Albert caught my gaze and rolled his eyes. Faster, Harry, I said under my breath. There's a guy in the back who's still awake.
"I command your attention as I place the bowl onto this lacquered tray that my lovely wife Bess is holding. Now I display for you a large black foulard. You see it? There is nothing unusual about this cloth. Here is one side-here is the other. Now I cover the bowl and lift it high in the air. At this point, you must prepare yourselves for a miracle. It is really quite an astonishing shock, so I would ask that you steel your nerves for the amazement which I now present."
Just do the trick, Harry, I muttered. And for God's sake, don't mention the travelling circus.
"Long ago, when I was a boy in Appleton, in the fine state of Wisconsin, the travelling circus came to town. It was a wondrous sight for a small American boy like myself. Jugglers they had, and clowns, and an elephant, and many tigers. But of all the wonders I saw that day, none amazed me so much as the magician who caused a bowl of goldfish-a bowl much like the very one I hold here-to vanish as if into thin air."
From the platform, Bess caught my eye and flinched slightly. She still held the black lacquered tray, waiting for her cue to leave the stage. She never lost her frozen smile, but her eyes were haunted.
"On that day," Harry continued, "I promised myself that I would grow up to perform that trick just as well as that man in the circus. And because this is America, I knew that a boy with a dream in his heart could grow up to become whatever he wished. A doctor, a lawyer, a politician… even a magician! And so, ladies and gentlemen, behold the miracle of the vanishing goldfish! I throw the foulard heavenward-and voila!-the enormous bowl has vanished!"
Let me tell you three things about the goldfish trick. One, it's the best stand-alone vanish in the history of magic. Two, it needs to be done fast, without a lot of anecdotes about the circus. Three, my sister-in-law Bess is quite a bit stronger than she looks.
It's a brilliant trick when it's done right, but you wouldn't have known it by the six-thirty crowd at Huber's Museum. Their reaction, as Harry flicked the cloth heavenward, left much to be desired. One might have called it a respectful silence. I suppose there must have been some scattered applause, and perhaps a bit of it was done by someone other than myself. Most of the others simply shuffled their feet and coughed politely.
When I think back on it, I remember something that Will Rogers once said about my brother. This was years later, of course. Rogers was watching from backstage while Harry worked on a particularly difficult handcuff challenge. The thing about it was that Harry had gone into a little curtained cabinet while he worked on the handcuffs, so the crowd couldn't actually see him. There wasn't a thing going on, but the whole audience was happy just to sit there and wait for my brother to finish. It took him an hour and a half, and the crowd never took its eyes off the cabinet. When Harry finally emerged, holding the handcuffs high over his head, they jumped to their feet. Will Rogers said he couldn't possibly follow an act like that. He said, "I might just as well have gotten on my little pony and ridden back to the livery stable as to have ridden out on that stage." It was a fine compliment, but I can't help thinking what Rogers might have thought if he'd ever seen Harry at the dime museum. In those days, Harry couldn't hold the audience even when he was standing right in front of them. It was so quiet you could actually hear the floorboards creak.
Albert was just about to move the crowd off when I caught him by the elbow. "Let him do the new bit," I said. "The trunk trick."
"Aw, knock it off, Dash," he said. "We've been over this again and again."
I pulled out my most prized possession, a gold Elgin pocket watch. "Let him try it," I said. "I promise you, each one of these people will be cheering at the end. If the crowd doesn't go wild, I'll give you the watch."
Albert looked at my face and saw that I was serious. He glanced at his own watch, a tin conductor's chrono, and looked back at me again. "Sorry, Dash," he said, not without regret. "You know the rules. He's already had his three minutes. If I let Harry pad his slot, then Harmi's going to be after me to make time for that ridiculous 'Dance of the Seven Sabers.' Everything'll get longer and before you know it we'll be down to five shows a day."
"Come on, Albert. Just this-" He held up his hand. "Sorry. I'm going to the blow-off."
I turned away and shoved my watch back into my vest pocket. Albert stepped forward and asked the crowd to gather round for a "very special added amusement." Every sideshow worth its salt had a blow-off-an extra act tacked on at the end to lure an extra nickel from the marks. This was always staged in a special annex-a small extra tent or a back room of some kind-or, in this case, an abandoned meat locker. Most of the time the blow-off would be a creepy, scary sort of illusion, like the old Headless Lady effect. In that one, you walked into the room and saw the body of a young woman sitting in a chair. She appeared normal in every respect, but for the fact that she had no head. There would be a bunch of wires and tubes filled with gurgling liquid sprouting out of her neck. The talker would explain her predicament in a low, quavery voice. "Decapitated in a tragic railway accident, this brave young lady is kept alive by a miraculous combination of modern medicine and American know-how…"
The blow-off was always especially good at Huber's, but Albert had an uphill climb trying to work up any enthusiasm from the crowd. My brother Harry had left them in an unhappy stupor, and no one seemed terribly eager to cough up an extra nickel for whatever awaited them in the so-called "Chamber of Chills."
"This attraction is not for the faint of heart," Albert warned. "This hideous freak of nature is the only one of its kind in the entire world, an unholy coupling of man and insect, a poignant hybrid of beauty and terror. I must caution you, ladies and gentlemen, the mere sight of what lies just beyond this room has made women faint and strong men buckle at the knees. Who among you has the courage, indeed, the fortitude to venture past this fateful portal?"
By the time Albert finished, nearly all of them had summoned the necessary fortitude. Albert collected a handful of nickels and shepherded the crowd through the door into a small, candle-lit room. There, sitting on a small wooden pedestal, was the most beautiful Spider-girl I ever saw. She had a furry, dark thorax with a bright yellow hour-glass shape on the back, meant to suggest the markings of a black widow. There were eight hairy, segmented legs-two of which were moving slowly up and down-and it had the head of my sister-in-law, Bess Houdini, with a bright ribbon in her hair and red polish on her lips. "Howdy, folks!" she called, waving one of the furry legs.
"Be careful, ladies and gentlemen," Albert warned. "Whatever you do, don't make any loud noises! I know she looks calm and friendly, but we had a fellow in here last week who-well, let's just say it wasn't a pretty sight."
Bess cocked her head and wiggled her thorax as Albert continued. "Folks, I'm sure you're all wondering how this hideous conjoining came to be. How did such an angelic face come to be transplanted onto that eight-legged horror? Only seven years ago, Alice Anders was the daughter of a world-renowned explorer, joining her father on a dangerous journey along the Amazon River. One night, while the explorers lay asleep in their tents, a sinister creature stole into the camp, lured by the sweet smell of young Alice's perfume. When the party awoke in the morning, they found a spectacle so ghastly that they were driven mad by the mere sight of it. There before them lay-"
We never discovered what the explorers saw, because at that moment Albert was interrupted by a loud crashing noise which, if you really stopped to think about it, sounded an awful lot like a pair of cymbals.