Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen

The Last Escape Jay Street

The worker of magic draws your attention to one hand, so he can do his foul trickery with the other. This, technically, is known as misdirection and is the greatest thing from a magician’s standpoint since the invention of the rabbit.

They lashed the heavy braided cord about Ferlini’s wrists and knotted it tightly. Of the two men the smaller was the most belligerent; he yanked and tugged until the cord seemed to bite through flesh. Grunting, they put the leg irons on his ankles, slamming the thick metal locks shut and testing their security. Finally, panting with their exertions, they stood over their victim and seemed smugly satisfied with his helplessness.

Then the woman was putting the screen in front of Ferlini’s bound body. In less than a minute, it was thrown aside by Ferlini himself, the cord and the irons upraised triumphantly in his outstretched hands.

The audience of the small supper club gasped, and then exploded into tumultuous applause. Ferlini glowed at the sound of it. He was fair-skinned, almost albino, even the desert sunshine failed to alter his color, but an audience’s approbation could tint his cheeks with the red flush of gratified vanity.

The two volunteers from the audience, shaking their heads and grinning sheepishly, returned to their tables and their jeering companions, and the six-piece band swung into a traveling theme. Wanda, Ferlini’s wife and professional partner, moved mechanically across the floor to pick up the screen and carry it backstage. There were some catcalls and a smattering of light applause, but she knew it was only in appreciation of her bare-legged costume. She was over forty, and her face was dependent on increasing layers of theatrical makeup for its passable beauty, but her legs were still long, lithe, and without blemish.

On her way to the dressing room, Baggett stepped in front of her and displayed his soulful eyes. “Let me help,” he said, putting his hand on the screen.

“It’s all right,” Wanda whispered. “You better not, Tommy.”

“They liked him tonight, didn’t they?”

She frowned, putting cracks in the thick makeup. “It’s that kind of crowd.” She shrugged. “They’ll like you, too.”

“Thanks,” Baggett, an aging crooner, said dryly.

“No, I didn’t mean it that way.” She placed the screen against a concrete wall and swayed toward him, her eyes dreamy. “You know what I think of you. Tommy. Your singing, I mean.”

“Is that all you mean?”

“I better go,” Wanda said.

When she entered the dressing room, she found her husband in a good mood, and it was the mood she liked least. He was staring into the mirror and rubbing his shoulders vigorously with a towel, his face split into a wide smile that showed every one of his large, strong teeth. “Yeah, it was good tonight, it was good,” he said happily. “I could have gotten out of steel boxes tonight, that’s how I felt. You see that little guy?” He guffawed and slammed the dressing table with his palm. “Little fella thought he was gonna fix me. You see how tight he worked the rope? I tell you, the little guys, they’re the worst. It’s a pleasure to fool ’em.”

He swung around and looked at his wife, who was staring at nothing. He made fists of his big hands and flexed his exaggerated muscles, swelling out his chest to display the incredible expansion that was so important to his art. “Look at that, hah, will you look at that? You think anybody ever take me for forty-six? What do you say?”

“You’re a Greek god,” Wanda said bitterly. “Only speaking of Greeks, we’re invited out to dinner tonight. Roscoe’s treat.”

“Ah, that Phil, he spoils my appetite,” Ferlini said, still with a grin. “You hear him talk, the escape business is dead. He should have seen that crowd tonight, that’s all I say. He’d know different.”

“He booked you in this job, didn’t he? He ought to know if it’s dead or not.” She yawned, and began to change into street clothes. Then she remembered something, and came to her husband’s dressing table, wiping at her makeup. “Listen, when we see Phil tonight, don’t start up again about that water business, huh? I’m sick of hearing about that.”

“Aah,” Ferlini said, waving his hand. “You’re gettin’ old, Wanda, that’s your trouble.”

“Look who’s talking! You’re no chicken either, Joe, and don’t forget it!”

He turned to look at her, grinning shrewdly. “I count ten new wrinkles on you since last week, sugar. You take a good look at yourself? Go on, take a look, you got a mirror.”

“Aw, go to hell.”

“Go on, look!” Ferlini shouted suddenly. Then his muscular arm whipped out and caught her wrist. He bent her down toward the lighted mirror on his table, forcing her to face it. She looked up at her reflection, at the streaked orange makeup on her forehead and chin, at the age lines around her mouth, the puffy flesh beneath her eyes. She turned her head aside, and Ferlini’s grip tightened cruelly.

“Stop it, Joel For God’s sake!”

“Who you callin’ an old man, hah? I’m younger’n you, understand, on account of I keep in shape! Don’t call me no old man, you hear me?”

“All right, all right!”

He released her, with a growl of disgust. His good mood was dissipated. Wanda, tears blurring her sight, went to the other side of the room and completed dressing.

“Not everybody thinks I’m so old,” she whispered. “Not everybody, Joe.”

“Shut up and get dressed. We’re supposed to go to dinner, let’s go to dinner. Besides,” he said, standing up and slapping his flat stomach, “I want to talk to Roscoe about something. About the water trick.”

Wanda said nothing.

The restaurant Roscoe had picked was just like Phil Roscoe himself: past its prime, seedy, congenial, and well-lit. Roscoe held Wanda’s chair gallantly for her, but Ferlini dropped heavily into a chair, reached for a roll and tore it in half. With his mouth stuffed, he said, “Hey, you should have seen me tonight, Phil, I was the best. You tell him, Wanda, ain’t it true?”

Wanda smiled weakly. “It was a good crowd.”

