at the same time might be enough to send a financial system crashing and bring a country to its knees.”
“But who would do that?”
Daniel shrugged. “There are still plenty of powerful anarchist groups in Europe. Japan and Russia have recently showed their aggressive tendencies, as has Spain.”
“But the United States, Daniel. Who would have the might to take on such a powerful country?”
“Nobody has the might, that is clear,” he said. “Whoever is doing this is working through subterfuge—agents infiltrating false dollar bills into the system faster than we can detect them. And who knows what other little tricks they may have up their sleeves.”
“Speaking of tricks,” I said, “I wondered if you’d had any news about Scarpelli and his assistant.”
Daniel frowned. “None. I had men looking into it, but so far they’ve come up empty-handed. The man has gone to ground—or at the very least moved well away from our jurisdiction. He could be in Canada by now, for all I know.”
“It’s strange that Lily’s body has not appeared in a morgue somewhere, isn’t it? Surely he can’t have gone far with a body. How would he transport it, for one thing?”
“It’s my belief that he’s buried her somewhere she won’t be found—maybe out in the marshes, so that we’ve no body and thus no chance to charge him with murder.”
“You still think he killed her deliberately?”
“I think it’s a strong possibility. My men did investigate the rest of the performers and crew at that theater and could find no link or possible motive for wanting the girl dead.”
“Or to put Scarpelli out of business?”
He looked at me, then nodded. “As you suggest, to ruin Scarpelli.”
“So you’re not inclined to believe it was mere equipment failure?”
He shook his head. “I was willing to consider that option until Scarpelli disappeared and the body with him. Why hide a body when her death would almost certainly be ruled accidental? And now we’ve had to drop the whole thing. With no body and no equipment to prove tampering we’ve hardly got a case, even if we find him again.”
I leaned closer to him. “So how did the illusion work? Did you get him to divulge his secret to you?”
“You can’t ask me that. I’m sworn to secrecy,” he said, smiling.
“Oh, Daniel, come on. I’m dying to know and I’m not likely to go blabbing it all over New York, am I?” I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Besides, I’m going to be your wife. I’ll be able to wheedle these things out of you in your sleep.”
“I sincerely hope not,” he said. “But if you really must know the whole thing was perfectly simple. It was all a question of levers. The supposed table on which the box rested was hollow. The girl lay flat in the box, and when the lid closed, she depressed a lever and the middle of the box sank down into what appeared to be a flat tabletop. She was also very skinny, of course, and able to suck in her stomach to an amazing degree, so the saw should appear to go almost all the way through the box, but just missed cutting her. Then the saw was removed, the bottom of the box sprang back into place, and out she stepped, unharmed.”
“Only this time the lever did not lower the girl where the saw wouldn’t reach her.”
“Exactly. Scarpelli claimed it must have jammed.”
I shuddered. “Horrible. Just horrible. And I’d take it for an accident too, except that I was at the theater again last night and the lock on Houdini’s trunk jammed. His wife was nearly suffocated inside. They had to get an ax and—”
“Hold on,” Daniel said, moving away from me. “You went to the theater last night? On your own?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“I thought you and I had planned to see Houdini together,” he said. “And now you slip away without me?”
“Daniel, don’t be sore,” I said. “It wasn’t like that at all. If you remember I was asked to look after Bess Houdini when she started having hysterics. I took her up to her room and stayed with her until she calmed down. We struck up a nice little friendship and she was so grateful that she invited me to come back and watch the show as her guest.” I looked up at him. “Did you want me to refuse a chance to see Houdini perform from the wings?”
“No, of course not,” he said quickly. “So how was it?”