Twenty-four 
Mr. Wilkie, isn’t it?” I demanded.
He smiled benignly and removed his homburg. “It is indeed. A pleasure to meet you again, Miss Murphy.”
I didn’t return the smile. I fact I was furious, as one often is after a big fright. “So those unmannered louts work for you?”
“I’m afraid so. I hope they didn’t alarm you too much?”
“Only kidnap me, stick a knife into my side, and threaten to kill me,” I said. “I was on my way to Atlantic City.”
“I know. That’s why we had to act quickly. I apologize for their behavior but I did tell them to make sure you reached this carriage before the train pulled out.”
“They could have tried saying that Mr. Wilkie, head of the Secret Service, wanted to speak with me urgently. Maybe I’d have come along of my own accord.”
“Ah, but I couldn’t let them use my name or let anybody know that we were meeting. Actually I didn’t want anybody to even know I was anywhere near New York City. I slipped through the station, hopefully incognito.” He leaned closer to me. “And I had to speak to you in a place where I could guarantee that we were not followed or overheard.”
“Good heavens. Why all the secrecy? Or does the Secret Service always operate this way?”
The train was chugging along merrily across the Jersey marshes and the outer sprawl of civilization. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“The journey is what matters, not the destination,” he said. “You can get out when the train stops in Philadelphia if we’ve concluded our business by then, but I find it expedient to conduct strictly confidential cases on a train. It’s like a private world, isn’t it?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t set up a hot air balloon,” I said and he laughed.
“I like you, Miss Murphy. You’ve been through a scare and you’re feisty and witty as ever.”
“So why do you need to speak to me so privately?” I asked.
“Houdini, of course,” he said.
“Houdini? What is that to do with you?” I was taken completely off guard.
“A lot, as it happens,” he said. “And I understand that you are also somehow intimately involved.”
“I was hired to assist Mr. and Mrs. Houdini with a problem, yes.”
“Can you share the nature of that problem with me?”
“If you can share the reason for your involvement with me,” I said.
He smiled again. He had a charming, avuncular smile and I found that I was bristling slightly less than before.
“Quite right, Miss Murphy. Actually I have set up this little assignation so that we can pool our knowledge. You see, I came to New York to meet with him, only to find that he had vanished.”
“You were the one he was planning to meet with?”
“He told you about it?”
“He said that something would be sorted out the next day and then he’d be off the hook.”
“Ah,” Wilkie said.
“So why would Houdini need to sort something out with you?”
“He was working for me, Miss Murphy,” Mr. Wilkie said in his soft, calm voice. “Don’t look so surprised. The Secret Service has found it most useful to employ entertainers, particularly magicians, as spies. They can move freely in foreign countries. They are invited to places like royal courts that normal foreigners never enter. They have perfect opportunities to overhear and to observe when those in power are at ease and speaking freely. And Houdini was one of the best.”
“Really?” I paused as my brain processed the implications of this. “So you do think that the incident at the theater last night had something to do with you?”
“I’m sure of it,” he said. “The man who was killed. He worked for me. I had placed him to keep an eye on Houdini because we had word that German agents were after him.” He leaned closer to me again. “Houdini had discovered something important, Miss Murphy. Something so vital that he couldn’t communicate in the normal manner.”
“Which was?”
“I wish I knew. There could be no direct communication between us, ever. He wrote articles for various magicians’ magazines, seemingly harmless reports on illusionists and performances, but with coded messages in them. Or he placed information in classified advertisements.”
“And you think he had discovered something important?”
“I’m sure of it. The future of our country may even be at stake.”
“Holy Mother of God!” I exclaimed. “You really mean that?”
“I believe so. What he discovered was too risky or too complicated to put in a magazine. Or perhaps he knew that the other side was onto him. Either way, he refused to hand over the information to anybody but me. That’s why I had come to New York last week, only he couldn’t be located and the president summoned me back to Washington before I could get in touch with Houdini. I sent a couple of my men in my stead, but he insisted on meeting only with me. He was supposed to have caught this train today. He should have been sitting opposite me and all would have been well. Now he may well be dead.”
“Do you have any idea who might have done it?” I asked.
“I only know what I read in the morning papers,” he said. “A clever illusionist. One who is working for the other side.”
“Is Germany the other side now? Are they our enemy?”
