“Not your favorite either, was it Ernest?” the stagehand called to another fellow who was apparently watching us from the shadows. The first stagehand turned back to me with a smirk on his face. “Gives himself airs and graces that one. Thinks he’s too good for the menial tasks. I told him why doesn’t he go back to the old country if it doesn’t suit him here?”

Ernest gave us a look of contempt. “I just didn’t like touching blood,” he said. “It’s bad luck where I come from if someone dies in the theater.”

He spoke with a slight accent, not unlike Houdini’s. “What does the young lady want?” he asked.

“She’s looking for a stole she left here,” the first stagehand said.

“Something was stolen?” Ernest asked, frowning.

The first stagehand and I exchanged a laugh and I saw his demeanor change toward me. “A stole,” he said. “You know a wrap, a shawl.”

“Ah. This I have not seen.”

I gave a shy, sideways glance toward the one who wasn’t Ernest. “Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll just take one last look around, just in case it’s been discarded in a corner, then I’ll be off.”

“All right, miss.” The first one was now looking at me as if he’d just noticed I was a woman. “Just don’t go near that stuff belonging to the illusionists. It would be more than my job’s worth if they caught anyone poking around it.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t go near it, I promise,” I said.

He nodded and went back to work putting a coat of paint on a pillar. Ernest gave me a long questioning stare and disappeared into the shadows again.

I started peering into corners, then I turned back to my friend. “That contraption for sawing the lady in half,” I said. “Did Scarpelli keep it locked up under one of those tarpaulins?”

“He did.”

I gave a dramatic shudder. “I saw the whole thing. It was horrible, wasn’t it? I still feel faint when I think about it. It’s not still there, is it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t see how it could be. It went in the ambulance with the girl on it. I helped carry her out.”

“Did you? And if it was all locked up with chains like that, then I don’t see how anyone could have tampered with it ahead of time, do you?”

“Beats me,” he said in disinterested fashion. “Unless you were Houdini. Those locks would be a piece of cake to him. But I can’t see Houdini tampering with another fellow’s act. He’s the big star, isn’t he?”

“And if anyone came in from the outside?” I suggested. “What chance would they have?”