“Oh, Daniel, come on. I’m dying to know and I’m not likely to go blabbing it all over New York, am I?” I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Besides, I’m going to be your wife. I’ll be able to wheedle these things out of you in your sleep.”

“I sincerely hope not,” he said. “But if you really must know the whole thing was perfectly simple. It was all a question of levers. The supposed table on which the box rested was hollow. The girl lay flat in the box, and when the lid closed, she depressed a lever and the middle of the box sank down into what appeared to be a flat tabletop. She was also very skinny, of course, and able to suck in her stomach to an amazing degree, so the saw should appear to go almost all the way through the box, but just missed cutting her. Then the saw was removed, the bottom of the box sprang back into place, and out she stepped, unharmed.”

“Only this time the lever did not lower the girl where the saw wouldn’t reach her.”

“Exactly. Scarpelli claimed it must have jammed.”

I shuddered. “Horrible. Just horrible. And I’d take it for an accident too, except that I was at the theater again last night and the lock on Houdini’s trunk jammed. His wife was nearly suffocated inside. They had to get an ax and—”

“Hold on,” Daniel said, moving away from me. “You went to the theater last night? On your own?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“I thought you and I had planned to see Houdini together,” he said. “And now you slip away without me?”

“Daniel, don’t be sore,” I said. “It wasn’t like that at all. If you remember I was asked to look after Bess Houdini when she started having hysterics. I took her up to her room and stayed with her until she calmed down. We struck up a nice little friendship and she was so grateful that she invited me to come back and watch the show as her guest.” I looked up at him. “Did you want me to refuse a chance to see Houdini perform from the wings?”

“No, of course not,” he said quickly. “So how was it?”

“Fascinating, until something went wrong. They were doing their famous Metamorphosis trick, in which Harry is handcuffed and put into a bag, and locked into a trunk and two seconds later he appears, free from all the restraints, and when they open the trunk, Bess is inside the bag. At least that’s how it should have gone. But the trunk wouldn’t open. They had to send someone upstairs to find the key and in the meantime she ran out of air and they had to break it open with an ax.”

“Was she all right?” Daniel aked.