The next day I met Esther for a lunch at Volker’s Drug Store, famous for its curious cardboard sign in the front window: Hier wird Englisch gesprochen. On Thursdays Mrs. Beckerstrader baked her German delights, an array of succulent confections, plum tortes, Pfeffernusse, the cottage cheese kuchen, and the cinnamon rolls topped with slivers of almonds-the best in Appleton-and both of us knew the delicacies would be gone by Friday. Each week I treated Esther from the allowance my mother gave me from my salary. It made me feel…independent. Afterwards, sated, I staggered back toward the city room with Esther, who’d be shopping for her mother’s kitchen at W. L. Rhodes, Grocer, just around the corner from the Crescent office. As we approached Morrison and College, we nearly collided with Ivy Ryan, her arms around a basket of poppy-seed rolls.
Miss Ivy gushed, “You’d best get back to the office. You have a visitor waiting on you.”
“Who?”
“The man who warrants these rolls.” Miss Ivy’s eyes grew wide. “Sam first mentioned a pail of beer from Glassner’s Grog Shop, but Houdini said no. Never.”
In an awed voice she told us that Houdini had stopped in at the office asking for me, and Sam Ryan sent her to purchase some breads. The office was in a titter. “Even Matthias Boon seems at a loss for venom.”
Esther said goodbye, but I insisted she meet the great Houdini. Flustered, Esther started to hiccough, debating what to do. Her rabbi father had forbidden her coming with us to see the show at the Lyceum, but she’d peppered me with questions about it. “The opportunity of a lifetime, Esther.”
As we descended the five cement steps, Houdini stood, smiled, and bowed, first at me and then at Esther. Of course, he was immediately taken with Esther, which irritated me. After all, Houdini was my friend. Sort of. Somewhat. Esther slipped into a convenient chair and produced a smile that seemed frozen onto her captivating features.
Byron Beveridge was sitting back, his fingers idly tinkling the keys of his typewriter as he watched Houdini. Matthias Boon had maneuvered his swivel chair to the edge of his cluttered desk, as close to Houdini as he could be and still seemingly remain positioned at his own desk. He gave me a mock friendly look that reminded me of Homer Timm’s transparent attempt at friendliness at the high school. Sam Ryan slumped in his rickety chair behind that chicken wire fence (I wondered what Houdini thought of such a makeshift construction in a newspaper office), conducting a lively talk with Houdini.
Sitting back in a chair pulled close to Sam’s desk, Houdini seemed a nondescript man, as unassuming as the town cooper or gunsmith, someone stopping in to place an ad in the Crescent and chatting about local politics. Sam was puffing on his cigar, and a cloud of dense, stagnant smoke floated above the desk like a low-hanging storm cloud. Sam’s wrinkled face looked more creased and pitted than usual because cracking a smile seemed to set in motion layers of chafed, dry skin.
“Miss Ferber, join us.” Sam Ryan motioned to me. “There’s a man here to see you.”
As I walked by, Boon mumbled, “The novelty may be too much for her.”
I shot him a withering look. I introduced Esther to Houdini, though she remained frozen in a chair by the door. Houdini responded, “Lola Montez has nothing on you, my dear.” For God’s sake. What was I? Dishwater with an intellect? Yes, a part of me was pleased that a friend of mine garnered such attention. After all, I invited her here. Still and all…I surveyed the room. All the men were gaping at Esther, rapt as schoolboys at their games. I caught Miss Ivy’s eye when she looked up from placing the rolls onto a plate. Her puzzled glance suggested that men were such abysmal fools. They always missed the point. Beauty was…well…
“You came to see me?” I asked, loudly.
“I have an answer to your question.” Houdini looked into my eager face.
Sam Ryan was smiling.
“And?”
“And Mr. Ryan agrees with me.” A moment passed, Houdini’s face assuming a faraway look. “You know, Miss Ferber, Mr. Ryan actually remembers my family from years back. He remembers the early Jewish families moving in. The frightened immigrants in the strange town.”
