Saving Houdini by Michael Redhill Read Free Book Online Page A

kids.
    “Surrender!” shouted someone from across the road. It was a little boy with a pop gun. He was shooting at Dash and feeble blue sparks flew up from the gun’s muzzle.
    “You got me,” said Dash, feigning death with his hands over his heart.
    “I am a’ arm of the law, mister! Don’t mix’er up with me!”
    There was actual smoke coming from the gun. The kid blew it and walked off. Dash saw he had a cardboard star pinned to his shirt.
    He crossed the park and continued toward his house. What was there to do in an empty house? He had to conserve energy. He couldn’t keep walking around. Still, facing that house with its echoing rooms in the daylight—for some reason that freaked him out more than hearing himself laugh in it at night. He reversed his steps and began walking again up to Danforth Avenue. Maybe he’d find a pear tree or something. There were a lot of fruit trees in his neighbourhood. But the road he was on didn’t seem to have any.
    He moved at an easy pace through the quiet afternoon. The shops that had closed for lunch were just beginning to open again.
How civilized
, his mother would have commented. He looked at the theatre close to the end of Danforth that had been there forever. He couldn’t remember what it was called in his time, but here it was a cinema, called the Century. It looked much more impressive than he remembered it. The marquee, sticking out over the sidewalk, announced what was playing:
W HEN L OVE G ROWS C OLD
and
So T HIS I S P ARIS.
    But it wasn’t a cinema every night of the week: a line at the bottom of both sides of the marquee said, T UESDAY N IGHT V AUDEVILLE PROGRAM : 25¢.
    There was a card behind a glass window to the right of the ticket booth. It told who was starring in all the movies that week, and then, in a black box at the bottom, it listed the players in the vaudeville show.
    TUESDAY NIGHTS AT THE CENTURY
VAUDEVILLE FROLIC– 10 ACTS !

    JUGGLERS AND ACROBATS
Knickerbocker Singers, direct
from Hoboken, N.J.

    “THE FALL OF EVE”
a new one-act comedy

    PATHE NEWS
MISS MERLE AND HER
FEATHERED FRIENDS
The Act Deluxe of Birdland

    BOONE HELM AND LIBERTY SLEPPO
MASTER MARKSMEN

BLUMETHAL AND WOLFGANG
    Performers of the Mysterious
    Exclusive Photoplay
    “ CHARMING ” MISS MARY MILES IN
HER WINNING WAY

    8pm, 25¢ Admission all seats
    Suddenly his hands were tingling. Blumenthal?
    BLUMENTHAL!
    Tonight.
    But where was he going to get a quarter? One he could actually use in 1926?

7
    Late on a fall afternoon in the distant past, Dashiel Woolf sat in his empty bedroom and stared at the wall. If school worked here as it did in his own time, Walt would be getting out around now. Then he’d see if his new “friend” would bring him so much as a banana.
    At around what must have been four o’clock, Dash at last heard the door downstairs creak open. He went to the top of the stairs and was about to call down when he heard the voice of a woman. She was saying,
    “… and enter into the gracious front hall, with rooms arranged in spokes around it …”
    Dash flattened himself to the wall. He listened to at least three people moving beneath him.
    “Dining room—certainly you could fit a table and have service for eight around it”—
ten
, thought Dash—“and here is a door that communicates directly with the kitchen behind, which”—she paused for effect—”is a
beautiful
, modern kitchen with a brand new four-compartment Bohn icebox …”
    “Ooh,” said a voice. “I like it, Mummy! Is
this
our house?”
    “Now, dear, Daddy and I are looking at a lot of—”
    Dash crept back into his bedroom and closed the door quietly. He was sure his thudding heart could be heard from downstairs. He had to get out of there, but he’d break his legs if he jumped from the second floor. Maybe there was grass. He stole a glance out the window. No, no. What was he,
barmy
? Maybe he could run out the front door while the family was busy in another part of the