The Osiris Ritual

Chapter Four

The Archibald Theatre in Soho transpired to be rather more bohemian than Newbury had been expecting. In fact, it was so far removed from the austere splendour of Drury Lane that he could hardly bring himself to consider it a theatre at all. Nevertheless, there was a stage – which, considering the condition of the rest of the building, he assumed had been erected specifical y to accommodate the new show – and an auditorium, of sorts, to seat the raucous crowd. The rest of the facilities were a little basic, to say the least, and it was clear the interior decor had seen better days. The floor was sticky, the seats uncomfortable and the smell almost as unpalatable as the stench he had encountered at the train station earlier that day. The space was dimly lit by a series of gas lamps mounted in a row along the rear wal, and whilst the venue was sizeable enough, the conditions still felt cramped and uninviting.

With a sigh, Newbury surveyed the audience around him. The crowd was comprised of a mix of both men and women, workers who had spil ed out of the factories and cookhouses just an hour or so before and were now engaged in quaffing extraordinary amounts of gin and heckling the magician with a continuous stream of jibes and cheers. For his part, though, the magician appeared to revel in all of the attention, responding to the cheers of his audience with increasingly impressive sleights of hand. So far they had seen a host of elaborate illusions, ranging from a bunch of flowers being pulled out of a sleeve, to card tricks, to doves being made to disappear and reappear beneath a red silk sheet. The Mysterious Alfonso was a consummate performer who had clearly spent years perfecting his act, and even longer learning how to engage the crowd. His thick Italian accent added a sense of the exotic and his little flourishes at the end of each trick – a roll of the arm followed by a brisk bow to the front row – showed clearly that he understood how and when to give his audience a cue to applaud. Duly, they showered him with praise.

Newbury leaned back in his uncomfortable seat. The show was impressive, yet it offered him nothing that he had not seen before, and whilst he sat in the midst of the noisy audience, jostled from side to side by the people around him, he found himself growing impatient. He was keen for the show to be over so that he and Veronica could attempt to get backstage and interview the showman about his possible connection to the missing girls. He shook his head. He was starting to think like Charles.

He studied Veronica for a few moments. She appeared to be increasingly enraptured by the magician's trickery, and had allowed herself to be carried along by the audience, applauding loudly at each appropriate juncture and general y accepting the show for the entertainment it was.

Newbury envied her that. He simply didn't have a mind that would allow him to enjoy such trivial pursuits without first attempting to analyse exactly how the trick had been carried out, what the basis of the illusion was, or how his eye had been tricked into believing something contrary to what had really occurred. He knew the tricks were nothing but illusions – as complex as they may be – and that was enough to dispel any sense of enjoyment for him. There was nothing truly mysterious, arcane or occult in what he was seeing down on the stage. Added to that, he was surprised that Veronica should engage with the show in such a way, given the reason for their visit to the theatre; unless, of course, she were feigning enjoyment as a means of gaining access to Alfonso, after the show.

Newbury's attention was pul ed back to the performance. Alfonso had wheeled out a large, coffin-shaped contraption on a trol ey and had placed it in the very centre of the stage. It reminded Newbury somewhat of the Ancient Egyptian casket he had seen the previous evening, although this contraption was hewn from plain wood and lacked the gaudy decoration of the Egyptian artefact.

Not only that, but Alfonso's box also had a series of thin slits cut into it at regular intervals along the sides and lid.

The magician moved around to stand behind the box, lifted his top hat and gave a dramatic sweep of his arm to silence the audience. A hush settled over the theatre. Newbury glanced at Veronica, whose eyes flashed in the low light.

"Ladies and gentlemen! The time has come. This is what you have come from miles around to see, no? The Mysterious Alfonso offers to you his death-defying sword box!" The magician smiled a toothy grin as the crowd began to cheer again, loudly. He waved them quiet once more. Slowly, as if to punctuate his next few words, Alfonso began to tug his white gloves from his hands, extracting one finger at a time, keeping a watchful eye on the audience al the while. "Now.. do I have a volunteer?"

