The Doctor looked over to the warehouse. ‘What’s kept in there?’

  ‘I had no idea until Gladstone gave it away,’ said Houdini. ‘It seems that he and Yarinski have pooled their resources over the years and have gathered a vast, secret collection of magic props and paraphernalia, dating back centuries.’

  ‘Then, we’re here to gather evidence so Houdini can solve the murder, clear his name, win the freedom of the city and put still more bums on seats?’ The Doctor gave him a studied look. ‘Definitely not to steal secrets …’

  ‘I already have secrets enough for two lifetimes.’

  ‘And I have lifetimes enough to learn them all.’

  They walked on, and Houdini said nothing more. The waterfront was haunted only by the throb of distant traffic, the whole bank of the river deserted. Outside Gladstone’s warehouse, a length of rope strung between sawhorses was the only sign of any police investigation. Houdini led the way cautiously to a side door and looked expectantly at the Doctor who produced his sonic screwdriver.

  ‘Ah! Your magician’s wand still works, even after our adventures underwater?’ Houdini observed, remembering the last time their paths had crossed in New England – or rather splashed, when recovering the body of a sea monster from the bottom of Gloucester Harbor. ‘You still refuse to sell it to me?’

  ‘Patent pending.’ The Doctor held his sonic to the lock and the door creaked open onto must and darkness. ‘Setting 211 – energetic excitation of the oxygen atoms to generate light.’ The sonic whirred, a prickling red glow above them lit the warehouse, and the Doctor smiled at Houdini. ‘Could’ve just used the light on the end as a torch, of course, but where’s the fun in that?’

  Houdini spared only moments to appreciate the marvel of the conjured light, distracted by the array of tea chests and packing cases, scattered with reams of dusty playbills and posters like ancient scrolls.

  The Doctor stared accusingly at the shadows. In one of them a tall crate had been torn open, the wood lying in splintered planks, and the Doctor waved his screwdriver over the smooth curves of white metal within, which reached to roughly half the height of the box. ‘Well, this is very interesting.’

  ‘It’s the lower section of Yarinski’s bulletproof cabinet,’ Houdini murmured. ‘He would stand inside and invite shooting parties to open fire. No bullets of any kind ever marked it.’

  ‘With atmospheric shielding of this kind, I’m not surprised.’ The Doctor kicked it lightly, and a green sheen glimmered about the metal. ‘It’s the lower section of the psycho-shell of a macro-kinetic transport pod. A device for traversing the stars – reduced by ignorance to a stage prop.’

  ‘A ship to the stars, you say?’ Houdini marvelled. ‘If I’d only known …’

  ‘You couldn’t have, I’m glad to say.’ The Doctor flashed a mirthless smile, put on a pair of thick dark spectacles, and turned back to the metal curves. ‘This is the only thing broken into, so the pod must be what the murderer wanted. But it seems both segments were here for the taking, so why run away with the piloting system and leave the drive behind …?’

  Houdini felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle – a familiar feeling – and held a hand up to the Doctor, bidding him be silent as he peered all around. ‘Come out!’ he pointed to the shadows dramatically. ‘Show yourself!’

  A short, stooped old man in a brown suit stepped out from behind an Egyptian sarcophagus. He leaned on a silver-topped cane the way his bulbous nose rested on a scrubbing brush moustache. In his left hand he held a gun.

  Houdini simply inclined his head stiffly. ‘Gladstone.’

  ‘Well!’ Gladstone had the smile of a starved cat. ‘Intruders, have I? And one so eminent as Harry Houdini! Had a feeling you’d come looking once I’d baited the trap.’

  ‘That was why you telephoned, then? As a lure?’

  ‘And you couldn’t resist. I knew you’d be here.’

  ‘Because you used your Third Eye?’ The Doctor tweaked the sonic and something like a glowing ball bearing fell from the rafters and bounced on the floor. ‘Or in other words, the camera-drone designed to monitor the occupant of this travel pod. Very handy for identifying the contents of a lady’s handbag in your act, I’m sure – or for making sure your intended victim is on his way so you can make your big entrance.’

