Clayton Rawson
The Headless Lady
With thanks to
Justus Edwards and Beverly Kelley
who duked me in
Chapter One
Two-Headed Girl
“Ladeez And Gentulmen: In just about sixty minutes or one hour tickets to the big show will go on sale in the red ticket wagon directly across the show grounds. In the meantime, the management presents for your edification, mystification and amusement … ”
During the night Manhattan Island had apparently slipped its moorings, drifted southward with incredible speed, and come to rest somewhere off the coast of Equatorial Africa. The great city lay submerged like a lost Atlantis beneath the heavy waves of hot moist atmosphere that all day had moved slowly in from the steaming ocean. The blazing tropical sun was nearer. Even the tall solidity of the buildings seemed limp and jelly-like as their outlines wavered in the damp haze. The nervous and excited rumble of the traffic had slowed to a fitful murmur of protest. Policemen growled; truck drivers cursed languidly; pedestrians mopped hot faces. New York was enduring the first heat wave of summer.
I called up a final spark of energy and pushed at the door of The Magic Shop, that curious commercial establishment in which the Great Merlini carries on his darkly nefarious business of supplying miracles for sale.
“If you really were a magician,” I announced, “you’d do something about the weather. You’d make a pass or contrive a spell and—”
I stopped. My only audience was the shop’s mascot and living trademark, the white rabbit that stretched lazily on the counter, a look of vast boredom in his round pink eye. Even his ears drooped disconsolately; and he paid no attention at all to my complaint.
Neatly lettered on the wall above the cash register was Merlini’s business slogan: Nothing is Impossible. The annoying confidence of that statement had aroused my skepticism before. I decided now to give it the acid test. I closed my eyes and intoned loudly.
“Hocus-pocus. Abracadabra. Fe-fi-fo-fum. I want a long cool drink, an ice-cold shower, an electric fan, a lot of air conditioning, a—” My eyes jerked open.
This really was fast work! I looked around apprehensively, still hearing the sound of ice clinking in a glass and the rushing siphon-swish of soda. But the wishful thinking together with my fevered temperature had apparently combined to produce an auditory hallucination — an empty, hollow illusion of a piece with the rest of Merlini’s deceptive stock in trade. There was no drink, and the cool sound had only accentuated my discomfort.
Then Merlini’s voice came from beyond the doorway that connected the outer salesroom with the workshop and office in the rear. “Come and get it!”
For the first time that day I moved with some degree of haste. There was a Santa Claus after all; the age of sorcery was not yet dead. In the back room, Burt Fawkes, Merlini’s shop assistant and general factotum, reclined at full length on a long, low box that had the sinister shape of a coffin. Beside him on the floor stood a container of ice cubes from the corner drugstore, a soda siphon, and a none-too-full bottle of Scotch. In one hand Burt held his own half-finished drink; in the other, a nice fresh one that he held extended listlessly in my direction. His remarkable lack of animation was so complete that I was about to diagnose a seriously advanced state of cataleptic trance when he spoke.
“Hurry, Ross. It’s slipping.”
I rescued the glass from his limp, wavering grasp and turned to find two more bodies laid out on the surface of the long workbench. Merlini’s lank frame, in an undignified half-lying, half-sitting sprawl against the wall, had, like Burt’s apparently settled there for the summer. He was in his shirt sleeves, tieless, his collar open. The keen, forcefully cut lines of his face were utterly relaxed; the interested curiosity that is ever present in the sharp glance of his black eyes was concealed behind closed lids. The buoyant vitality that bubbled in his personality seemed to be almost completely turned off — but not quite. It appeared in the voice he used — though the voice was not his. It was, instead, the youthful alto of a brash, irrepressible child; and it came not from Merlini, but from the grinning, red-haired ventriloquial dummy that lay beside him trying vainly to match the superior example of immobility that Merlini had set.
The dummy’s hinged lower jaw moved slowly. “Simple as that,” he said. “Just name it and there you are. We stock only the best grade of witchcraft, every item fully guaranteed or your money back.”
On a raised dais near by was a great thronelike chair whose curving design and brightly gilded, grimacing dragons bespoke an Oriental and ancient origin. Carefully I tested the seat for trap doors, and, finding none, sat down. I gave some attention to my drink and inquired, “What about that shower, the fan, and the air conditioning?”
“Be reasonable and settle for the drink,” the dummy retorted lazily. “The Djinn-of-all-work hereabouts has had a hard day. We were just about to let him knock off and go home.”
“That’s a new excuse,” I said. “What kept the Djinn so busy, and why do your boss and Burt look as if the referee had just counted ten? I thought that all the Great Mysterioso had to do was wave his hand — simple as that — and the Djinn did all the work? Big husky fellow like that didn’t need help, did he?”
“Those cases and cartons over there”—the dummy’s head inclined toward a stock of boxes in one corner—“had to be packed. It took a great many mystic passes.”
I eyed them, noticed a suitcase or two in the lot, and sat up suspiciously. I ignored the dummy and addressed Merlini. “You’re not leaving town again?”
Merlini tilted his glass and drank long and deep, a procedure that did not prevent the dummy from answering, “Give me just one good reason for not leaving a place that has weather like this.”
I banged my glass down on the chair arm. “I’ll do exactly that! Where do you think you’re going?”
“Albany. New York State Convention. Society of American Magicians. Driving up tonight through the cool countryside. Won’t you come along?”
I had my hands full; I saw that. “Merlini,” I said heatedly, “stop fiddling with that dummy and be reasonable.” I held up the roll of galley proofs I’d brought, along. “This is the second set of galleys on your last case. You were so involved in constructing a new levitation you couldn’t check the final typescript. You chased out to Chicago to attend a National Convention of Witches, Warlocks, and Banshees or something when the first proofs came through. And now, if you think—”
Merlini spoke for himself this time. “But it’s business, Ross. I’ve planned a mouth-watering display of the very latest conjuring—”
“What do you think this is?” I waved the proofs feebly. “You signed a contract. Our publishers, to put it very mildly, are beginning to fret. They’ll begin making passes themselves shortly — but not at the empty air.”
“I thought they published books, not a weekly magazine. No one reads in weather like this. It’s too hot—”
“They answered that one,” I replied. “Said we seemed to have the erroneous impression that they published bicentennially. I know what’s eating them. They’d sort of like to get back those advance royalties we’ve already spent. Ever think of that?”
The sound of a buzzer indicated that a customer had entered the shop outside.
The dummy said, “Take it, will you, Burt? We’re in conference.”
Burt finished off his drink, pulled himself up onto his feet, and went out, moving at about half the speed of a sleepy snail who hasn’t made up his mind.