Harry Houdini Mysteries by Daniel Stashower Read Free Book Online

to the gloom. Upon spotting his friend seated alone at a table near the back, he waved aside the maitre d’ and led us past the bar.
    “Kenneth!” Biggs cried as we approached the table. “What’s that you’re reading? The Herald ? I’m surprised they allow such a liberal sheet in here!”
    “Not so liberal as all that, Biggs,” the young man answered. “I’ve just been reading your screed on the events in Manila Bay. You’re becoming something of a saber-rattler.”
    “Well,” replied my friend, “it sells the newspaper.”
    “That’s a rather feeble justification for war, Biggs.”
    “My editor takes a different view. He’ll soon tire of the conflict, I expect.”
    “Let us hope so.”
    Kenneth Clairmont was a slight, pale man of roughly my own age, with clear, intelligent eyes behind a pair of round spectacles. He wore an understated brown suit of fine Scottish wool with a black mourning band on the arm. Along with the newspaper there was a book on the table in front of him—the latest novel by Richard Harding Davis—and I guessed that Clairmont was a man who preferred reading to the usual bar room chatter.
    Biggs made the introductions as we took our seats. Clairmont greeted us with enthusiasm and signalled for a steward. “I’ll have another Walker’s and soda,” he said, lifting his empty glass. “I imagine my learned friend here will take the same. Hardeen, what can I offer you?”
    I shuddered at the thought of what a drink would cost in such a place. “Nothing for me, thanks,” I said.
    “Absurd!” cried Biggs. “The same for Dash, as well.”
    “Excellent,” Clairmont said, smoothly maneuvering past my embarrassment. “I should be thought a poor host otherwise. How about you, Houdini?”
    “I do not drink,” Harry said.
    “Not at all?”
    “I have embarked on a rigorous course of muscular expansionism. Alcohol has an inhibiting effect.”
    “You don’t say?” Clairmont lifted his empty glass and examined it critically, then turned back to the steward. “Better make mine a double measure, then. Will you take a glass of minerals, Mr. Houdini?”
    “Mineral water is fine,” my brother said.
    The steward nodded and moved away while Clairmont rose to greet a pair of older gentlemen who were approaching our table. From their conversation, I gathered that the two had been colleagues of Clairmont’s late father. The young man spent several moments in earnest conversation, then resumed his seat. “This place was a great favorite of my father’s,” he said, by way of explanation. “I’m forever running into his friends and associates. I don’t know why I keep coming back, to be honest. I never came here before.”
    “It is a natural thing,” said Harry quietly. “When our father passed, I found myself walking through the park each day along the same path where he took his exercise. Each day I would be stopped by people from the neighborhood who knew him. They would tell me stories of things he had said and done—small things, but they meant a great deal to me. It is a comfort at such times to know that one is not alone.”
    Clairmont nodded, and once again I caught Biggs staring at my brother with transparent surprise, as though Harry had suddenly shown himself to be fluent in ancient Sumerian.
    “I suppose we must all find a way of coming to terms with our ghosts,” said Clairmont, glancing up as the server returned with our drinks. “Biggs tells me that you have some experience in this line—ghosts and spiritualists and all that.”
    “A bit,” I said. Clairmont listened attentively as I recounted much of what I had told Biggs about our spook show days. He asked several questions and seemed particularly intrigued by themanner in which we had been able to transform idle gossip into seemingly miraculous spirit revelations.
    “So it was all fakery?” he asked when I had finished.
    “Certainly,” I said.
    “Very artful fakery,” Harry added.
    “Have you ever