  Gladstone looked shaken for a moment. Then he stared at the little sphere and it buzzed back up into the rafters. ‘These murders are a distressing business, but why not turn it to one’s advantage?’ He licked his lips and seemed to find them appetising. ‘I have caught the two of you red-handed, trespassing on my property. You attack me, I shoot you in self-defence. Think of the disgrace when the police arrive – the ageing Houdini, as tired and uninspired as his act, so desperate for fresh magical secrets that he would steal for them!’

  The Doctor cleared his throat impatiently. ‘The real story here is, what’s an alien space travel system doing boxed up in a Chicago warehouse? Where did you get this?’

  ‘One of many items from P. T. Barnum’s personal Collection of Otherworldly Wonder,’ Gladstone revealed.

  ‘Poppycock!’ Houdini made each syllable a pistol shot. ‘You never dealt with Barnum.’

  ‘Wiseman King did the deal – the Prince of the Preternatural!’ Gladstone nodded. ‘When he retired following that unfortunate bit of business with the showgirls, he was persuaded to make a sale or two, wasn’t he? As well you know, Harry.’

  ‘And he sold this to Yarinski.’ The Doctor’s lip had curled. ‘Well, what else to do with a travel pod that can’t travel? Not with this slave restraint relay built into its workings.’

  Gladstone raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘You claim to understand this?’

  ‘The craft was designed to dispatch a slave creature to its new owner. That owner must have possessed a restraint control of some sort to punish it if it disobeyed; there’s a secondary circuit built into the drive system here to stop the creature from using this craft to escape. At least –’ The Doctor pressed the side of his glasses and smiled – ‘until I destroy that relay.’

  A fierce flash of light jumped from the base of the craft in a cloud of purple smoke. Gladstone reeled back – as Houdini lunged forward, snatched the gun and covered him in turn. ‘Ha! You performed the Bullet Catch trick in your young day, Gladstone, did you not? Let us not test what you remember of it.’

  Gladstone opened his mouth to retort – and a spiked claw burst out from inside, like a horrible tongue, as it skewered the back of his skull.

  ‘No!’ The Doctor shouted.

  The creature behind Gladstone was a huge, albino biped festooned with twitching claws and jaws like some monstrous Venus flytrap. Over its head and torso it wore an arrangement of opaque glass and metal – clearly the second, piloting piece of the travel pod. As Gladstone’s corpse thudded to the floor, the creature let out a threatening shriek that the glass helmet did little to muffle.

  ‘Stay back!’ Houdini raised the gun as the Doctor bawled the same thing, only to Houdini. But the creature barged past them both and leapt into the metal pod. It glowed a deep beetroot colour, huffing and steaming until, in a magnesium flash, it was gone.

  ‘Fast worker, wasn’t he?’ The Doctor got up and dusted himself down. He looked disgusted – most likely with himself. ‘I don’t recognise the species, but had I known it was hiding here, I clearly wouldn’t have burned out the restraint system …’

  ‘It must have been after Gladstone.’ Houdini was on his knees, glaring at the old man’s body; in the brown suit he looked like a stubbed out cigar. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Set it free. Free to escape through space at the speed of thought; it’ll be the other side of the solar system by now.’

  ‘What have you done?’ Houdini said again, closing his eyes. ‘What have you done …?’

  I was at the stage door that night, tasting the air when the Great Houdini and the Doctor came back. Bess – Mrs H – was working late in the theatre costume shop sewing extra sequins to our costumes. I could’ve taken a cab back to the brownstone off Michigan Avenue where we were staying, but I promised my mom and dad I would never be out of the company of either Mr or Mrs Houdini, and with Mr H out of the way that night …

  As soon as I’d opened the door I’d seen the police box standing there in the alley. It hadn’t been there the night before. Houdini was making for it now with the Doctor, and they both looked real serious.

  ‘You’re sure it’s gone?’ Houdini said.

  ‘It’s far, far from here. Don’t worry, no one will know we were at Gladstone’s.’ He tossed something like a ball bearing in his palm then pushed it into his pocket.

  They shook hands, and – get this – the Doctor walked inside the police box and the light started flashing, and this wind started up with the strangest sound, and litter was blowing all around. Mr H’s hair was standing up, and the police box was just fading away. It’s just an illusion, Dorothy, I told myself, though my eyes were hanging on stalks. It’s just what the boss does.

