Mrs. Houdini(31)

But he was already striding over to the window and undoing the ties. “It’s all right. It hasn’t been very successful at drawing customers. I was going to replace it with something else. I thought it was elegant, but I think I need something flashier.”

Bess kissed him on the cheek. “Oh, you’re a doll!” she cried. “And don’t worry about your business. I’ll make sure all my friends come in and buy something expensive from you.”

She hauled the cardboard through the alley and left it against the outside wall of the tearoom. Then she went back inside in search of Gladys. Niall was blotto, leaning against the doorway, a dreamy look in his eyes. “I love this place, Bess,” he murmured. “It feels like home.”

“You looking for your friend?” She turned to see the man with the sweaty underarms, holding a cigarette in each hand. “The blind one?”

“Yes. Where did she go?”

“She left with some fella. Said to tell you he would get her home.”

“She did?” Bess was alarmed for a moment, then laughed to herself. “Well, that’s something.”

She brought the picture of the yacht inside and leaned it against the wall in front of her. There were other white boats in the background, their names obscured, and in the distance, a striped lighthouse, a thin beam of light stretched across the water. It must have been some kind of yachting club.

But she noticed something new. The photographer’s name, Charles Radley—scrawled in black ink in the corner—had been obscured in the window by the mannequin. Bess had never heard of him. Beneath his name, the photograph was dated April 2, 1925.

The issue of The Delineator was still on the coffee table. She sat down on the sofa and turned the pages with trembling hands. There she was, that girl Kathleen still staring out at her, the look in her eyes penetrating—as if, all those years ago, she’d known—and the words “Home Again” blurred behind her.

Bess tore out the photograph of Kathleen. On the bottom edge of the magazine page, there was also a photographer’s name, printed in italic letters so small she had to squint to decipher it, the words barely visible as they ran against the corner of the bathhouse.

“Charles Radley,” it read.





Chapter 5


THE CIRCUS


July 1894


They joined the Welsh Brothers circus in the green, sleepy town of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, arriving at the train station in the thrashing nighttime rain. No one was waiting to greet them, and as the platform cleared they managed to find the stationmaster and asked him where the circus tents were. He directed them to a field three miles away, toward the center of town, but they had no money to spare and walked the distance in the mud and darkness. Each of them hauled a heavy trunk, one almost half filled with playing cards. Bess had come up with the idea to make up special packs of cards and sell them between their acts, along with the secret to a sleight-of-hand trick.

They arrived at the field drenched and exhausted. They had eaten the last of their food—bread and cheese—on the train, and hadn’t had a meal for hours. Around them half a dozen tattered tents had been erected, and a dozen trucks parked, but there were no people. Everyone, it appeared, was inside taking shelter from the rain. They stopped in a little alley between two of the tents, panting.

“Hey, you!” a voice called to them in the darkness. Bess looked around and saw a light burning in the distance. A figure was standing in a doorway that had been cut into the back of one of the trucks. “You the Houdinis?”

“Oh, thank God,” she said to Harry. “We’ve been found.”

The figure waved them toward the truck, and they discovered that the inside had been cleared out and done over as makeshift living quarters, with a few cots and a table and chair. A gas lamp was burning on the table, and Bess could make out the rounded, sweating face of the figure who had called them over, a heavyset man in greased black pants and loose suspenders.

“I’m Welsh,” he said. “You’re the Houdinis, right?”

Harry nodded. “Harry and Bess.” His uneasiness was noticeable immediately to Bess. She had known him only a short time, but she already felt she could read his slightest expressions. Welsh was intimidating, and much larger than Harry.

Welsh sat down at the table and thumbed through a notebook. He didn’t motion for them to sit, but even if he had, there were no other seats besides the bed, and Bess certainly did not feel comfortable sitting on another man’s cot. “What do you do?” he asked, pulling out a pen.

Harry shrugged. “Anything.”

Welsh nodded. “You two do Punch and Judy. And mind reading. Houdini, you do the magic, the wife singing and dancing, and of course your trunk trick, and the handcuff act. Twenty-five a week and cakes.”

Bess glanced at Harry to see if he knew what cakes were, but she couldn’t catch his eye. Harry didn’t seem concerned. He pushed his hand forward and grasped Welsh’s. “That’s fine.”

Welsh led them to another car, where their own living space had been partitioned off from another, larger space, which appeared to house a group of men. The men were playing cards and nodded to them as they passed through but didn’t look up. There was nothing in the room they had been assigned but a narrow cot—no space even for a table. The division between their space and the men’s was nothing but a thin piece of wood. She could hear every word they were saying. They seemed to be the rougher ones that Harry had called canvas men.