“You’d like to be married from my family home, wouldn’t you? It would make a lovely setting in the garden and there’s St. Benedict’s Church close by.”

“You want us to get married in the Catholic Church?”

“Well, I thought—my mother will probably expect it and we were both raised in the faith.”

“I’ll have to think about it,” I said.

We left the house together and parted with an amicable kiss. But inside my head was whirling. Did I want to get married in church after having rejected it for so long? Did I want a wedding in Daniel’s house, where it would be his family, his friends? I had pictured a wedding in the city, with Sid and Gus as my bridesmaids and Ryan looking flamboyant in a long black cape and all my other friends in attendance. But Daniel was picturing the traditional wedding in the country—at his mother’s house, no less! As I had said, I’d have to do some thinking about this.

Eleven

After I left Daniel I went straight to the theater. I didn’t expect to find the Houdinis there, but I hoped that there might be some activity at this hour and someone could tell me where they lived. The Bowery was a regular hive of activity, with women doing their morning shopping, pushcart vendors crying out their wares, and small boys dodging between carts as they played some game. The street itself was clogged with a jam of horse-drawn drays, hansom cabs, the occasional automobile, and trolley cars. The smell of fresh manure and the slops tipped into the gutters were overpowering in the sticky heat, and I was glad when I saw the theater marquee rising above the shops and saloons. The front doors were locked but I went down the alley to the stage door and found Ted, the doorkeeper in attendance.

“You again?” he said. “You keep turning up like a bad penny—and speaking of bad pennies, I’d keep well away from Mr. Irving, the manager, if I were you. He was in some fearful bad temper last night. Not only did he have to stop the show for the second time in a week, and give some people their money back, but it turned out that someone had unloaded quite a few forged banknotes on us. My but he was hopping mad.”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “So what was everyone saying about the accident last night?”

“You know theater folks—superstitious, that’s what they are. They were saying that the place is jinxed. First Lily and then Bess.”

“And what do you think?” I asked him.