Sam tapped his cigar in his ashtray. “His father, Rabbi Mayer Weiss, used to stop in with news items. A fine man, a scholar. Let me tell you-he created quite a sensation as he walked up College Avenue, looking like an old-world prophet in his Talmudic shawl, a white neckband, and that hat…”
“A barrett,” Houdini finished for him. “The four-cornered miter of German Reform Judaism. I used to be embarrassed…” He stopped. “A man who found nothing in America but sadness and death.” Then he shook his head. “Listen to me. Family stories.” He saluted Sam, pleased. “It’s good he is remembered.”
“And well,” Sam added. “A dignified man.”
Houdini nodded. “But now it is time for our business, Miss Ferber. I’ve suggested to Mr. Ryan a little of what I think needs to be done, but you and I have work to do. We have a performance to stage.”
“I’m not following this, sir.”
“Mr. Ryan has already contacted the chief of police, and we’re meeting at the high school at three, very shortly, when the students leave. I have an idea…”
“Tell me,” I demanded, hungry.
Houdini laughed. “I’m a showman, my dear. Seeing is believing. You asked me to perform magic. You have to learn that magic has its own rules. Would you rob me of my moment?” His tone became serious. “I’m not gonna name the murderer for you-I don’t have any idea on that, I tell you-but I think I can show you how to walk through a wall and not be seen. You have to find the murderer yourself.”
I held up my hand. “You misunderstand me, Mr. Houdini. I’m not trying to find a murderer…”
He interrupted. “Of course, you are. I know you, young lady.” He ran his hands through his hair, and a clump of hair jutted out. He left it there. “It’s a story that needs an ending.”
“We have a chief of police and a deputy…”
“They may need a little help from you.”
Sam Ryan was enjoying Houdini’s baiting of me. “Mr. Houdini,” he admitted, “is quite a persuasive man.”
“I can persuade men to chain me, tie me up, handcuff me, throw me into jail cells. People like doing that. It’s the freeing people from shackles that people resist. Wherever you look, people are in the chains they wrap around themselves.” His eyes got bright. “Freeing people is the job of the newspaper.” He stood. “We need to leave for my real Appleton show. Miss Ferber?”
A little dazed, I stood. Sam turned to Matthias Boon. “Matt, get your hat and notebook.”
I would have none of it. “This is my story.”
Sam shook his head. “Mr. Boon is the city editor, Edna. You know that. This is his story.”
“But I’m at the heart of the story.”
Houdini was watching me.
“No.”
And that was that. I glowered at anyone who looked my way. Matthias Boon preened, swelling up like a spoiled child indulged one too many times with sticks of sweet peppermint. So be it. Let the episode of Houdini be reported by a man who didn’t have a sensible notion in his fat head.
Houdini bowed to Esther. “And this pretty lass can be my stage assistant, seeing as my bride Bess is in New York and my brother is off with friends.” Esther blushed and stammered a thank you. I frowned. Was sight the only operative sense for the male of the species?
So Houdini, Esther, Boon, and I headed a few blocks away to Ryan High School. As we walked, I kept my distance from the strutting editor who led the way, as though we’d never gone that route before. At the corner, turning from the police station, Caleb Stone spotted us, and waited. Rushing up, out of breath, was Amos Moss. In his agitation he had mismatched the buttons on his vest under the shabby old suit. That proved my theory-men function with only the sense of sight, always impaired.
A few students straggled out of the building, but the hallways were empty. Miss Hepplewhyte stood, flummoxed. “Has something happened?”
Yes, a murder.
No one had told Principal Jones and Vice-Principal Homer Timm about the visit, and both men were not happy, though the principal shrugged his shoulders. “What do you want me to do?” The usually genial man seemed a little startled, and rightly so. This was his domain, invaded.
Homer Timm had been speaking to Mr. McCaslin, who looked relieved when Timm, spotting the regiment of souls marching in-with Houdini as leader, no less-simply abandoned him. He stood there, a frown on his face. The drama teacher looked puzzled, eyes dark, and quickly stepped into a classroom, shutting the door behind him.
