Part 41 (1/2)
”How'd he get there?”
”We don't know, Captain Swear to God, atching everything everything We had a man on the stairs, and another on the elevators I don't kno he got in there He just kind of showed up” We had a man on the stairs, and another on the elevators I don't kno he got in there He just kind of showed up”
”Co for the elevators ”And bring your son,” he told Sa a cleat to lash theone blank and bloodless hat looked to Lieber like astonishment Somehow his hoax had come true
They stepped into the elevator, with its elaborate chevrons and rays of inlaid wood
”He's on the parapet?” said Captain Harley Rensie nodded
”Wait a minute,” said Sammy ”I'm confused”
Lieber allowed as hoas a tiny bit confused hiht that the mystery of the letter to the Herald-Tribune Herald-Tribune was solved: it was a harmless if inscrutable stunt, pulled by an eleven-year-old boy No doubt, he thought, he had been fairly inscrutable hi for attention; he was trying to make a point that no one outside the family could possibly understand Then, so-lost cousin whom Lieber had assumed until that point to be a dead man, run down on the shoulder of so, was actually holed up, somehow or other, in an office suite on the seventy-second floor of the Empire State And now it looked as if the kid was not the author of the letter after all; the Escapist had kept his grim promise to the city of New York was solved: it was a harmless if inscrutable stunt, pulled by an eleven-year-old boy No doubt, he thought, he had been fairly inscrutable hi for attention; he was trying to make a point that no one outside the family could possibly understand Then, so-lost cousin whom Lieber had assumed until that point to be a dead man, run down on the shoulder of so, was actually holed up, somehow or other, in an office suite on the seventy-second floor of the Empire State And now it looked as if the kid was not the author of the letter after all; the Escapist had kept his grione fourteen stories-special express all the hen Rensie said in a s voice, ”There are orphans”
”There are what?” what?”
”Orphans,” said Clay He had his arm crooked around his kid's neck in a fatherly display of reproofas solicitude It was an eet you hoeant,” Harley said ”Why are there?”
”Well, it didn't look like the, uh, the gentle to show,” Rensie said ”And the little brats came all the way down from Watertown Ten hours on a bus”
”An audience Of little children,” Harley said ”Perfect”
”What about you?” Lieber said to the boy ”You confused, too?”
The boy stared, then nodded slowly
”You want to have your wits about you, Tom,” Lieber said ”We need you to talk to this uncle of yours”
”First cousin,” Clay said He cleared his throat ”Once removed”
”Maybe you could talk to your first cousin once removed about those rubber bands,” Rensie said ”That's a new one on me”
”Rubber bands,” Captain Harley said ”And orphans” He rubbed at the wrecked half of his face ”I' there's also a nun?” ”A padre” ”Okay,” said Captain Harley ”Well, that's so” Captain Harley said ”And orphans” He rubbed at the wrecked half of his face ”I' there's also a nun?” ”A padre” ”Okay,” said Captain Harley ”Well, that's soe of St Vincent de Paul huddled on the ept roof of the city, a thousand feet up Gray light was se The heavy steel zippers of the children's dark blue corduroy coats-donated by a Watertown depart with the twenty-two chiainst the April chill The children's two keepers, Father Martin and Miss Mary Catherine Macos, trying to cinch them with their voices and hands Father Martin's eyes watered in the sharp breeze, and Miss Macoooseflesh They were not excitable people, but things had gotten out of hand and they were shouting
”Stay back!” Miss Macomb told the children, several hundred times
”For pity's sake, man,” Father Martin told the leaper, ”co stunned in the faces of the children, blinking and tentative The slow, dull, dark subo had abruptly surfaced Their blood was filled with a kind of crippling nitrogen of wonder nobody was sh with children, entertainrave business
Atop the thick concrete parapet of the eighty-sixth floor, like a bright jagged hole punched in the clouds, balanced a so suit The suit clung to his lanky fralint of silk He had on a pair of golden swiolden applique, like the initial on a letterman's jacket, in the shape of a skeleton key He wore a pair of soft gold boots, rather shapeless, with thin rubber soles The trunks were nubbly and had a white streak on the seat, as if their wearer had once leaned against a freshly painted doorjahts were laddered and stretched out at the knees, the jersey sagged badly at the elbows, and the rubber soles of the flirease His broad chest was girdled by a slender cord, studded with thousands of tiny knots, looped under his armpits, then stretched across the open-air pro of an ornamental sun ray that jutted froave the knotted cord a tug, and it twanged out a low D-flat
He was putting on a show for theathered at his feet, cursing and cajoling and begging hi a deht of the sort still routinely found, even in this dies of comic books
”You will see,” he cried ”A th of the elastic rope, woven out of eight separate strands, each strand , extra-thick rubber bands he had picked up at Reliant Office Supplies The policemen remained suspicious, but they were not sure what to believe The ht-blue costume, with its key syment And then there was Joe's professional manner, still remarkably smooth and workmanlike after so many years of disuse His confidence in his ability to pull off the trick of leaping fro to a maximum of 162 feet in the direction of the far-distant sidewalk, then reascending, tugged skyward by the enor at the feet of the policemen, appeared to be absolute
