was now really riled up. “Oh, so she’s my friend now, is she? A minute ago she was a complete stranger and someone I couldn’t trust because she was here to steal our act!”
I was feeling horribly uncomfortable and decided that something had to be done before their marriage was ruined.
“Stop this, please,” I said. “It would be so much simpler if your husband knows the truth, Bess. I can see why he doesn’t want to trust me. I wouldn’t want to admit a strange person to my act when there have already been two horrible accidents in a week.” I turned to Harry and looked him straight in the eye. “I think you should know the truth, Mr. Houdini, and if you tell me to get lost, I’ll go.”
Bess held up her hand and started to say something but I shook my head. “The truth is, Mr. Houdini, or Mr. Weiss, if you’d rather, that your wife came to me in great distress. She was sure that someone was trying to kill you. As it turned out it appears that someone was trying to kill her, or at the very least wreck your act. So she asked for my help. You see, I’m a private investigator.”
“You’re what?” Harry said.
“A detective, Harry, she’s a lady detective,” Bess said. “I was only doing it for you. I wanted her to find out who was out to get you. I wanted to protect you because I love you.”
And she broke into sobs.
“Babykins. I’m sorry.” Harry sank onto the bed beside her and took her into his arms. Really, were theater folk always this dramatic?
“I did it for you, Harry,” she repeated. “Don’t be mad at me. I thought you’d nix the idea of having a detective watching out for you, so I invented this crazy scheme. Pretty dumb of me, huh?”
He sat beside her, stroking her hair, gazing into her face. “You’re a real sweetie pie, you know that?”
“I knew you’d never tell the police that you were in danger and I had to protect you somehow so I thought a lady detective would work into the act real nice. I was going to pretend I wasn’t feeling well but then that awful accident happened, and it just proved what I’d been afraid of all along. So please say, yes, Harry. For my sake.”
He stroked her hair and smiled down at her. “I’d do anything for you, babykins, but what good is some dame going to be onstage with me? No offense, ma’am, but if someone has rigged my equipment how the hell are you going to know that?”
“Language, Harry,” Bess said.
“I expressed the same concerns to your wife, Mr. Houdini,” I said.
“Where I think I can help you is more likely to be offstage, keeping my eyes open and asking the right questions. But I needed a valid reason to be with you all the time.”
He nodded. “Can’t do no harm, I suppose, unless you look so bad up there that you turn my act into a comedy.”
“I’ll try not to,” I said.
“So you’ll do it, won’t you, Harry?” Bess insisted. “If he’s tried something once, he could try again.”
Harry shrugged. “If you want a detective onstage with me, watching out for me, then okay, you got it.”
Bess gave me a triumphant smile as she hugged him. Harry turned to look up at me. “I could tell right away you’d never been a performer in your life,” he said.
Fifteen
There was silence in the bedroom while we all recovered from the excess of emotion. Then Bess lay back among her pillows, looking quite at ease again. “So hadn’t you better start teaching her the signals if you want her to go on with you tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow?” I said as this reality dawned on me. “You think I could be ready to go on by tomorrow?”
“For the mind-reading act,” Houdini said. “We have a system of signals. You saw when I went down into the audience and I had someone pick a card? There’s no mind reading involved. I told Bess what card it was by the things I did and the movements I made. It’s a system as old as the hills and it’s really simple. For example, supposing the person in the audience selected the ace of clubs. I would just happen to touch that person’s shoulder. That would signify to Bess that it was an ace. And if I was standing with the right foot in front of the left—that