  ‘What have you done?’ Houdini shouted to the air, and he sounded so anguished. As the last bits of the blue box took off into the night he hung his head.

  But even as the sound faded it started up again, and so did the gale, only this time behind Houdini. I looked and couldn’t believe it. The box was coming back! It didn’t look just exactly the same but near enough. Houdini looked real startled as he turned to face it and, as the edges hardened and the wind dropped, a figure burst out from inside. It was a woman, with blonde hair and soft features; she charged up to Houdini, grinning, and just from her being there the alley seemed warmer by a couple of degrees.

  ‘Harry!’ She put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Harry, what I told you, I was wrong. That creature in the warehouse – it hasn’t left Earth! I doubt if it’s even left Chicago!’

  Houdini stared at her.

  ‘It hit me, not five minutes ago. I was reminiscing with my gang, telling them about the good times, like that sea monster in Gloucester Harbor. How wet did we get, eh? And those chains the hunters clapped us in!’ She clapped his cheeks with both hands as if to demonstrate. ‘Oh, sorry, Harry, I forgot. It’s me. Still me – the Doctor!’

  ‘You are a woman now?’ Houdini said at last.

  ‘Probably, yeah. Well, you’ve done it too! Remember that illusion you used to do with Bess – Metamorphosis! You go in the crate and she’s your assistant and then you come out and she’s in the crate and you’re her assistant …?’ She beamed and waved to the police box behind her. ‘Well, that’s my crate! Anyway, listen, that thing at Gladstone’s lock-up. It can’t have gone far.’

  ‘How can you know this—?’ Houdini began.

  ‘It just struck me, BAM!’ She slapped a hand to her forehead. ‘Remember I excited the oxygen molecules with the sonic? Showing off. Lit the place red. BUT! I just realised, macro-kinetic transmission energies on anything more than a local hop would’ve super-excited those oxygen molecules, put us in the dark. But that didn’t happen, and so, question is – whereabouts in the neighbourhood did that creature go?’

  I had no idea what she was talking about. I had even less idea why Houdini would suddenly look so relieved.

  He looked at her. ‘You believe the creature is still close by?’

  ‘Yeah. I do. Unfinished business. The Magician Murders may not be over.’ The Doctor looked haunted. ‘That’s why I’m back here! I set that creature free but it hasn’t gone – and it mustn’t be allowed to kill again. But how do we find it, eh …?’

  I stopped listening as I saw three more people coming out from the blue box, a dark-skinned boy and girl not much older than me, and a man as old as my daddy. And I felt bad for thinking it, but that was a better illusion than I ever saw Houdini do. They weren’t parading for applause, though, just looking around in wonder. Like they’d never been in a Chicago back-alley before.

  ‘Ryan! Yaz! Graham!’ The Doctor threw open her arms. ‘Come and meet the great Harry Houdini!’

  I slipped back inside, just then, into the gloomy corridor, and of course it was the perfect time to run into Billy coming around the corner with Mrs H.

  ‘Dorothy!’ she looked surprised. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was at the stage door,’ I said. ‘Mr H is back with the Doctor … only the Doctor’s different.’

  ‘Ah, that old trick,’ Mrs H said fondly. ‘He can change his physical appearance. He does it a lot.’

  ‘He is a she!’

  Mrs H just laughed. ‘Is she now!’

  Billy looked at Mrs H. ‘Sounds quite a talent, changing appearance like that. I’d like to meet … her.’

  Mrs H met his smiling eyes and nodded. ‘I think we all would.’

  The Doctor and her group had no digs so Houdini put everyone up at the townhouse. That meant that me and Julie had to share our room with Yaz. No problem – what a Sheba! She looks like an Indian princess, even if she dresses like a boy. Ryan, on the other hand, is the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen, though he smells like a girl; he shared the basement with the stagehands. Graham slept on the floor in Mr Collins’ room. They both love their bosses, sure, but I bet they had fun complaining about all the looking out for them that they do. The Doctor refused the Houdinis’ bed and took the tub. Maybe she was a man yesterday, or maybe not – maybe I don’t get it but, either way, she’s a real bearcat. The whole bunch of us mucked in and got along. I love that in a company, you know? When you just have the feeling that things are fine.