”The children won't be able to see lint of e”
The children agreed, pressing forward Horrified, Miss Macomb and Father Martin held them back
”Joe!” It was Sammy He and various police in a confusion of waving arms out onto the ept pro Tommy Clay
When Joe saw the boy, his son, join the motley crowd that had convened on the observation deck to observe as a rash and iinary promise was fulfilled, he suddenly remembered a remark that his teacher Bernard Kornbluician had said, ”could pick a nested pair of steel Bramah locks”
He had offered this observation toward the end of Joe's last regular visit to the house on Maisel Street, as he rubbed a dab of calendula oint cheeks Generally, Kornblu the final portion of every lesson, sitting on the lid of the plain pine box that he had bought fro his ease with a copy of Di Cajt Di Cajt while, inside the box, Joe lay curled, roped and chained, perh his nostrils, andterrible, minute exertions Kornblum sat, his only co for the triple rap fronified that Joe had loosed himself from cuffs and chains, prized out the three sawn-off due of the lid, and was ready to ee At times, however, if Joe was particularly dilatory, or if the tereat, Kornbluile Ger himself, however, to shoptalk He reh bad luck or foolishness, nearly been killed; or recalled, in apostolic and tedious detail, one of the three golden occasions on which he had been fortunate enough to catch the act of his prophet, Houdini Only this once, just before Joe attee into the Moldau, had Kornblum's talk ever wandered from the path of professional retrospection into the shadowed, leafy ins of the personal while, inside the box, Joe lay curled, roped and chained, perh his nostrils, andterrible, minute exertions Kornblum sat, his only co for the triple rap fronified that Joe had loosed himself from cuffs and chains, prized out the three sawn-off due of the lid, and was ready to ee At times, however, if Joe was particularly dilatory, or if the tereat, Kornbluile Ger himself, however, to shoptalk He reh bad luck or foolishness, nearly been killed; or recalled, in apostolic and tedious detail, one of the three golden occasions on which he had been fortunate enough to catch the act of his prophet, Houdini Only this once, just before Joe attee into the Moldau, had Kornblum's talk ever wandered from the path of professional retrospection into the shadowed, leafy ins of the personal
He had been present, Kornbluh the inch of pine plank and the thin canvas sack in which Joe was cocooned-for what none but the closest confidants of the Handcuff Ring, and the few canny confreres itnessed it, knew to be the hour when the great one failed This was in London, Kornblum said, in 1906, at the Palladiue to free himself froe had been made by the Mirror Mirror of London, which had discovered a locksland who, after a lifeti, had devised a pair of manacles fitted with a lock so convoluted and thorny that no one, not even its necromantic inventor, could pick it Kornblum described the manacles, two thick steel circlets inflexibly welded to a cylindrical shaft Within this rigid shaft lay the sinister mechanism of the Manchester locksmith-and here a tone of awe, even horror, entered Kornblum's voice It was a variation on the Braent lock that could be opened-and even then with difficulty-only by a long, arcane, tubular key, intricately notched at one end Devised by the Englishone unpicked, inviolate, for over half a century until it was finally cracked The lock that now confronted Houdini, on the stage of the Palladium, consisted of of London, which had discovered a locksland who, after a lifeti, had devised a pair of manacles fitted with a lock so convoluted and thorny that no one, not even its necromantic inventor, could pick it Kornblum described the manacles, two thick steel circlets inflexibly welded to a cylindrical shaft Within this rigid shaft lay the sinister mechanism of the Manchester locksmith-and here a tone of awe, even horror, entered Kornblum's voice It was a variation on the Braent lock that could be opened-and even then with difficulty-only by a long, arcane, tubular key, intricately notched at one end Devised by the Englishone unpicked, inviolate, for over half a century until it was finally cracked The lock that now confronted Houdini, on the stage of the Palladium, consisted of to Bramah tubes, one nested inside the other, and could be opened only by a bizarre double key that looked so like the collapsed halves of a telescope, one notched cylinder protruding from within another Bramah tubes, one nested inside the other, and could be opened only by a bizarre double key that looked so like the collapsed halves of a telescope, one notched cylinder protruding froentle them, looked on, the Mysteriarch, in black cutaway and waistcoat, was fitted with the awful cuffs Then, with a single, blank-faced, wordless nod to his wife, he retreated to his sin his impossible work The orchestra struck up ”Annie Laurie” Twenty ician's head and shoulders eed froet a look at the cuffs, which still held hiht He ducked back inside The orchestra played the Overture to Tales of Hoffmann Tales of Hoffmann Fifteen minutes later, the music died amid cheers as Houdini stepped froainst hope that the h he knew perfectly well that when the first, single-barreled Bramah was, after sixty years, finally picked, it had taken the successful lock-pick, an American master by the name of Hobbs, Fifteen minutes later, the music died amid cheers as Houdini stepped froainst hope that the h he knew perfectly well that when the first, single-barreled Bramah was, after sixty years, finally picked, it had taken the successful lock-pick, an American master by the name of Hobbs, two full days two full days of continuous effort And now it turned out that Houdini, sweating, a queasy s free at one end, had h his knees hurt fro in the cabinet, he was not yet ready to throw in the towel The newspaper's representative, in the interests of good sportsht, and Houdini retreated to his cabinet once more of continuous effort And now it turned out that Houdini, sweating, a queasy s free at one end, had h his knees hurt fro in the cabinet, he was not yet ready to throw in the towel The newspaper's representative, in the interests of good sportsht, and Houdini retreated to his cabinet once more