Caleb Stone apologized for the intrusion, an apology clearly not genuine. For some reason, he was relying on the element of surprise. But why? After the explanation-“Mr. Houdini has an idea”-a line that seemed weighty and somber, a kind of leaden exclamation-the two men nodded to each other, and Principal Jones waved his arm to the notorious corridor. “Down here, Mr. Houdini.” He stammered, “It’s a honor, sir.”
Houdini bowed slightly. “Of course it is. But first I would like to walk around the school, if I might.”
He strolled the hallways, peering into classrooms, offices, standing on stairwell landings, though I noticed he did not go upstairs. He did walk into the auditorium and into the dressing rooms, and at one point he stood on the stage, down front, and seemed ready to do his magic act. He’d probably never met a stage he didn’t immediately dominate. I wondered if he’d be followed by a troupe of sword swallowers? Of fire-eaters? Where were the Siamese twins?
He wandered through the small school library, empty of students, and Miss Dunne, surprised as she shelved a book, actually gasped and dropped it to the floor.
“Houdini,” she exclaimed, and he laughed, bowing.
“All right, enough of this.” He turned to me and asked to be directed to the locked storeroom He stood there, contemplating, his eyes focused. Then he took Esther’s hand and leaned in to whisper something to her. Blushing a deep scarlet, Esther nodded and walked out of the building. “My lovely assistant has an assignment.”
What? To amass boughs of lilacs to be strewn at your feet? To hire a brass band?
Houdini faced the offending door, now locked. “You have a key?” he asked the principal. “Can you open it?”
Homer Timm sneered, “You can’t be of help?”
Houdini regarded him with narrow eyes. “I get out of situations, not into them.”
So the door was opened and Houdini peered at the knob, as well as the inside of the door. “Shut me in.” He paused, then seemed to speak to himself. “Ah, it locks when it closes.” He stepped into the dusty, dim space, and Caleb Stone slammed the heavy oak door shut. He jiggled the knob, but the door was locked.
“No key needed to lock it,” the chief said.
Yes, I believe that’s what Houdini just announced.
Everyone waited and my heart pounded. I noticed a sheepish Mr. McCaslin had slipped into the hallway, though he stood away from the rest of us. Obviously he didn’t want to miss this new scene in our play. We waited as three four five six minutes passed. No one said a word, expectant. Every so often there was pounding or scraping from within, and one time Houdini let out a low-throated groan. Good God, was he stumbling around in the dark?
Then, abruptly, the door flew open, and Houdini stepped into the hallway with a flourish.
“So?” Caleb Stone’s voice wavered.
“I’m playing with you,” Houdini said, cavalierly. “Opening this door is no trick.” He pointed to a knob on the inside of the door. “To get out all I had to do is to turn the knob.” He bowed. “This is no challenge.”
I realized that, as with his stage show, he delayed freeing himself for dramatic effect. Yes, I told myself-you build a scene craftily; you need to understand crescendo and climax.
Amos Moss grunted. “Ain’t a question of getting out anyway. It’s a question of how she got in.”
Houdini looked at him, “No, you’re wrong, sir. It is a question of how she got out. But we know she ain’t got out back into this hallway. Again, I’ll lock myself in.”
“Why?” Amos Moss asked.
Matthias Boon was scribbling furiously on his pad, and I wondered how he was going to write up this episode, though I knew my presence would be minimal, if mentioned at all.
Houdini stepped back in, and Caleb Stone closed the door. He looked irritated. This was all tomfoolery.
Again we waited. This time the minutes passed, perhaps ten, maybe fifteen. Everyone in the hallway was getting restless, and I noticed Principal Jones was leaning against the wall, looking drowsy, though Homer Timm stood like a sentry, spine erect, arms folded. One sleeve of his suit jacket was smeared with chalk. Now and then his eyes caught mine, though I couldn’t interpret the look: stony, quizzical, even a little sardonic. Miss Dunne had quietly joined us, abandoning her books for this impromptu theatrical. She kept away from Miss Hepplewhyte, who, of course, avoided Mr. McCaslin. Enemies, all.
