But she does not.
That is why it is my master plan, and why I am the master.
Before I leave, I throw her one crumb to chew on.
"I may need you to desert your post for a while to aid in another of my master plans."
Her ears perk. "Does it involve danger?"
"Absolutely."
"Then I am your girl."
"Uh, yeah. Maybe."
Chapter 34
I Get a Kick from Champagne . . .
"Come into my parlor," the grinning bald man invited, pulling aside a curtain embroidered with the zodiac.
Temple hesitated. "I didn't know professors had parlors."
"Well, only in Las Vegas. Here, the study of magic is both philosophy and practicality. I'm sorry, did my crypt-keeper act scare you?"
"No, Professor Mangel. It's just that I had a close encounter with a magic act recently that was rather unsettling."
"Oh? And call me Jeff, remember?"
"I do remember, which is why I came to you. But I thought you said you only went by
'Jefferson.' "
"I did, but you so charmingly defied me that I liked you immediately. All tyrants cherish cheek, and a professor is a class-room tyrant."
"Lou Grant didn't cherish cheek. He hated it."
"He hated spunk. There's a difference between spunk and cheek."
"What is it?"
"Everything, except the fact that they both end in k."
He grinned like a genie glad to be out of a bottle and led her through a maze of mounted posters, display cases, and free-standing magician's cabinets.
"Maybe l should call you Dr. Caligari," she added, shivering at the upright coffin like structures and remembering that she had once been incarcerated in one.
"Listen. I'll give you some herbal tea and you'll see it all for the flummery it is."
He led her into a small staff kitchen equipped with a microwave, sink. cupboards, and stained mugs. "Is this better for our talk?"
"Oh, yes."
He ran water into two mugs and set the microwave wheezing.
"What's unnerved you? That fatal seance at the haunted house didn't do it, but something obviously has now."
Temple sat at the Danish modern table, hefting her trusty tote bag to the teak top. "A friend of mine has been shot at. A magician friend."
"Shot at, where?"
"In Las Vegas. On the Strip at rush hour."
"I meant, anatomically."
"Oh." Temple winced. "The bullet creased the back of his skull. He was stopped at a red light."
"Gracious! Have the police been notified?"
"I don't know. The thing is, he's working on a book. An expose."
"Expose of what?"
"Fake psychics who manipulate seances and gullible clients."
"Hmm."
"Why do you say that?"
" 'Hmm' isn't saying much." Mangel smiled, then jumped up when the microwave timer pinged.
Soon steaming mugs of fragrant tea were wafting into their nostrils like Vick's VapoRub into the nasal passages of cold sufferers.
"Peppermint," he said after savoring the first sip. "What is your main concern?"
"I'm wondering if it's true that magicians--and psychics by extension--are so protective of their special effects that they would kill to protect their secrets." Mangel sipped again from the steaming mug, then puckered his lips thoughtfully. "You know those 'magic acts revealed' specials on TV lately ?"
"With the 'masked magician' explaining everything? Kind of hokey. Yeah." Mangel shook his head, the overhead fluorescent light polishing his bald pate to cue-hall brilliance. "No. Not hokey. Not hocus pocus. Serious. There have been . . . death threats."
"Death threats? So it's well-known."
"The gentleman's agreement that is magic goes back centuries.
Each magician honed his special tricks, his equipment. He expected his brother magicians to honor the secrets of his invention. Toward the end of his life. he would pass on his secrets and his equipment to a younger magician. It was a form of Masonry."
"A secret society?"
"Don't whisper, dear girl. We're on the University of Las Vegas campus, drinking tea. But, yes, the loose brotherhood of magicians is a kind of special society. They have their own rules and expectations. They abhor those who violate them."
"And there have been actual death threats over those hokey TV specials?'
"More than threats. There's a price on the head of the masked magician."
"In this day and age?"
He nodded. "Of course, the price is for revealing his actual identity, so he can be subjected to questions and have to answer them. Still, who can say when the self-protective urge becomes the other-destructive urge?"
"If this magician's compact goes back that far, could anyone be honoring it today?"
He nodded. "The art is even more in need of protection now that high-tech media techniques can dissect every millisecond of every move."
"But . . . a magic act. Surely no one takes it that seriously today?"
"The point is that it was taken 'that seriously' yesterday. That's when the unwritten rules were established."
"If they're unwritten, why would they have influence even today?"
"The weight of time. Leave your tea here, and I'll show you something in the exhibit."
Temple reluctantly abandoned her homey, steaming cup of tea.
Even though the building on the Las Vegas campus was thoroughly modern, the magic exhibition area had a certain disarming aura that spoke of secrets long kept and practices that would not bear close examination.
Jeff showed her a book, a huge, thick, ancient-looking book, closed with a metal clasp that resembled an elaborate hinge. Its thick parchment pages revealed ragged gilt edges, faded ink, and odd drawings.
"This is the syllabus, so to speak, of an organization we believe was called the Synth."
"S-S-Synth?" Temple stuttered, for she had come across that word before.
"l know; it sounds like lisping," Jeff admitted with a rueful smile. "But, believe me, it was taken very seriously by generations of magicians."
"Are there magic tricks in here?"
"Hardly. Those were too guarded to be sketched out and written down. No. this book is mumbo-jumbo. It delineates all the secrets and strictures that pertained to being a magician.
Blood oaths, ceremonial rituals, lists of professional names--"
"You mean they didn't even go by their right names in there?"
"What magician does ?"
"Is there a Shangri-La in the register of magicians?"
"You mean a practicing magician? Contemporary?"
Temple nodded. "She did a disappearing act at the Opium Den downtown." Mangel's frown emphasized his polished Wizard-of-Oz baldness. "For that," he said, "we need an arcane and infallible method of divination. Follow me."
Temple wondered what weird room they would enter next, but heaved a sigh of relief when she saw it was just an office, equipped with serious stacks of unfiled papers and a computer on and ready.
"This I understand," she said, plopping down in the molded wood visitor's chair, rote bag beside her.
"I'll search some data hanks." The computer keys chuckled at the tickling of his blunt-nailed fingertips. Mangel's head thrust toward the screen.
Temple squealed her chair legs around the comer of the desk so she could watch.
The words Shangri-La sat center-screen, along with some dates and a place.
"That's the Las Vegas gig," Temple said. "This troupe appear anywhere else recently?"
His fingers made Shangri-Las disappear at the click of a few keys. A blinking cursor marked time.
"Nothing in Europe."
More clicks.
"Nothing in Asia."
"Nothing? Not even in Asia? Shangri-La?"
"Well, not under that name. I'm sure that eastern magicians don't go to James Hilton and Lost Horizon for their names. Hmm."
"Hmm?"
He peered at the screen. "One reference. In Rio of all places."
"Rio de Janeiro?'"
"Brazil." He nodded. "Two years ago."