“At this moment, no. But the Kaiser has grand ambitions, Miss Murphy. They are seeking to expand their empire and they are building up their armaments at an alarming rate. That’s one of the reasons Houdini was so useful. He was fascinated with gadgets so the Germans were happy to show him around their factories. They’re proud of their mechanical superiority, you know.”
“So you believe they have sent an illusionist over here with instructions to kill Houdini?”
“Before he could make a report to me, I must assume,” Mr. Wilkie said.
“How many German illusionists can there be in New York at this time? Surely it will be easy to flush him out?”
“Not necessarily a German, I’m afraid. If I can persuade magicians to work for me, then presumably some can be persuaded to work for alien powers, if the money is enticing enough.”
“Oh, I see. So who else knew that Houdini was working for you?”
“Nobody should have known, except for a couple of my own men—and the president, of course. He takes a keen interest in what we are doing.”
The carriage was warm and smelled of stale cigar smoke but I knew better than to open the window and have the smoke from the locomotive blow in on us. I fought to stay alert, trying to digest everything I had been told.
“I wonder if Bess knew?” I said.
“I’m sure she didn’t. Houdini once told me, on a train journey similar to this one, that he would never confide matters of importance to his wife. He said she had too fragile a nature to bear the strain of worry.”
“He babied her,” I said. “She’s in an awful state at this moment. I really shouldn’t have left her side, but I felt I had to speak with Houdini’s brother, who has left New York to perform at a theater in Atlantic City.”
“Hardeen, you mean?”
“Yes. Was he working for you too?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then could it be possible that he is working for the other side? He was also performing in Germany, wasn’t he?”
“You think he’d murder his own brother?” He shook his head. “I very much doubt that, Miss Murphy. They are a devoted family from what I’ve heard. Very close. No, I don’t think that Hardeen is our man. In fact I rather suspect that our man is working for both sides.”
“What makes you think that?”
“This,” he said, and handed me a cutting from a magazine. I started to read. It seemed innocuous enough, reporting on the various acts currently performing in Berlin.
“Illusionists are always popular with the crowd and there seems to be a crop of good ones at the moment, including the amazing Mr. Harry Houdini—” I looked up and Mr. Wilkie smiled.
“He was never particularly modest about himself when reporting as a supposed third person. Read on.”
The article went on to describe Harry’s act, and then that of other magicians. Then came the words, “The interesting thing about illusionists is that they can make you believe anything. You think they are working on one side of the stage, when really they are on the other. It’s all done with mirrors—that’s what they say, don’t they?”
I looked up and handed him back the piece of paper. “Do you think that’s what those last words mean—that someone in Germany was working for both sides?”
“I’m sure of it,” he said.
The train lurched as it went around a bend, throwing me off balance. Mr. Wilkie put out a hand to steady me.
“Why have you told me all this?” I asked.
“Because you struck me as a particularly intelligent young woman and because you’re a detective, and you were already working with Houdini,” he said. “A most useful combination for our purposes.”
“Your purposes? You want to hire me to work for you?”
“I want you to work for your country, Miss Murphy.”
I had to smile at the irony of this. “I’m not even a citizen here, and an outcast from my own country.”
He returned the smile. “All the more reason to repay the debt to the country that has taken you in, wouldn’t you say?”
I was about to say that the country hadn’t exactly done much for me yet. There had been times when I had been close to starvation and had only survived through my own wits, but Wilkie went on. “It is essential that we find out what Harry Houdini had discovered and was about to hand over to me. I want you to go back to New York and see what you can find.”
I considered this. “Why me? Don’t you have a host of men you could send to search Houdini’s residence?”
“I do, but at this moment I’d rather work with the element of surprise. I don’t want the enemy to know what we’re doing. I gather you’re well in with Houdini’s wife. He may have let slip something to her—something she’d confide to you but not to me. I want you to go through his things and bring anything suspicious to me.”
“Harry Houdini was trying to bring something to you and he wound up missing or dead,” I said. “I’d rather like to stay alive, thank you.”
A brief smile crossed his otherwise expressionless face. “Then shall we say ‘bring it to my attention?’ If you find anything you think I should know about, you will send me a wire saying ‘Thank you for birthday present,’ and sign it ‘Your niece.’ I will arrange to meet with you directly.”
“I see,” I said.
“I’ll post one of my men to keep an eye on you.”
“Not the one with the stiletto,” I said quickly.
