Theo’s landlord, Billy Bottle, rapped at the laboratory door. “Man here to see you,” he announced. For four or five years now, there’d been a steady stream of visitors to the boardinghouse, ever since Theo’s first paper had appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series A. Generally, the visitors were professor types, all black wool robes and wild white hair and ink stains on their middle fingers. This fellow was no scholar, not dressed like a toff, in that three-button cutaway jacket, the way he was.

“Say I had an appointment,” the man suggested when the door did not open right away.

Mr. Bottle rubbed his nose, a remarkably large feature that wobbled this way and that over a scrubby moustache. “What I say won’t make no difference to Theo.” He patted at his pockets. Where had he left his tobacco and pipe? Sometimes it took Theo as long as an hour to answer a knock. If indeed the knock was answered at all.

Impatient with Mr. Bottle, the magician stepped around the man and faced the firmly closed door. “Theo! This is Harry Houdini.”

Harry Houdini! The world-famous magician? Mr. Bottle bobbled the packet of Player’s, spilling bits of dried material down his stained shirtfront. What was a fella like him wanting with Theo? The landlord brushed himself off, then filled his pipe without further mishap. He tamped the tobacco with a yellow-stained thumb.

“Theo!” Houdini called again.

A match hissed and the aroma of pipe tobacco stung the magician’s nose. He sneezed.

“Could be buried in a book,” Mr. Bottle offered, puffing gently. “Theo does love them books. One time didn’t come out for a solid week.”

“I. Do. Not.” Houdini exhaled powerfully through his nose. “Have a week.”

Billy Bottle cleared his throat. “Something I could do for you?” he asked. “I’m handy in tight spots.”

“What? No, you cannot help me.” Harry Houdini pushed through the haze of tobacco smoke and bellowed at the door. “Theo! We had an appointment!” Houdini pulled out his solid-gold pocket watch. “For an hour ago.”

Billy Bottle consulted his own pocket watch, not that he cared much about the time. It was more to show Houdini he wasn’t the only one with such accouterments.

The magician rapped firmly, then leaned his ear to the wood panel, listening. “I can’t hear anything,” he reported.

Bottle shrugged, bony shoulders bouncing under a threadbare jacket. He put his pocket watch away. “It’s them books.” He removed a bit of tobacco from his tongue. “Not a durn thing to be done about it.” The man didn’t have to be so quick about turning down a genuine offer of help. He might be surprised at the tricks old Billy had up his sleeve. Some of them learnt when he’d traveled the roads, selling snake oil, bamboozling hayseeds, and working the sideshows. Billy Bottle knew a thing or two about many of the magical arts.

Houdini massaged the bridge of his nose. “There was money exchanged,” he informed the landlord.

“For one of them experiments?” Billy asked, incredulous. None of those professor sorts ever offered a penny for the contraptions and models and thingamabobs Theo created.

“Not an experiment.” Houdini was breathing hard. “Furthermore, it is not any of your concern.”

Those words made Billy’s teeth clamp against his pipe. It was always the same with these big shots. Thought they were too good for the likes of Billy Bottle. “Theo don’t much care about money. Says knowledge is all the treasure one needs.” Personally, Mr. Bottle would have preferred Theo care a bit more about finances, especially in regard to paying one’s rent in a timely manner.

Houdini’s face turned as red as the carnation in his lapel. “I am not interested in Theo’s life philosophy!” His hand formed a fist and battered the door with enough force to rattle it in its hinges. “This is Harry Houdini. Open up!”

Mr. Bottle puffed serenely. “Theo gets skittery at loud noises.”

Harry Houdini stamped his well-buffed oxford—rich brown with cream-colored spats—putting Mr. Bottle in mind of a two-year-old. “Surely you have a key,” the world-famous magician declared.

“Ain’t you the lock expert?”

A dagger could not have been sharper than the look Harry Houdini gave in reply to Mr. Bottle’s impertinent question.

Houdini drew himself up to his full five feet and six inches. “Kindly deliver this message to Theo Quinn.” He bit off each word as if it were coated in cod-liver oil. “If I do not get what I paid for, I will—”

A rattling doorknob stopped the angry declamation. Slowly, the door that had been shut so firmly against the magician, against distractions, against the world, began to creak open. There in a sliver of sunlight stood the object of Houdini’s powerful interest.

“So good to see you, Mr. Houdini.” A hand was extended to the visitor. Many fingers were adorned with tied bits of string.

Houdini took in the personage standing before him. “You are—?”

Dressed in a smart white blouse and navy wool gored skirt, Theodora Quinn completed the world-famous magician’s sentence. “The person who will help you vanish an elephant.” She gestured toward her study. “I am so sorry to have kept you waiting. Won’t you please come in?”