Mrs. Houdini(76)

Charles’s hands were white. “I needed a mother and you needed a son. But we didn’t find each other until it was too late.”

“It’s not too late.”

“Isn’t it? I’m not a little boy anymore.”

“Harry loved his mother till the day he died. I used to wonder why we never did adopt any children. We kept saying, later, later. And later never came. And of course, now I realize why he kept putting off the decision; he was hoping he would find you. But I think now, looking back, that Harry was also very much like a boy himself, a kind of Peter Pan, if you will, who never grew up.” She paused. “You would have loved him.” She cleared her throat and swept her hands through the piles of photographs covering the floor. “We can’t possibly have looked at everything, can we? I feel like we are missing something.”

Charles ran his hands through his hair again. “I don’t know, but I’m exhausted.”

Bess tried not to panic. She did not want him to dismiss them to their hotel without finding anything, because she might never get another chance.

Gladys crept over to her side and knelt down beside her. “Perhaps there is another way.”

“No, no. There can’t be.” Bess looked about the room, but there were only those three newspaper photographs on the wall. She’d looked at them a hundred times in desperation, and none of them had any words on them she could decipher from the code.

Then something occurred to her. “What’s the biggest bank around here?”

Charles thought about it. “The Boardwalk National Bank, I suppose. Why?”

Gladys’s eyes widened. “Of course. It would have to be one he knew would still be around, years later.”

“What do you mean?” Charles asked.

“Years before he died,” Bess explained, “Harry told me he had arranged some kind of financial security, in case anything ever happened to him. He didn’t mean an insurance policy—he never trusted those. I always believed he had hidden money somewhere else. We were never exactly rich; I was always hounding him about spending more than we took in. And he knew there was a debt on the house. So he knew I would have difficulty if he died.”

“And you think this money is in a bank here?” Charles asked.

“It makes sense,” Gladys said. “Bess inquired at banks in New York. But Harry knew you had lived here at one point. It would have been a safer place to hide it.” And Atlantic City had held special meaning for Bess and Harry, too; it had been the place where she had almost lost him once, but had not, in more ways than one.

“But how would he have known you would find it?”

Bess traced Harry’s image on one of the photographs. “I found the letters he left, looking for you. I think he knew I would find everything eventually.”

She stood up. “And I’m wondering if there’s a photograph there, too, that will give us the last piece of the code.”



The Boardwalk National Bank was an impressive, columned building with marble floors and crystal chandeliers. A large American flag was draped across one white wall of the lobby, and an enormous wooden clock hung on the other. There were a dozen tellers counting bills and signing forms behind tall glass windows, and every one of their stations was occupied.

“What do we do?” Gladys asked.

“I suppose we just stand in line.”

When they reached an open teller, Bess asked for a manager. Fortunately, she was recognized, and ushered into a large office off the lobby, where a trim, mustached man in a pin-striped suit greeted them.

“Mrs. Houdini,” the man said, taking her hand. “What a pleasure to meet you. I’m Richard Warren. What can I help you with?” He gestured toward the open seats across from his desk.

Charles helped Gladys into one of them, and then he and Bess sat down. “I believe my husband may have opened an account here,” Bess said. “But I’m afraid I’m not sure what kind of account it was, or what name it was under.” She slid a piece of paper toward him. “It could have been any of these names.”

“Houdini, Weiss, Rahner, Tardo,” Warren read. “Well, I can tell you with certainty there is nothing here under the name Houdini. I would have known about it if there was.”

“Of course. I didn’t think so.”

“But if you give me a few minutes, I can check on these other ones for you.” He took the paper and went through a door that led to a suite of offices, where an army of pert, manicured secretaries clicked loudly on their typewriters.

“What if it’s not here?” Gladys whispered.

“There has to be something,” Bess said.

Fifteen minutes later, Warren returned. He was holding a blue card instead of the paper Bess had given him. Bess stood up. “What did you find?”

He handed her the card. “There was no bank account under any of these names. But there is a safe-deposit box. It appears it was paid for in full for a period of twenty-five years. Under the names Beatrice Rahner and Romario Tardo.”

Gladys let out of a sigh of relief. “So either name could access it?”

Warren nodded and looked at Gladys and Charles. “But are either of you Rahner or Tardo?”

Bess stepped forward. “I’m Beatrice Rahner.”

The manager looked at her. “Mrs. Houdini, really, I can’t just—”