  Next morning we all had breakfast at the big and busy table, all together. Houdini looked kind of tired, like he hadn’t slept. The morning paper was folded in front of him, and its leader yelled out the murder of another magician, this one called Mr Gladstone. I felt kind of scared at the idea of a third Magician Murder, but Mr Collins tried to laugh it off: ‘These acts have been dying on stage for years. And there are so many magicians in Vaudeville it’ll take ’em years to get round to Houdini …’

  The big man himself put down his grapefruit fork and changed the subject for us. ‘Your blue police box is crowded these days, Doctor.’ He gave an expansive wave at Yaz, Ryan and Graham, then favoured me with a smile. ‘I, too, change my assistants regularly. Beauty, strength and the reassurance of experience – these are what we master mystifiers demand, eh, Doctor!’

  The Doctor looked at her friends, speechless for a moment. Then she just laughed.

  ‘Well, fair play, I’m beauty,’ Graham deadpanned.

  ‘Strength,’ Yaz said at once, grinning.

  ‘And I’m just so reassuringly experienced,’ said Ryan, shaking his head.

  I giggled and wondered if Billy had noticed how much I looked at Ryan, but no; he was staring out the window, his food untouched.

  The Doctor pulled something strange from her pocket, like a stick of pewter with a crystal on the end. ‘Well, lovely as it is to eat grapefruits in the morning – what a brilliant idea, who thought that up? I should thank them – we have stuff to do.’

  Houdini reached out casually. ‘Your sonic screwdriver has changed …’

  ‘But you haven’t.’ She slapped his fingers away, and Mrs H laughed out loud. ‘It might be a long shot … but I’m gonna scan.’

  ‘Scan for what, Doctor?’ Yaz said.

  ‘Technology relating to the creature that killed Yarinski all that time ago – um, yesterday.’ She was studying her metal stick. ‘Our visitor got away in a macro-kinetic transmission pod, and tech like that leaves a very distinctive disturbance in the local atmosphere. So if he’s still about the Chicago area I ought to be able to …’ The stick started to thrum and the crystal glowed faintly. ‘To pick him up! Ha, there we are!’

  ‘Where?’ Billy looked at her, rose from his chair. ‘Tell me where—’

  ‘Mind your place, lad,’ Houdini snapped. ‘Sit down.’ And Billy sat.

  ‘Ooh!’ The stick’s crystal glowed a deep red, enthralling the Doctor. ‘Power surge! There’s tech operating right now, and it’s close.’

  Graham looked alarmed. ‘What, here in the house, you mean?’

  ‘Hard to say exactly.’ The Doctor shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  I was first on my feet, though Julie and Mr Collins were close behind me.

  ‘Everyone needs to stay calm,’ Yaz said.

  ‘Nobody’s gonna get hurt,’ Ryan promised.

  ‘This creature murders magicians, after all,’ said Mrs H. ‘It will have no taste for anyone else.’

  ‘So it’s Houdini and the Doctor we’ve got to worry about,’ Yaz reasoned.

  ‘It could have killed us yesterday if it had wanted to,’ the Doctor said. ‘Just like it killed poor old Gladstone.’

  ‘Bumping you off could still be on its to-do list!’ said Graham. ‘What do we do, Doc, evacuate?’

  ‘Lock ourselves in the basement!’ I suggested.

  ‘Never back yourself into someplace there’s no other way out of,’ the Doctor said, and Houdini joined in as she added, ‘First rule of escaping.’ She was waving her pewter stick around like a magic wand. ‘All right, everyone. The surge has died down. No immediate danger – but it’s still about.’

  ‘Comforting,’ said Graham.

  I reached for Billy’s hand without thinking, and he squeezed my fingers. I saw Mrs H was holding his other hand, to comfort him.

  ‘It’s no good! The sonic’s not accurate enough to give me more.’ She put the strange rod away in her pocket. ‘I need bits and bobs from my police box to fix the reading.’

  ‘In the alley by the theatre? I’ll go with you,’ Billy said. ‘If you’re a magician too, you’ll be in danger.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Graham, ‘but we’ve got this, mate.’

  ‘No one gets past Strength and Beauty,’ Yaz added with a smile at Ryan. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Reassuring Experience?’