A few tentative hands went up around the room. Alfonso seemed to consider his options, scanning the audience with his outstretched finger. After a moment he settled on a young woman in the second row. She was blonde and pretty, and wearing a pale blue dress: The men to the left of her al stood to al ow her to pass. She made her way slowly through the row of seats and approached the stage. Alfonso came forward and took her hand as she mounted the steps, helping her up so that she could take her place beside him. He twirled her around on the spot, showing her off with a wide smile, as if to suggest that she wasn't a plant and that there was nothing unusual or untoward about her person. The crowd clapped appreciatively. Next, Alfonso led the woman forward, towards the coffin-shaped box at the centre of the stage. He left her there for a moment whilst he fetched a small stool, which he placed on the wooden boards before her. Then, lifting the lid to reveal the interior of the box, he stood back and encouraged her to climb inside.

The woman looked nervous. She peered over the lip of the box as if she suspected there might be something hiding within. Then she glanced back over her shoulder, searching out t he face of her companion in the crowd. Newbury watched the man wave at her to continue. Hesitating, the woman stepped up onto the stool and, holding her skirt so as not to trip, she I i fted first one leg and then the other into the box, until she was standing inside it, towering above Alfonso and shaking visibly. Newbury wondered what was going through her mind. Gulping at the air, clearly terrified, the young woman sank to her knees and then lay down inside the open casket, disappearing from view. Alfonso acted quickly. He took the lid he had removed just a few moments before and lifted it back into place, being careful to ensure a snug fit. The audience was almost silent with anticipation.

Even Newbury found himself leaning forward in his seat, straining to see what Alfonso would do next.

The magician moved off to the left-hand side of the stage, where a young female stagehand – dressed in a most revealing costume of feathers and sequins – had wheeled on a large wooden rack fil ed with glittering swords. Alfonso stepped up to this and drew one of the blades. He held it high above his head, showing it off to the crowd. It reflected brightly in the dul light. Then, moving back to stand before the box containing the woman, he slapped the flat edge of the blade against the casket, causing it to clang noisily. Next he took the sharp end of the blade between his thumb and index finger and held it aloft, trying to flex the metal. The audience continued to watch, ful y enraptured.

Alfonso moved the casket around a little so that the crowd could see what he was about to do next. He took the point of the sword, found one of the thin notches that had been cut into the sides of the coffin-shaped box, and thrust the blade into it with all his might. The tip of the sword exited the box on the other side through another of the pre-cut slits. Alfonso pushed the blade home until the hilt of the sword was resting against the side of the box.

There was a gasp from the audience. Alfonso didn't hesitate to soak up their admiration. He went back to the rack of swords, took another blade and proceeded to repeat his actions, first proving to the crowd that the blade was real, and then pushing it through the box – and, supposedly, the woman inside it -until its tip was clearly protruding from the other side. He did this again and again until the rack was empty and there were at least ten of the blades perforating the box. Finally, frenetic and short of breath from the exertion, he mounted the stool, placed the tip of a blade against the lid, and thrust it downwards through another hole, so that it slid through the box and burst out of another hole in the base. There was no way the woman inside the box could have survived.

Alfonso climbed down from the stool and stood before the audience. Panting, he rol ed his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. The audience were silent and agog. Smiling, Alfonso kicked the stool away and grasped hold of one end of the box. It was still resting on the low trol ey on which he had earlier wheeled it across the stage, and he spun it around for the audience, offering them a view of the casket from all sides. Newbury frowned. It was not at all clear what had happened to the woman. There were no obvious trapdoors in the base of the box, and if she had dropped out through a smal hatch in the bottom she would have been easy to spot. The only explanation was that she was stil inside the box, but Newbury found that hard to believe. The swords had certainly looked real enough, and he couldn't see how Alfonso could have missed her when he inserted the blades, no matter how much precision he had used when cutting the guide holes prior to the event.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Newbury turned to see Veronica leaning in towards him, a smile on the curl of her lips.

"Most definitely. I'll admit I was growing a little impatient with the performance until this most recent development. I haven't a notion of how he has effected the woman's escape from the box.

It's really quite intriguing."

Veronica laughed. "Perhaps there will be chance to ask him after the performance has finished.

If we're not taking him into custody, that is."

Newbury nodded. "Quite so." He paused. "Look, he's about to get her out again."

They both turned back to see Alfonso removing the swords with abandon, sliding them out of the box and dropping them noisily to the stage. It took him only a moment before al of the blades had been extricated. He hesitated before the box. Then, with one last, grand gesture, he swept the lid from the top of the casket and stepped back, allowing the final scenes of his act to play out before him. There was a gentle cough from within the box, and then the woman sat up, looking around at the audience, her eyes wild with disorientation. There was a roar from the gathered crowd. The front rows stood, their applause deafening. Newbury smiled as he watched Alfonso enjoying the adoration of his fans. The man was definitely growing on him.

