Houdini winked at Gustave. “I have a reporter guest for a second.”
Gustave nodded.
As we walked by the open door to Gustave’s office, I spotted the imperious Cyrus P. Powell seated at Gustave’s desk. Oddly, Homer Timm was standing behind him, unmoving, his eyes focused on the money. Powell was counting the money with undue concentration, but he glanced up at Houdini and me, and his look was sour, disapproving. He looked ready to say something, but the stack of dollar bills he gripped seemed more appealing.
Gustave was stranded outside his own office, one he dared not enter.
I followed Houdini into a narrow hallway and trailed him up a small flight of stairs into a shabby square dressing room. I had expected something more glamorous than the threadbare chairs, the dirty chintz draperies, and the faded Currier and Ives prints hanging lopsidedly on the wall. It looked like a room nobody came to…or at least stayed in very long. A musty smell, years of unwashed bodies, too much stage makeup, forgotten clothes left piled in corners. Houdini sat opposite me, poured himself a glass of tonic water, and sipped it. He offered me some, but I refused.
“I don’t drink spirits. It harms my body, saps my energy. I don’t smoke either. Cigars, never.” He made a face. “The body must be kept pure. Remember that.” He smiled as he sat up straight, his eyes fixed on me. “Now tell me the facts. The story of the murder.”
For the next few minutes, a little in awe of the man who drew close to me, blue-gray eyes shiny in the flickering gas light, I narrated the saga of Frana sneaking out of the high school, the phony note, the rumors of assignation with an older man-he frowned at that-the finding of the body in Lovers Lane.
“But why do you think of me?”
I breathed in. “When I saw you get out of that box…” I told him of the locked storeroom, the dusty space with the smudged footprints…and Frana’s bit of ribbon.
“So?”
“So she got into that storeroom and we thought she hid there-or was held there against her wishes, perhaps strangled there-but a witness now claims he saw her running in Lovers Lane a few minutes later. It’s impossible.”
“It doesn’t sound too complicated.”
“Well, it’s baffled us all.” I waited a second. “It doesn’t seem possible.”
“She could have walked out. People miss what’s in front of their eyes, you know. Illusion.”
“You haven’t met Miss Hepplewhyte.”
He tilted his head to the side. “So it’s a box of illusion, that room.”
“Perhaps you can help.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no.”
This was not what I wanted to hear. “I’m bothered, Mr. Houdini, I must tell you, because the school janitor is considered the murderer, so far at least. He’s a gentle man, harmless, a German immigrant who doesn’t understand what’s happening to him. A witness claims he saw Frana and her friend frolicking”-I paused, hesitant with the word-“in Lovers Lane. Well, sir, Mr. Schmidt is not one to frolic. Believe me.” I was going on and on, becoming impassioned, and I realized that Houdini was smiling at me. No, he was grinning widely.
“What?” A little peeved.
“I enjoy your spirit.”
“Well…”
“It’s good, really. You write with flavor, and you speak with a passion. And you are how old?”
“Nineteen.”
“A child.”
“Hardly.”
“Are you married?”
“Of course not.” What was wrong with this man?
“I married my Bess young, knew her a matter of days. A slip of a girl, though the love of my life, this wonderful woman. She is better than my career, of course. In a few years I’ll stop this nonsense and have children. Lots of them.”
“I have no intention of getting married,” I announced, surprising myself.
“Then you better get famous fast.”
“Why?”
“We all got to have someone to applaud for us.”
That made no sense. I wanted to get back to the story of Frana. “Mr. Houdini, people can’t walk through walls…”
“Of course they can.”
“No, no, realistically.” I was getting frustrated. “I know you do an act on stage, but you can’t just walk through a wall.” I pointed to an outside wall, bright under blazing gaslight.
“You just have to know how to do it.”
He was toying with me, as he’d done before, and, again, I realized I took myself too seriously. All right. But this pleasant banter was getting us nowhere. Frankly, it was time for bed. Eight hours of blissful sleep each night, my practical regimen, my requirement, no less.
“All along,” I emphasized, “I was thinking Frana was hiding in that locked, unused storeroom, but maybe she was running through the woods, happy as can be.” I made eye contact. “That means she got out.”
“Happy, until someone snapped her neck.” Houdini dramatically twisted his wrists.
I trembled. “It seems impossible.”
“Mysteries are like handcuffs…”
I interrupted. “I know, I know. They always have an answer.”
“Let me think on this. I’m here for three more days.” He stood. “Now I’ll walk you home.”
“Oh, no. That’s not necessary. Appleton is a safe town. It’s not that far.”
His face set, firm. “I am a gentleman. I can do no less.”
I acquiesced reluctantly, though flattered. As we walked out, Gustave Timm was turning off the gaslights and locking the doors behind us. Mildred Dunne had left. Cinderella back at the hearth, dreaming of September and her honeymoon at Niagara Falls. Outside, waiting for his brother, Homer Timm stood with his arms folded over his chest. He seemed startled to see Houdini and me together, Houdini cradling my elbow. We turned down the sidewalk, crossing the street. When I glanced back both brothers were still outside the Lyceum, two shadows against the dark facade, unmoving.
Under a moonlit sky, we walked to my home in comfortable silence. The only thing Houdini said was that the night reminded him of a recent stroll on the Nevsky Prospekt in Moscow.
“The sky was the same pale blue with a hint of sulfur in the air. Like here in Appleton from the paper mills out at the Flats. I never forget the odor of sulfur in the air. In Moscow I feel like I’m in prison. The Czar’s police follow you everywhere. It ain’t America, Miss Ferber.” He grew quiet, neither of us talking until I pointed out my house, dark now, on North Street. He bowed and I thanked him.
“I have an answer for you,” he said, suddenly. “There is only one possible answer.”
I turned back. “What is it?”
“Not yet.”
“When?”
He chuckled in the darkness. “The impatience of young people. I will sleep on it.”
He disappeared into the dark night.
Chapter Twelve
The next day I met Esther for a lunch at Volker’s Drug Store, famous for its curious cardboard sign in the front window: Hier wird Englisch gesprochen. On Thursdays Mrs. Beckerstrader baked her German delights, an array of succulent confections, plum tortes, Pfeffernusse, the cottage cheese kuchen, and the cinnamon rolls topped with slivers of almonds-the best in Appleton-and both of us knew the delicacies would be gone by Friday. Each week I treated Esther from the allowance my mother gave me from my salary. It made me feel…independent. Afterwards, sated, I staggered back toward the city room with Esther, who’d be shopping for her mother’s kitchen at W. L. Rhodes, Grocer, just around the corner from the Crescent office. As we approached Morrison and College, we nearly collided with Ivy Ryan, her arms around a basket of poppy-seed rolls.
Miss Ivy gushed, “You’d best get back to the office. You have a visitor waiting on you.”
“Who?”
“The man who warrants these rolls.” Miss Ivy’s eyes grew wide. “Sam first mentioned a pail of beer from Glassner’s Grog Shop, but Houdini said no. Never.”