“What’s happening?” I asked, looking around me in bewildered fashion. “Did I faint?” Then I looked around, pretended to study each of their faces in turn, and asked, “Where am I? Is this where Mr. Wilkie is going to meet me?”

“I think that’s hardly likely,” Anthony Smith said with something like a smirk.

“Then who are these people?”

“That is irrelevant,” Lily said. She held the lamp up to my face. Close-up I could see that she had light eyes that didn’t go with her dark complexion. That was why she wore the cat mask on stage. “What we need to know is how much you told Wilkie.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

She slapped me hard across the face. “Don’t be foolish. Of course you know. Wilkie is coming to New York to meet with you. You and he had a long, private conversation on a train and let’s just say that Mr. Wilkie doesn’t waste his time in idle chat. You have information he wants and obviously you haven’t given it to him yet or he wouldn’t be coming here.”

“So what exactly have you discovered?” Summer asked in a gentler tone. “We have no quarrel with you. If you tell us what you know then you can go free.”

“I hardly think that’s likely,” I said, “since you’ve already killed one, possibly two men who were on your trail.”

He laughed. “The young lady has a keen wit. I like that.”

I was trying desperately to come up with something to tell them. If I mentioned the design for the submarine device, there was nothing to stop them from going to Houdini’s house to retrieve it. As that thought crossed my mind I realized something else. They were the two so-called spiritualists who had come to Houdini’s house. No wonder my instincts had prevented them from entering. But what could I give them that might satisfy them yet not aid their cause?

“All right,” I said slowly. “For one thing, I discovered that Scarpelli has probably gone up to Boston, and that he’s somehow involved in forged money.”

This made all three of them laugh. “I’m sure that is important news,” Lily said, “but nothing to do with us.”

“He is not working with you?” I asked, my mind going to the forged banknotes.

“Not on this particular assignment.”

“He really believed he had killed you?” I asked.

“Of course not. Lily needed to cease to exist and Scarpelli—well, it was wise for him to vanish too at this moment. He’s on a boat bound for Germany right now, having sailed out of Boston as you so cleverly deduced. He has been most useful to us. His career will get a boost as a reward for services rendered.”

“A boost?” I blurted out.