What was I looking for? I really didn’t know. All I could surmise was that a skilled illusionist had pulled off the remarkable stunt so smoothly that I, standing a few feet away, had not been aware of it. A skilled illusionist who had recently been in Germany and who was now in the pay of the German secret service. And who was also a skilled killer. I scanned through the German text for names I might recognize, but the Gothic type was so different that I didn’t know what I was reading. Eventually my eyes started watering from the poor light and the exhaustion of the day caught up with me. I turned out the gas and looked out of the window before I went to sleep. I couldn’t see the constable from my window, but I thought I saw the shadow of a man standing across the street. I hoped he was Mr. Wilkie’s agent, sent to keep watch over me. I tried to reassure myself as I fell asleep.

In the morning I woke to the sun streaming in through my window and the sound of horses’ hooves as the milk wagon made its way down the street. I felt surprisingly refreshed and ready to take on the world. Bess was still blissfully asleep but Houdini’s mother was up and bustling around the kitchen. She had made little pancakes that she served to me with sour cream and nodded again with approval as I ate heartily.

“What we do now?” she asked as she sat opposite me with a cup of coffee. “What happens to us?”

“We have to wait, I suppose,” I said. “Wait until there’s any news of your son.”

“He is dead. This is what you think, no?” she asked.

“I really don’t know,” I said. “I am still hoping for the best.” But I wasn’t quite sure what the best could be. One man was dead and Houdini had been spirited away in a trunk. The trunk had been found floating in the East River. So the chances of his still being alive were slim, but I didn’t want to give up hope.

“I’m going to keep looking for him,” I said. “Maybe you can help find out what happened to him.”

I went upstairs and brought down the scrapbooks. “I can’t understand German,” I said. “Can you help me translate?”

She glanced at the newspaper cuttings then shook her head. “I speak some German, but I don’t read it. Yiddish I can speak. Hungarian I can speak. But in my town they did not educate girls to read German. My son Leopold—the doctor. He could maybe help you. He is an educated man.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Can you give me his address?”