Alfonso returned the stool to its place beside the box and helped the young woman to step down, seeing her back to her seat in the second row. The female stagehand came out onto the stage and began col ecting up the swords, sliding them back into their housings in the wooden rack. When she had finished, Alfonso, smiling and nodding his appreciation to the audience, made his way back to where he'd left the open casket on the stage. He replaced the lid and then pushed it off to one side, allowing it to roll away on its castors. He turned to the crowd. "One more?" They roared again, loudly. Alfonso waved them to quieten down. "I shall warn you, though. This is no trifling feat of illusion." His voice dropped to a staged whisper. "This time I offer you the chance to glimpse some real magic." There was another cheer. Alfonso approached the very front of the stage. He threw his arms wide. "Then I find myself in need of another volunteer."

This time hands shot up al across the theatre. Newbury turned to Veronica, and was appal ed to see she was also offering herself up as a volunteer, her hand raised high above her head. "Miss Hobbes! I feel strongly that this is not the safest course of action to pursue. We came to this place expecting to find a villain."

Veronica turned to meet his gaze, but kept her hand raised in an effort to be seen from the stage. "And that is exactly what I intend to do, Sir Maurice. We need to get close enough to see how his illusions work." Her whisper was strained. She clearly didn't want to be pressed further.

Nevertheless, Newbury felt he had no choice.

"Real y, Miss Hobbes. I must insist that you lower your hand. I cannot sit by and al ow you to put yourself forward for such a dangerous enterprise, especially given the fact that you yourself are investigating this very man in connection with a series of missing women. I would be foolish to allow it. I quite understand your desire to bring this matter to a close, but I will not be responsible for allowing you to become one of your suspect's many victims. Will you desist?"

Veronica drew a sharp breath and lowered her hand. "I wil." She broke his gaze and returned her attention to Alfonso, who, whilst Newbury and Veronica had been debating, had chosen a volunteer from the audience and was in the process of helping her onto the stage. Newbury glanced at Veronica once more, unsure of her reaction, and then leaned forward in his chair to observe the goings-on that were taking place at the front of the theatre.

The volunteer was once again a young woman, this time with raven-dark hair and a lilac dress.

She seemed more confident than the previous volunteer, and, from what Newbury could gather from her manner, happy for the attention she was receiving. Alfonso stood her in the very centre of the stage. He bade her to remain still. Then he circled her, looking her up and down from al angles, as if studying her careful y, weighing her up with his eyes. He glanced up, catching sight of his stagehand standing off to one side, and beckoned her forward. She hurried over to him, handed him a red silk sheet, and then edged away again, smiling at the audience as she disappeared from view.

Alfonso turned to the audience. "Watch closely." He unfurled the large red sheet and then draped it over the woman, spreading the edges out neatly so that they pooled on the floor around her, completely covering her from head to toe. Then, with barely a moment to catch his breath, he snapped his wrist and swept the sheet away again, flicking it up into the air in a bold dramatic flourish.

The woman was gone.

The crowd took a moment to react. The woman had completely vanished. There was not a trace of her to be seen. One minute she had been there, clearly evident beneath the thin silk sheet, the next she had entirely disappeared. There had been no sound, no sign of any movement. It was as if she had simply been swept up into the ether like an errant spirit.

Someone started to clap. Others fol owed. Soon the entire audience was standing, applauding the magician, who lingered just a moment longer on the stage, before offering a sweeping bow, col ecting his hat and then exiting stage left. The audience continued to clap, even after the final curtain was drawn.

Newbury turned to Veronica. He had to shout to make his voice heard over the clamour of the audience. "Now I'm impressed."

Veronica nodded, a knowing look in her eye. "It's what happens to her next that concerns me."

Newbury smiled. "That, Miss Hobbes, is what we are here to find out." He glanced over his shoulder. "Come on, let's see if we can make our way around this crowd. I can't imagine it will be too difficult to find our way backstage."

Veronica rose to her feet. She was smiling. "Thank you, Sir Maurice."

Newbury grinned as he offered her his arm. "Always a pleasure, Miss Hobbes. Always a pleasure."