“And me,” Irene said. “You’ll talk to me, too. This is my problem and my story.”
“Don’t worry, you will be a critical part of the act.”
“You’ve got a plan?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Tell me.”
He did. When he was finished, she took a deep breath and released it slowly.
“That is . . . very daring,” she said. “And risky.”
“Like any good illusion, it is actually very simple technically.”
“It relies on your read of Enright. If you’re wrong—”
“No.” Oliver drank some more whiskey and lowered the glass. “Tonight he confirmed everything I sensed about him. He’s cold-blooded, arrogant, and impulsive.”
Irene shivered. “I wonder how many people he has murdered.”
“We’ll probably never know,” Oliver said, “but I very much doubt that Helen Spencer was the first.”
He swallowed a sip of his whiskey, set the glass aside, and absently started to massage his left leg. Irene watched him for a moment and then she got up, knelt beside his chair, and put her hands on his thigh. She could feel the pain-tautened muscles and sinews beneath the fabric of his robe.
“Let me do this,” she said.
“Forget it.”
She ignored him and started to massage his leg, applying gentle but firm pressure.
To her surprise he stopped arguing. After a while he even seemed to relax.
“Have you ever told anyone what went wrong in your final performance?” she asked.
“Accidents sometimes happen when you mess around with dangerous things like guns.”
“I don’t think it was an accident.”
He went very still.
“What makes you so sure?” he finally asked.
“The fact that you won’t talk about it.”
“No one likes to talk about a failure, certainly not a career-killing mistake.”
“You’ve got a right to your secrets,” she said.
“You had a right to your secrets, too, but now I know some of them.”
“Yes, you do.”
“My secrets are dead and buried,” Oliver said. “But sometimes I find myself dealing with a ghost.”
She didn’t ask any more questions, just continued to knead his leg. After a time he started to talk.
“It was the Cage of Death illusion,” he said. “Geddings created the original version but Uncle Chester and I made a few changes to enhance the audience appeal.”
“Who is Geddings?”
“He was a friend and one of the most skilled magicians I have ever known. He taught me a great deal. He went by the title of the Great Geddings.”
“Never heard of him.”
“That was his problem. He was incredibly talented when it came to the technical aspects of an illusion but he wasn’t much of a performer. Success on the stage is all about telling a story. The ability to draw the audience into the magic—make people willing participants in the illusion—is what separates the stars from the merely competent. For all his skill, Geddings couldn’t read a crowd. He couldn’t establish the rapport that’s needed onstage. But he taught me a great deal and we made a good team.”
“What happened?”
“We started out as partners. Billed the act as Geddings and Ward. But it soon became clear that, although I wasn’t better than Geddings in the technical sense, I was the one who could attract and hold an audience’s attention. We changed the name of the show to the Amazing Oliver Ward Show.”
“Which became famous.”
“We did quite well. Then the disaster occurred.”
“That would have been about two years ago?”
“Right.” Oliver was silent for a moment. “We were in San Francisco. We had a full house. After being suitably locked up in the usual flashy chains and manacles, I was lowered into a steel cage. The cage was hoisted several feet off the floor.”
“To show the audience that you couldn’t get out through a trapdoor at the bottom.”
“You learn fast.” Oliver drank a little more whiskey. “A curtain was lowered. The lights were focused on the draped cage. All standard effect stuff but the audience loved it. At that point a mysterious figure wearing a cape and a mask appeared. He circled the cage a few times, took out a pistol, and fired three shots into the drapery. Naturally the pistol was supposed to fire blanks.”
“Obviously that wasn’t the case.”
“The pistol was loaded with real bullets. Two of them caught me in the thigh. Did a lot of damage to muscle and tissue but just barely missed an artery. I was lucky.”
“Lucky? How can you say that?”