We waited and waited.
And waited.
A scraping noise from within, the sound of a board snapped, splintered. Still toying with us?
“Maybe we should check on him,” Homer mumbled, but Caleb Stone’s look said, of course not.
I cleared my throat. “I think we should trust him.”
Silence in the hallway.
I heard the front door open, and I feared Christ Lempke would come lumbering in, filled with accusation and bile; but, surprisingly, Esther came rushing around the corner. “Come with me.” She practically sang the words.
Everyone trailed her outside, down the steps, alongside the building where I expected to see Houdini. But Esther kept moving, away from the building, beyond a copse of shrubbery, off a pathway into a bank of blue hemlock scrub. There, standing with arms folded, his hair all out of place, his clothing dusty and crumpled, was a beaming Houdini.
“Well, well, well,” Caleb Stone said. “I’ll be darned.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“It’s very simple,” Houdini announced as Esther moved beside him, taking her role as stage assistant a little too seriously.
Back inside the high school, standing outside the storeroom, Houdini described what he said was obvious to him. “I told myself there had to be another way out. If she ain’t come out one way, she comes out another.” In walking around the building, he’d noticed the proximity of the storeroom to the auditorium wing. In the back wall of the locked room was a panel, perhaps five feet high and two feet wide, hinged but latched on the other side. It opened to another storeroom on the other side.
“A little pressure on the panel,” he informed us, “undoes a latch that, once sprung, lets the panel door swing open.”
Everyone stared at the small opening. Why was it there?
Houdini explained how it worked. The panel opened to the other room, which opened onto a small landing leading down into the auditorium. From there, he said, it was easy to walk along the side of the stage to the back of the building, a route that led to a back door. Then he was outside.
“Is easy,” he explained. “Once I saw how close the auditorium was to this wing of the school, I knew there was a way.” He sighed. “That young girl simply walked out of the school through a door. Simple. No mystery.”
“Yes, but how did she know it was there?” I asked. “I mean, how did she even get into the storeroom?”
“That’s the question,” Caleb Stone agreed. “Someone helped her.”
“Impossible.” From Miss Hepplewhyte.
The chief went on, “Someone had to tell her-or somehow entice her into this room.”
My mind was racing. “Interestingly, Frana seems to have walked the other way first, past Mr. McCaslin’s classroom, waving to a friend. Then she scurried back to the end of the hallway to this storeroom. She planned it.”
Mr. McCaslin spoke up. “I did see her walk by.” He looked rattled.
Caleb Stone noted, “If you stand in the storeroom, you can’t tell the panel’s there. The latch is on the other side.”
Houdini nodded. “It was easy for me to undo it. But someone else…”
“Someone would have to have opened it from the other side.” A pause. “Someone was waiting for her.” My voice was rising.
“Who knew about this passageway?” Caleb Stone asked.
Both principal and vice-principal shook their heads because there was no reason for anyone to know of it. Homer Timm grumbled, “We have enough to do policing wandering students. We hardly have time to explore the catacombs that wend their way through this building.”
“But someone did,” Caleb Stone insisted. “And it warn’t Frana who discovered it. That’s for certain.” He wanted to see what was on the other side, and the group moved around the corner and into the auditorium. The chief walked up three steps to the landing and into what was clearly the janitor’s storeroom-shelves filled with mops and brooms and pails, as well as hammers and saws and planes. The cluttered paraphernalia of school housekeeping.
“This is where August Schmidt keeps his tools,” Homer Timm told us. “This is his space.”
“Is he back at work?” Caleb asked.
The principal shook his head. “No, he’s too frightened to return. And we can’t allow it. The students would be alarmed.”
That was news to me. I imagined the timid German at home, awaiting arrest for murder. Worse, this storeroom yawned before us, one man’s domain, and its contents seemed to suggest guilt.