He actually laughed this time. “Those two are on this train with us returning to Washington. No, it will be a new man, one you’ve never seen before. It doesn’t do to leave operatives in one place for too long. The opposition is too darned clever.” He paused, looking at me long and hard. “I won’t say there isn’t some degree of danger involved. But we hope that you are only seen as a friend of Bess Houdini, keeping her company. And the house will be guarded, as it is possible that someone may try to break in if they think there is something vital to be found there.”
“They did try to break in once,” I said. “Bess told me that Houdini scared a burglar off.”
“I rather wish the brother hadn’t gone back to Atlantic City,” Wilkie said. “He was a male presence in the house. An extra defense.”
“You will check into him, won’t you?” I said. “Just to put my mind at rest that he wasn’t the one working for the other side?”
“You’re saying that I should pay attention to your feminine intuition?”
“Nothing of the sort,” I replied hotly. “Just that you should pursue all suspects.”
“Spoken like a true detective. I can see that Sullivan has trained you well.”
“Indeed he hasn’t trained me at all,” I retorted. “In fact he’s desperately against my being a detective. Everything I know I’ve learned the hard way, and I still have a lot more to learn.”
“I think you’ll do splendidly,” he said.
“So does Captain Sullivan know about our meeting?” I asked. “Does he know that Houdini was working for you as a spy? Is that why you really came to New York when I met you at his apartment the other day?”
“He knows nothing of it,” Wilkie said. “And I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention your meeting with me to him. Not that I don’t trust him, of course. Splendid fellow. Sound as an oak. But in these cases, the fewer people who know the facts, the better. He is searching for Houdini, which is good, but I rather fear that he’ll not find him, or that his body will turn up weeks from now, probably quite unidentifiable.”
“Oh, dear,” I said. “Poor Bess.”
He nodded. “It will be hard for her, I agree. And it’s always harder not knowing, isn’t it? I’m glad you’re returning to her today. You can provide comfort as well helping us.”
I plucked up courage to mention something that had been going through my head, but that I hadn’t dared to ask before. “I don’t want to sound crass, but am I to be paid a fee for my services or am I supposed to be doing this for the good of the country?”
Wilkie threw back his head and laughed. “I do like you, Miss Murphy. You have none of the usual female sensibilities. Find us what we’re looking for and there will be a handsome fee.”
“Do you have any idea at all what you’re looking for?”
He shook his head. “None whatsoever. All we know from Houdini was that he’d discovered something important in Germany and that he wouldn’t share his news with anyone but me. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but I don’t know whether this was information or something of substance like papers or drawings that he wanted to hand over.”
“You’re not giving me much to go on,” I said.
“All I can say is that some of the information may be contained in a magazine article he was writing. It may, of course, have been all in his head, in which case it is lost to us, but I suspect he’ll have wanted to show us some kind of proof. Now, these are the magazines I want you to look for.” And he opened his briefcase.
“Magazines?” I took them with interest. Conjurers’ Monthly. Mahatma magazine. The Dramatic Mirror. “I’ve seen these before. There were piles of them in their bedroom.”
“You have searched their bedroom?” He looked impressed, or was he amazed at my cheek?
“This morning. I wanted to see if there was any clue as to where Houdini might have gone. The police suspect that he was part of the murder plot, you see. And I rather thought that he and his brother might have planned it between them. I suspected it was a way to get rid of someone who was bothering them—threatening or demanding money, maybe. As you can see, we were all barking up the wrong tree.”
“So there are magazines in his bedroom,” Wilkie said. “But it’s not an old magazine I want. Those I have. Those we have been through with a fine-toothed comb. I need a new article he might have been writing. One that has not yet been published. Or his notes.”
“If he had such vital information for you, why didn’t he just telephone you?”
Wilkie laughed. “Telephone me? My dear Miss Murphy, do you know how many exchanges a telephone call has to go through between New York and Washington? A telephone message is about as private as shouting from the rooftops. For all I know any telephone call from my headquarters could be monitored by unfriendly ears. In the same way that letters could be steamed open and wires read by unfriendly eyes. In my business you can’t trust anybody.”
“And yet you seem to think you can trust me.”
He gave me a long, hard look. “My dear Miss Murphy. I pride myself on being a good judge of character. I’m certain I can trust you.”
