minutes a small snort, followed by an urgently whispered
sorry
, came from Walter Gibson. Dash pressed his lips together and tried to remind himself that he was probably in mortal danger.

Finally, they heard some applause and then the sound of a voice. They couldn’t make out what it was saying.

“I don’t know if the program outside is the real order of the evening,” Dash whispered. “If it isn’t, Blumenthal could be on first.”

“So let’s try to get in.”

“What if we get caught?”

“We’ll say we’re unloading ferns.”

Dash thought about it. “Let’s wait until we hear applause. You know, between acts. Then maybe there’ll be a lot of people moving around and we’ll blend in.”

“Good thinking,” Walter said.

They heard singing through the wall. Horrible, shrieky lady-singing. Then a man replied to her, singing in a rumbly, vibrating voice. Someone was playing a tinkly piano. At the next explosion of applause, the two boys slid out from their hiding place and walked through the door. Backstage swarmed with activity. The ferns were being moved deeper into the interior of the building and pieces of set were coming out. A large woman in a dress plastered with feathers came hurrying back, peeling
her eyelashes off. “Thenk you, thenk you
very
much,” she said in a plummy British accent to everyone who passed her, including those who had said nothing to her at all.

“Excellent rendition,” Walter said to her.

“My deepest g
rrr
atitude,” she said, rolling her rs. “I am always moved by the musical sensibility one finds in the Colonies. Now come along, Roland,” she called to a tall, thin man in a tuxedo. He was mopping the sweat from his brow.

Dash and Walt carried on. Soon they were standing close to the wings where some other performers were waiting to go on. “Here,” Dash whispered. “We can stand back here by the ropes and wait until it’s his turn.”

They settled back against the side wall where some thick ropes hung. The next act was a little playlet that the audience found uproarious, about a man who comes home to find his wife being “wooed” by another man, whatever that meant. All three of them chased each other around the stage, except for when they suddenly stopped and sang about their problems. Then more chasing. They came off as hot and sweaty as Roland had.

After that, there was a shooting demonstration by a couple of tall fellows in spurs and leather pants. Boone Helm and Liberty Sleppo:
expert shootists.
Their thing was keeping a tin plate airborne by shooting pellets at it. Helm shouted, “I et my old pardna, Liberty, don’ make me etcha too!” They danced around each other going
bang bang.

Walter was becoming exasperated. “Are you
sure
your magician is playing tonight?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“At least this hasn’t
cost
you anything,” Walt said.

“I told you— Hey, look.”

The emcee was coming back on. He gave a little cough into the microphone.

“And now, it is the Century’s distinctive pleasure to be able to offer to you next a magic act of such prosaic peculiarity, such paucity of pomp, indeed of such prestidigitory imPROBability, that I think you will agree it is one of the most impressive spectacles of its kind.”

A muscular man in a soiled undershirt jostled Dash and Walter out of the way. “You two shouldn’t be ‘ere,” he said, reaching to loosen a rope. A length of it zipped upwards, making a high zinging sound. Then, without another word, he moved on to his next task.

“To be sure,” continued the emcee, “you have never seen such stylings as those of our next performer, the one, the only—please hold your applause!—
Blumenthal and Wolfgang!
”

He swept his arm off to his right—toward the other side of the stage—and a thin man emerged from the wings. He was a ragged-looking person of about thirty, with black hair down to his shoulders. He held a hand up to greet the crowd and a ripple of laughter went through it. He was rather handsome, but slight, and his sole apparatuses were a beat-up pasteboard suitcase and a folding table. He was the only person onstage. Dash didn’t know if he was Blumenthal or Wolfgang.

The man came to centre stage and flicked the table open.
One of its four legs had been repaired with rope and a tree branch. The table wobbled, and he had to put the suitcase to one side to steady it. It was something of a balancing act, but after a moment or so he had it settled and he stood back, his hands open to catch it if it suddenly collapsed. Finally, he assumed the pose—somewhat—of a professional magician: his head held high, his hands out to his sides. The audience laughed again.

“Good evening,” he muttered. He brought one of his arms sharply forward and made a fist. Nothing happened. He gestured with the other hand, and a tiny spark of red appeared atop his fist. It spread. It was a petal. Another appeared.

Of course
, Dash thought,
the magic rose.

Blumenthal circled his fingers over his fist and the whole bud showed on top of it. Then the stem appeared, and he winced comically as the thorns poked out one by one. At last he held a single, long-stemmed red rose in his hand. He passed it to a woman in the front row, but to just a smattering of applause. Disappointment flickered across the magician’s face.

Now he gestured broadly at his suitcase and made a sort of bow. He raised the suitcase’s lid, propped it up, and removed a cheap-looking magic wand. He began to wave it but became distracted by something in the case and reached forward and stirred the air. The wand flew out of his hand and vanished into the suitcase. The lid slammed shut and the makeshift table collapsed.

Walt looked at Dash.
This is the guy who’s supposed to send you home?

The magician muttered and set up his equipment again. When he opened the suitcase a second time, the wand suddenly poked out of it and he took hold of its end. But something in the suitcase had the other side. The man struggled with the wand, wiggling it back and forth, and then a grey squirrel’s head popped out of the case. It had the other end of the wand in its mouth. They heard it chittering angrily, yanking hard on one end of the wand as the magician held the other. They were having a tug of war.

“No, Wolfgang!” the man shouted. “Hey!
Hergekommen!
” The audience was shrieking with cruel delight. He rapped his knuckles on the open half of the lid to scare the squirrel into dropping the wand.

Dash put his head in his hands. It wasn’t supposed to be funny, he could see that. Blumenthal was hopeless.

Wolfgang had bested his master. Now he was running all over the stage with the wand in his mouth, sassing him triumphantly. Blumenthal gave chase, but the squirrel was quickly up the curtain on the other side of the stage. Once at the level of the balcony, he leaped off the curtain and ran, tail twirling, along the railing.

“Uh, my fine ladies and gentlemen, I request your attention. Here, let me propose … I— Look here, in this hat of mine. I have a length of rope here— No reason to give that badly trained creature all your attention. Look how much rope is here in this hat.”

Five pieces of dirty rope hung from one of his fists. No one was paying attention to him. Someone had turned a spot
on Wolfgang as he sprung from balustrade to chandelier, from chandelier to wall sconce, the whole time holding the wand in his mouth and chirruping.

Blumenthal bravely soldiered on. Dash focused on him from the wings, moving a little closer to the stage. The man was showing the five ropes of differing lengths, yanking them taut between his fists, ignoring the gales of hilarity coming from the auditorium. His hands were steady. He took the five lengths and made two of them into one, and then he made two others into one, and then he balled the whole mess up into his hands and suddenly shook out a single rope, more than ten feet long. It lay on the stage, but there was only scattered applause.

He had done it well—usually, magicians did the rope trick with only three ropes, and it was hard enough that way—and Dash clapped for him and nudged Walt with his elbow.

Blumenthal acknowledged them with a surprised sideways glance into the wings, and then he paused, turned, and held his hand out toward them. But the audience had had their share of Blumenthal’s act and his quarrelsome squirrel. They began to boo him.

“Now, now,” he said. “Why don’t we do some magic with rings for you nice people?” He reached his fingers into a vest pocket and took out a small, black steel ring. But the booing only increased. Blumenthal smiled out at them, and then replaced the ring in his pocket and clapped his hands twice. Wolfgang suddenly bounded back onto the stage and went right into the suitcase. The lid closed as the table rocked beneath it and
Blumenthal’s wand rolled across the stage right to his feet. He picked it up, took the handle of the suitcase, and kicked the table closed with the toe of his battered shoe.