Of course my mother often told me that my curiosity would bring me to a bad end. She probably wasn’t wrong, but one of my faults is not knowing when to back down. I resolved to go and see the Houdinis in the morning. It would be only natural that I paid a call on my poor, dear friend Bess to see how she was faring. And I should also pay a visit to Daniel. For one thing I should probably try to patch things up with him. I could understand his frustration with my refusal to act like a normal young bride-to-be. And the best way I knew to do this—at least the best way that wouldn’t lead to complications before we were married—was to cook him a nice meal. Whoever said that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach was perfectly right. I’d also like to add that a good meal is also the best way to soften up a man if you want information out of him—and I was dying to find out if Daniel had made any progress on the disappearance of Lily and Scarpelli. All in all a busy day ahead tomorrow.

I arrived home and got ready for bed, but it was too warm in my bedroom, my brain was now racing, and sleep was impossible. So I got out a piece of paper and sat at my window, savoring the gentle night breeze on my face and arms as I jotted down my thoughts.

There were several explanations for what I had witnessed tonight:

a. The trunk locks jamming had been a nasty accident, which Bess, being psychic, had foreseen.

b. Bess planned the whole thing to look like an accident so that she’d have an excuse to drop out of the act and let me take her place.

c. Someone in that theater was trying to kill illusionists or at least ruin their acts.

If the last, then the best possibility was one of the other illusionists, those two men who opened the bill with their doves and their card tricks. Marvo had actually stated to me that Houdini had raised the bar too high for all the illusionists and that the audience was no longer satisfied with just a clever act. They wanted danger. They wanted excitement. And he had been prowling around backstage, clearly annoyed that I was hanging around and might be in a position to watch him.

Then there was the quiet Mr. Robinson. I should check into him also. I decided I could dismiss Abdullah the sword swallower as he had come straight from Coney Island and this show was clearly a step up for his career, so he wouldn’t want anything to happen that might ruin it for him.