Mrs. Houdini(38)
She had written to Mr. Radley under a pseudonym, asking him to meet her at the United States Hotel. She had heard he did freelance photography, she said, and she wanted to hire him for a job.
When Stella heard Bess was traveling to Atlantic City for the weekend, she jumped at the chance to accompany her. The baby was due in the fall, and she wanted to be home with Abby when she got bigger. And Fred was so busy at work. She desperately needed a vacation, she said.
Bess couldn’t tell her that the trip was really about following the trail of the second code—she knew Stella would think she was imagining things—but still, she hated to travel alone. She told Stella she was going for some business meetings related to Harry’s estate, but she would mostly be free. Niall had offered to look after the café while she was gone, and they traveled by train into New Jersey and arrived only an hour before Bess was scheduled to meet with Mr. Radley. She left Stella in the hotel room and made her way downstairs to the lobby.
She was uneasy about the meeting. So much of her marriage with Harry had been about the written word, the notes they left for each other in one room or another; and so much of Harry’s career had involved using images to mislead, that it did seem plausible that he could be communicating his second code to her through the words inside photographs. But what if she was wrong? She wasn’t sure she would be able to believe in much if she could not believe in this.
The United States Hotel was massive and garish; it spanned fourteen acres between Atlantic, Pacific, Delaware, and Maryland Avenues. It was the largest hotel in the nation, and a marvel of architecture. She and Harry had stayed there after it had first been built; the hotel was hosting Harry’s performances for two weeks, and a suite of rooms was included in the contract, for the Houdinis as well as their employees. Bess had been delighted by the ghastly size of the property; she had found the place to be a playground. From the outside, the building was an identical series of brick stories with long white balconies; on the inside, the corridors were carpeted in the same red carpet throughout. While Harry buried himself in work, she went swimming and came back holding pink boxes of saltwater taffy and newspapers with his picture on the front page. Even after fame had found him, he never ceased being thrilled by his face on newsprint.
She didn’t really have the money to be staying here now, but she thought it prudent to keep up pretenses, in case it proved necessary. Bess recalled the first time she and Harry had stayed in a real palace, during a trip to Russia. The Grand Duke Sergius, bored and hearing of Harry’s escapes, had invited them to St. Petersburg, to give a special exhibition in his ballroom. The duke told them he had spent a month building a steel chest that could not be unlocked. Harry, slightly concerned but knowing how much Bess was longing to see the palace, accepted the challenge. Bess was invited to have tea with the duchess while Harry was performing. Afterward, he recounted to her how he was stripped to his underwear and searched, but managed to open the box nonetheless. She knew how it had been done, the picklock clasped underneath his left toes; he had tested it with her the night before. That night they slept in gray silk sheets in a room decorated with candlelight and heavy tapestries. Breakfast was brought in on a tray and eaten on the balcony, which overlooked the gardens.
She had asked Charles Radley to meet her in the lobby at six. Wanting to make sure he was there before her, she arrived at a quarter past six and scanned the cream-colored sofas for a man sitting alone. She had no idea what he looked like or how old he was, but she estimated that he would be wearing a less expensive suit than most of the men there, and would probably wait about a half hour before he gave up on her.
It was a hot evening, but the lobby was cool. The wall was lined with tall, open glass windows bordered by sheer white curtains. Stiff-collared waiters were bringing around drinks of lemonade, and a piano player was playing a soft rendition of “Rhapsody in Blue.” Although the room was crowded, most of the men and women were already in evening dress, the women leaning against armchairs in their jewel-colored chiffon. But there was only one man alone, sweating in a gray wool suit, tapping his foot in an armchair next to the soft carpeted staircase. She was disappointed; she felt certain she would recognize him when she saw him, that it would be instantly clear why Harry had directed her to him. But she had never seen him before; he didn’t seem like the bearer of any kind of message. She sat down quietly in a chair by the door and pulled a novel from her purse so she could study him a moment longer. She had given him a man’s name for the meeting, and she didn’t think he would recognize her at first.
He was much younger than she had imagined. He was clean-shaven and attractive, in his early thirties, his dark eyes hidden behind a thin pair of spectacles. Something about him made her uneasy, though she could not identify what. He seemed harmless enough. He crossed two thin hands over a leather briefcase, which Bess imagined contained a selection of his work. He did not have the body or the demeanor of a dangerous man, although Stella liked to talk about the debauchery of Atlantic City—where the Prohibition laws were essentially unenforced—being even worse than Manhattan’s.
After a few minutes he glanced at his watch, looked around the room once more, and stood up. Bess stood up as well and went after him. She followed him across the lobby, toward the dining room, and through a tall mahogany door next to the kitchen. She found herself standing in what appeared to have once been a library. It was completely windowless, lit only by tall brass lamps and shaded sconces. Red leather couches were scattered around the room, and the walls held floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. It reminded her of Harry’s library at home. The thick, woody odor of cigar smoke wafted through the doorway. In front of one of the bookshelves, a makeshift wooden bar had been set up and was manned by a bartender, who was retrieving drinks from a fully stocked liquor cabinet behind the bar.