“We have to go,” I said. Esther had been frowning at my sniping at Theo and Gustave Timm. “I’m headed home. I promised my father a walk.”
“I’ll walk you both home.” Houdini moved toward me.
“Of course not. I’ve told you before…”
“There’s a murderer afoot in Appleton,” Houdini said, his tone a little too flippant. Esther and I gasped. Gustave Timm looked at him, befuddled. He sucked in his cheeks. “Oh, Lord, I’m sorry, that was careless of me. I choose the wrong words. My English is poor…Sometimes I speak…”
“No,” I agreed, “you’re right. But I walk the streets of Appleton all the time. People know me.”
“I only meant…” Houdini’s craggy face got soft. “I think of that poor girl. A girl just like you two. Young.”
No one knew where to look. Gustave Timm cleared his throat and checked his watch.
“Thank you.” I broke the awful silence. “But I can find my way home.”
Quietly, tension still in the air, we walked off the stage.
While Gustave locked up the theater, we lingered in front of the marquee that still bore Houdini’s name. A life-sized poster of Houdini filled the display case by the entrance, and I noticed Houdini checking his image. At that moment a plum-colored Victoria paused in front of the theater, the two majestic horses neighing noisily, and we turned to see Cyrus P. Powell, reins in hand, staring at us.
Gustave, flummoxed, dropped his keys, but Houdini half-bowed, European-style, ready to speak. Mr. Powell’s censorious eyes swept from me to Esther, then to Houdini, and he said through clenched teeth, “A private show at my theater?”
The rich man’s voice had a metallic, whistling timbre, so much like nails pulled across a school slate.
But in the next instant, he turned to his horses, and the Victoria moved away.
“He’s not happy with me,” Gustave mumbled.
“I doubt whether he’s happy with himself,” I chimed in, and I caught Houdini grinning at me.
Houdini said he was ready for a nap and planned to head back to David Baum’s house. Esther was meeting her mother at a friend’s two streets over, and began her generous goodbyes, which rivaled the farewell scene from some Italian opera. Houdini kissed her hand. I walked with Houdini and Gustave, but Houdini turned off at Oneida Street. Gustave and I continued on, and I purposely made peace with him, the two of us talking animatedly about Mabel Hite’s recent performance in A Knight for a Day. I thought her acting strained, the famous actress “underplaying the needed comedy.”
Gustave’s face brightened. “God, yes. You know, I thought the same thing.” I smiled at him; we were friends again. He added quickly, “I do think you should convince Sam Ryan to let you do theater reviews. I’ve read your news pieces. I’m not just saying that.”
“I’m lucky if I have a job next week.”
He seemed surprised and concerned. “Tell me.”
But suddenly Houdini was calling from behind us, returning. “Miss Ferber, let me walk you home.”
“I told you, sir, I’m safe in Appleton. This isn’t New York’s tenderloin district.”
“I need to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Let’s walk. It’s beautiful out.”
As the three of us walked along, Houdini wove an elaborate question about the differences between European and American audiences, and whether I thought-as someone who went to the theater regularly-he came off as a bumpkin with his rough accent, his boasting, and his faulty grammar. “You write for a living. Bess tells me to watch my speech. I just don’t know.” He looked me in the eye. “When you get famous, sometimes it’s hard to step backward to learn what you should have learned…” He faltered. “Sometimes I say ain’t and sometimes I say youse, and I know the audience thinks I’m a fool. In Europe it don’t matter. To them I’m a crazy American with my tenement-house gab. But here I notice people laughing. The other night, in my hometown, I said youse guys, and I saw some folks shake their heads.”
He didn’t wait for me to answer nor did he seem to care. His monologue was spirited and amiable…and a little insane.
I started to say something about elocution lessons and what he could do, how they’d given me confidence to speak before audiences, but he spoke over me. I got quiet and listened.
Gustave Timm seemed confused by Houdini. When he turned off at Edwards Street, heading home, he waved goodbye and shook his head, amused. Houdini talked on about his wife Bess and her attempt to correct his grammatical lapses, his egregious blunders; and of his brother’s mockery; and of the Russian and Germans and Hungarians and…and…
“Thank you for listening to me,” he said. “You’ve answered my question.”
“But…” I started to protest as we turned onto North Street. “Sir, I haven’t.”
“Oh, but you have.” He tipped his hat and bowed. He left me.
I continued on alone, smiling to myself. The international celebrity had walked me home, had asked me for advice. He filled me with wonder, this special soul, and for a moment I felt as if I owned the universe. When I reached my front steps, I turned to look after the departing handcuff king, a very strange man, indeed-but a kind man, a gentleman.
Houdini was no longer in sight.
Down at the intersection of North and Morrison a farm wagon passed, a horse neighed and stomped. A woman called out; a child yelled back. I saw a shadow by a grove of elm trees. I froze. I saw the quick movement of a man. Maybe. But there was no one there. Yet I felt a spasm of terror. In that moment I panicked. I was being followed. I knew it. Standing there, I watched the shadows. Nothing moved. No one moved. Nothing. Yet my spine tingled and my heart pounded. There was someone there. But where?
Chapter Seventeen
When I walked home from the city room the next evening, I spotted Houdini deep in conversation with my father. I stopped, amazed. The two men, these two vagabond Hungarian souls, looked like old, old friends, both dressed in similar at-home suits, Houdini in a gray flannel jacket, my father in black. Twins, brothers out of a grubby shtetl from an unforgiving land. They could be sipping coffee as the sun set on the Danube. I waved but Houdini didn’t even notice me until I stepped into the yard.
“Pete, a surprise for you!”
“Well, I guess so. Hello, Mr. Houdini.”
“I’m catching a train tomorrow for New York. I wanted to say goodbye.”
I pulled up a chair on the porch. Houdini was watching me, eyes narrowed. He fiddled with the sailor’s cap in his lap.
“Is everything all right?”
Houdini chuckled. “Ah, a reporter’s response. I’ve come to recognize it-me being interviewed over and over.” He acted as though he just thought of something. “I think I left you with a strange impression of me yesterday, walking you back from the theater, my dear Miss Ferber. I always get a little, well, energetic, especially when I’m working on a new stunt, my mind darting all over the place, and that new routine made me nervous. Things always do until I get them right.” He sighed. “So I talk too much and I bounce around-I can’t sit still. I walk for hours. In Appleton if you walk for hours, you end up in the Fox River or in Little Chute. One place leaves you soaking wet, the other leaves you lost in farm fields.” A moment’s silence. “I guess I’m doing it again.”
I felt there was something he was not saying.
In my brief encounters with him, I’d been struck by his larger-than-life presence, a kind of bluster and electricity that the famous seem to project…a little man who filled up all the space around him. Perversely, now on that porch, he seemed my father’s cherished chum, an immigrant stepping out of steerage with a tattered cardboard suitcase under his arm.
My father was talking. “We’ve been talking about Europe. Mr. Houdini has just visited Budapest. He mentioned a pastry shop on the Vaci Utca where I went with my mother as a young boy.”