The train chugged on across flat New Jersey countryside, occasionally crossing rivers with boats bobbing in blue water. There were farms and leafy glades and everything looked very peaceful and rural. I watched a young woman taking in a line of dry laundry while a child and dog romped at her feet. In a nearby field men were harvesting corn with great baskets on their backs. I bet these people never have to worry about crimes, I thought. They wake with the sun. They work in the fields and they fall asleep tired and content. Maybe that was the kind of life to have, not always having to be alert, on guard, in danger.
“You will soon have a more peaceful life if you want it,” an inner voice whispered in my ear. At this moment it came as a relief to think it.
Chief Wilkie took out his pocket watch and checked it. “Ah, we will be coming into Philadelphia soon. I suggest you disembark and catch the next train back to New York. You’ll need money for the return ticket.” He reached into an inside pocket and drew out an envelope. “Advance against fees,” he said.
I nodded politely as if men handing me money in railway compartments was a usual business for me, and put the envelope into my purse.
“And everything is clear?”
“One more thing,” I said. “You have told me how to contact you if I find anything important. How do I contact your man if I find myself in danger?”
“My man should be within hailing distance at all times,” he said.
“You sent a man to watch over Houdini and he didn’t prove to be much assistance, did he?”
“Good point. But frankly I don’t expect this to take long. You’ll search the house. Either you’ll find something or you won’t. By tomorrow we should know. And there are constables on duty, guarding Mrs. Houdini, are there not?”
“Then go to the house and stay there until your assignment is complete,” he said. “But I really don’t think you are putting yourself in danger. You are staying with a dear friend at a time of distress. What could be more natural. And they’ll never be expecting us to use a woman.”
“I see,” I said. I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or annoyed.
We were passing through the outskirts of a city—ragged wooden houses, then more orderly rows, then solid brick buildings as we neared the center. Then the train pulling up beside a platform.
“Good-bye then, and good luck, Miss Murphy.” Mr. Wilkie stood and held out his hand to me. I shook it. He took down my overnight bag and opened the door for me.
“If you hurry, I believe there is a train to New York in a few minutes. No need to purchase a ticket. If you choose a regular carriage you can pay the conductor on board. Tell him there was a family emergency and you had to return unexpectedly.”
“Thank you,” I said, before I paused to wonder why I was thanking him for anything. Does a kidnap victim usually thank her abductors for taking her out of her way, then laying a difficult task before her? As I stepped out of the carriage and accepted my bag from him I looked down platform to see where I should cross and saw someone I recognized shoving his way through the crowd. It was none other than the fair-haired and arrogant young man whom I had overheard talking with Houdini in the passageway at the theater.
“That man.” I hissed out the words, leaning close to Mr. Wilkie. “The fair one, coming toward us. He was talking with Houdini at the theater a few nights ago.”
“Was he? Interesting,” Wilkie replied and to my astonishment he waved.
The young man quickened his stride, passed me as if I didn’t exist, then went to haul himself into the carriage beside Wilkie.
“Sorry, sir. I was held up. All in order?” he said in polished tones of one educated at a good school.
“All in order,” Wilkie said. “I was just saying good-bye to this young lady. Miss Murphy, this is one of my associates, Mr. Anthony Smith.”
Mr. Smith tipped his hat to me politely.
“Aren’t all your associates called Mr. Smith?” I asked.
Wilkie laughed. “Valid point. But this one really is. This young lady has a rapier wit, Smith.”
The young man seemed to really notice me for the first time. He stared at me, obviously trying to recollect where he had seen me before. Then he said, “Should I close the door, sir? We’re about to be off.”
“I think so, Smith. The young lady will be leaving us here. Such a delightful journey, my dear. Enjoy yourself in Philadelphia.”
“Thank you, I will.”
I smiled at them politely, then turned to walk down the platform. So Mr. Smith was not to be told of my mission. Or maybe Wilkie was waiting until the train left the station, just in case the wrong person was listening. I decided, as I went to find out the platform for the returning train, that I should make a terrible spy. I’d surely spill the beans to the wrong person.
As I came to the end of the platform newsboys were waving early editions of the evening newspaper. “Philly Flooded with False Money,” the headline read. So Daniel’s case had spread from New York. Or maybe the forger had found the police too hot on his heels and had moved on. That’s probably what the obnoxious Mr. Smith had been doing in Philadelphia, I decided.
And as the train pulled out of Philadelphia Station, I noticed a poster on the wall advertising Signor Scarpelli—Prince of Magicians. I tried to see what date was on it—whether it was an old poster or not, but the train had already gathered speed and whisked me past it.