“Don’t worry, he fusses a lot but he’ll do it, and you’ll look fabulous,” Ryan assured me as we came away. “He really is a genius. I absolutely insist that he makes all the costumes for my productions.”

So I had what was probably going to be a horribly expensive costume being made for me with a grudging promise that it would be ready for a fitting in the morning. Now all I had to do was learn how to be an illusionists’ assistant in one lesson. How did I get myself into these things? I wondered.

The day was not quite as stiflingly hot as the one before and I was altogether in a better mood when I alighted from the train at Ninety-ninth. That mood seemed to be radiated from the other people on the street. Old men were sitting on stoops, windows were open with bedding draped over sills to air. The girls were still playing jump rope games and women paused from their sweeping and polishing to look up with a smile, remembering the days when they had time for games.

Houdini’s brother opened the door to me at their house. “Oh, it’s you again,” he said. He didn’t look too thrilled to see me.

“Has Bess come home from the hospital?”

“Yes, but she’s really weak. My mother is making her some Hungarian beef soup.”

“And your brother is here?”

“Ehrie? Yes, he’s with her.”

I hadn’t heard him called that name before. “Ehrie?” I asked.

He nodded. “That’s his name—Ehrich. I guess that’s where he got the name Harry from for his act. Well, I suppose you’d better come in.”

He led me into a dark hallway and then opened the door to a front parlor. It was truly hideous—dark, overstuffed, and Victorian at its worst with velvet sofas, chairs with skirts to them to hide the offending legs, dried flowers and birds under glass domes, in fact not an inch of space that hadn’t been decorated with something. Then I remembered that this was a rented house and forgave the Houdinis for the awful taste. It was also clearly a traditional front parlor, the type that is never used, except for weddings and funerals. The pillows looked as if no back had ever leaned against them. I perched uneasily on the edge of the nearest chair and waited.

Soon brother Dash returned. “They want you to go up to the bedroom,” he said with a tinge of horror in his voice.