When Houdini had been in the box for nearly an hour, Kornbluan to sense the approach of defeat An audience, even one so fir while the orchestra cycled, with an air of increasing desperation, through the standards and popular tunes of the day Inside his cabinet, the veteran of five hundred houses and ten thousand turns could doubtless sense it, too, as the tide of hope and goodwill flowing fro display of showain, this time to ask if the newspaper's ician to take off his coat Perhaps Houdini was hoping to learn so as the cuffs were opened and then closed again; perhaps he had calculated that his request, after due consideration, would be refused When the gentleretfully declined, to loud hisses and catcalls from the audience, Houdini pulled off athe finest bits of show hied to pluck from the pocket of his waistcoat a tiny penknife, then painstakingly transfer it to, and open it with, his teeth He shrugged and twisted until he had worked his cutaway coat up over to the front of his head, where the knife, still clenched between his teeth, could slice it, in three great sawing rasps, in two A confederate tore the sundered halves away After viewing this display of pluck and panache, the audience was bound to him as if with bands of steel And, Kornblum said, in the uproar, no one noticed the look that passed between the ician and his wife, that tiny, quiet woe as the minutes passed, and the band played, and the audience watched the faint rippling of the cabinet's curtain
After the ician had reinstalled himself, coatless now, in his dark box, Mrs Houdini asked if she ht not prevail upon the kindness and forbearance of their host for the evening to bring her husband a glass of water It had been an hour, after all, and as anyone could see, the closeness of the cabinet and the difficulty of Houdini's exertions had taken a certain toll The sporting spirit prevailed; a glass of water was brought, and Mrs Houdini carried it to her husband Five minutes later, Houdini stepped fro the cuffs over his head like a loving cup He was free The crowd suffered a kind of painful, collective orgasht and relief Few reician was lifted onto the shoulders of the referees and notables on hand and carried through the theater, that his face was convulsed with tears of rage, not triumph, and that his blue eyes were incandescent with shaht and relief Few reician was lifted onto the shoulders of the referees and notables on hand and carried through the theater, that his face was convulsed with tears of rage, not triumph, and that his blue eyes were incandescent with shauessed, when he had e of the canvas sack and a pair of Geraffed with buckshot ”The key”
Kornblu the bands of raw skin at Joe's wrists with his special salve, nodded at first Then he pursed his lips, thinking it over, and finally shook his head He stopped rubbing at Joe's arms He raised his head, and his eyes, as they did only rarely, met Joe's
”It was Bess Houdini,” he said ”She knew her husband's face She could read the writing of failure in his eyes She could go to thehim, with the tears in her eyes and the blush on her bosom, to consider the ruin of her husband's career when put into the balance with nothing ood headline for the next lass of water to her husband, with the small steps and the solemn face of the wife It was not the key that freed him,” he said ”It was the wife There was no other way out It was impossible, even for Houdini” He stood up ”Only love could pick a nested pair of steel Bramah locks” He wiped at his raw cheek with the back of his hand, on the verge, Joe felt, of sharing some parallel example of liberation from his own life
”Have you-did you ever-?”
”That ter shut the lid of the box of ointain, not, this tio home”
Afterward, Joe found there was some reason to doubt Kornblue had taken place, he learned, at the Hippodrome, not the Palladium, and in 1904, not 1906 Many co the the pleas for light, water, tied beforehand between Houdini and the newspaper; soned the cuffs, and that he had coolly whiled away his ti in his cabinet, Kornblu contentedly along with the orchestra down in the pit handcuff challenge had taken place, he learned, at the Hippodrome, not the Palladium, and in 1904, not 1906 Many co the the pleas for light, water, tied beforehand between Houdini and the newspaper; soned the cuffs, and that he had coolly whiled away his ti in his cabinet, Kornblu contentedly along with the orchestra down in the pit
Nevertheless, when he saw To a small, horrified smile, Joe felt the passionate, if not the factual, truth behind Kornblum's dictum He had returned to New York years before, with the intention of finding a way to reconnect, if possible, with the only family that remained to him in the world Instead he had become immured, by fear and its majordomo, habit, in his cabinet of mysteries on the seventy-second floor of the E orchestra of air currents and violin winds, the truent continuo of passing DC-3s Like Harry Houdini, Joe had failed to get out of his self-created trap; but now the love of a boy had sprung hihts