Caleb Stone peered into the room. “Who goes in here beside Mr. Schmidt?”
“No one.” From Homer Timm.
But I interrupted. “Well, students rehearsing our plays would sometimes run up for hammers…”
Mr. McCaslin added, “And, you know, nails and…” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Show me how the panel works,” Caleb Stone demanded.
All of us pushed closer, peering. Houdini walked up the stairs and into the janitor’s storeroom, and I moved next to him. “There really is nothing hidden here,” he pointed out. “Look.” He showed us a panel built into a wall. “It looks like one of the series of panels that make up the back wall. Very basic. With a simple latch to close it. Another storeroom. Whoever built it probably figured there might be a need for moving from one space to the other. A place to put unused furniture.” I noticed that a small table was set against the panel, covering part of it. Closed and latched, the panel became part of the wall. Examining it, I realized it was easy to not see the latch. Would August Schmidt have known this? Houdini undid the latch, and suddenly there was the other secret room. I stepped closer to examine it, then I backed out as others moved up the steps to look. I stood on the small landing that led out of the janitor’s room and down to the auditorium. If I craned my neck, I could glimpse the back of the stage. From the landing I spotted the work smocks and caps hanging on hooks, aprons lying on a table, even boots placed along the wall-all the possessions of August Schmidt.
Caleb Stone and Amos Moss nodded at each other. I sensed what they were thinking-Here it is. It has to be August Schmidt. That unassuming man, that sad soul who played his role well, masking his true murderous intent, a man who hatched some nefarious plot, discovering the unused storeroom, opening that latched panel. Somehow, he seduced the innocent Frana, confusing her, enticing her, promising wonders.
That struck me as nonsense. Wouldn’t someone have seen him? Who knew there’d be no one watching? But these men wanted to believe Frana planned an escape, slipping into that room at two o’clock to meet an anxious Schmidt, the two running out the back into the woods, laughing as they escaped.
The scenario was impossible. Someone waited for Frana. But not the meek Schmidt. What life in New York could he offer her? Absurd! No Sherman House drummer was familiar with the school building. But it could be anyone in town, some old-timer who knew the school, maybe even a former student or teacher who long ago discovered the locked storeroom when visiting the janitor’s room for a pail or a broom, and, years later, now an “older” man, suddenly found a use for such information.
I turned to Houdini, who was now standing apart from the others. He looked tired, drawn; these exercises carried a heavy toll for the man. Concentration and imagination, indeed.
“Thank you,” I said. He was waiting for someone to acknowledge him.
Caleb Stone gave his thanks, and Houdini bowed. He turned to go. “My work here is done.” He smiled at me. “This was not really an escape, Miss Ferber. This was just a discovery I made. You could have done this. This is just a door in a wall. A panel. That’s all. No one bothered to look.”
Chief Stone interrupted, sheepish. “It was common sense, really. But it never occurred to me. We never came back to look.” He scratched his head. “I’m feeling a little foolish.”
Houdini interrupted him. “Why should you think that way?”
“Well, it was right in front of our eyes.” The chief’s head twisted around. “For Heaven’s sake, a storeroom door. I never thought…”
“No, it wasn’t.” Houdini was kind. “There was no latch visible from the inside, sir. You see, I’m always looking for means to escape. That’s the way my mind works.”
“But, my God, a doorway…”
Quietly Houdini assured him, “Once you’d reexamined the room, you’d have found it. Surely.”
The chief started to say something, but Houdini held up his hand. “It’s just that I got here first. And, you know, I do like to put on a show.”
“But…”
“No trickery, really. You didn’t need the great Houdini for this. You needed to open your eyes.”
I shook my head. “What was obvious was obviously not obvious.”
Boon frowned at me.
Houdini’s look took us all in. “Isn’t it strange, then? With all my elaborate escapes and tricks and illusions, I find a door in a wall…and, well…you may remember this one day as my finest performance.”