“Good? I had three curtain calls!” Ferlini said, forgetful that he worked without curtains, and without encores. “I’m tellin’ you, Phil, the escape business is comin’ back with a bang. And I’m gonna be right on top when it does. Especially after we do that water routine—”

“What, again?” Phil groaned. “Look, we haven’t even had a drink, and you’re talking about water.”

Ferlini roared with laughter, and shouted for the waiter.

For Wanda, the meal was tiresome from first course to last. Ferlini and his manager did the talking, and she had heard it all before.

“Look, Joe,” Roscoe said, “You know as well as me that times are different. Few years ago, a good press agent could ballyhoo an escape guy right onto the front page. Only Houdini’s dead, Joe, don’t forget it.”

“Sure, Houdini’s dead. Only I’m alive!” He thumped his chest. “Me, Joe Ferlini!”

“That’s one thing about you, Joe, you never had any trouble with false modesty.”

“Listen,” Ferlini grated, “what could Houdini do I can’t? I work with ropes, chains, irons. I can get out of bags, boxes, hampers, chests. I can do handcuff routines. That bolted-to-a-plank stuff. I can do that Ten Ichi Thumb Tie. I can do the straitjacket. I can do escape tricks Houdini never even thought of. Besides, you know he used a lot of phony trick stuff—”

“And I suppose you don’t?” Wanda snorted.

“Sure, sometimes. I mean, I got my skeleton keys and my phony bolts and that other junk. But you know me, Phil, I do my best tricks with muscle. Am I right?”

“Sure, sure,” the manager said wearily. “You’re the greatest, Joe.”

“I keep in shape, you ask Wanda here. One hour a day. I’m with the barbells. I still got a terrific chest expansion. I can do this water thing, Phil. It’ll be great!”

“But it’s been done, Joe, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. People don’t get excited about it no more.”

Ferlini made a noise of contempt. “You drink too much, Phil; your brain’s soft. Sure, it’s been done, only how many years ago? There’s a whole new generation now. Right? And the way you handle things, it could be a real big deal. What do you say?”

Roscoe sighed, and it was a sigh of surrender.

“Okay, Joe, if you really want it. How do you want to work the act?”

Ferlini beamed. “I figure I’ll do it up good. First I’ll let ’em handcuff me. Then the rope around my body, about fifty feet, and the leg-irons. Then they put me in a sack and tie it up good. Then they put the whole business in a big iron chest and dump me into Lake Truscan. How does that sound?”

“Like sudden death. How much is trick and how much is muscle?”

“The rope is muscle; I’ll just give ’em the chest expansion routine and the whole tiling’ll slip right off me. I’ll have a skeleton key to the handcuffs in a double-hemmed trouser cuff. Once I get them off. I’ll take a razor and slit the bag open. The chest’ll have a phony bottom; I push it open and swim to the surface; the whole works sink and I come up smelling like a rose.” He gave Phil his victory grin.

“How good a swimmer are you?”

“The best. Don’t worry about that part. When I was a kid, I wanted to go over and swim the Channel, that’s how good I was.”

“We could drop you by motor boat, and pick you up the same way. That’ll lessen the risk.”

“Sure, it’s a cinch. I knew you’d see it, Phil.”

“I see it,” the manager said, “but I still don’t like it. Hey, waiter! Where’s that bourbon?”

From their apartment hotel room on the third floor, Wanda could look out of the window and see her husband stroking rapidly across the outdoor pool in the courtyard. He moved like a shark through the water, his graying hair slicked back and crinkling at the edges, the thick muscles in his back and shoulders rippling with every smooth motion of his arms. Once, fifteen years ago, she would have been rapt with admiration. Now she knew better. The great Ferlini needed only one admirer, and he saw him in the shaving mirror every day.

With a sigh, she came back into the room, sat down, and listlessly turned the pages of Variety. There was a timid knock on the door a few moments later, and she called out permission to enter. When she saw Baggett in the doorway, she caught her breath in surprise and guilt.

“Tommy! What are you doing here?”

“I had to see you, Wanda. I knew Joe was in the pool, so I thought it would be a good time. Looks like he’ll be there the rest of the day—”

“You’re probably right.”

She was flustered, but tried not to show it. She offered him a drink, but he said no. She tried to make small talk, but he wasn’t interested. In the next minute, she was in his arms. But she was uncomfortable there, and soon broke from him and started to talk about her husband.

“You just don’t know what he’s like. Every year he gets worse, every day. All he thinks about is the act, night and day it’s escape, escape, escape. Sometimes I think I’ll go crazy, Tommy, I mean it. When we were in Louisville, last year, I actually went to a head-shrinker for a while, did you know that? For three months I went, and then he got the job in Las Vegas, so that ended that.”

“If you ask me,” Baggett growled, “he’s the one that’s crazy, treating you the way he does.”

“You know he even escapes in his sleep sometimes? No kidding. He wakes up m the middle of the night, throws off the covers, and takes a bow.” She laughed without a change of expression, and then the tears flowed. Baggett surrounded her in his arms again. “Sometimes I wish he’d get tied up where he can’t escape. Not ever—”

“What do you mean?”

She looked up at him.

“You know the water trick, where he gets thrown in a lake? He’s going to do it in a couple of weeks. You know what I’ve been thinking about, ever since he decided on it?”

She went to the window, looking down at the pool where Ferlini was still stubbornly plowing the water.

“I was thinking that maybe something would go wrong. He’s good; I know that. He can escape from almost anything. But if one little piece of the act doesn’t work right — he’d drown. Do you think I’m terrible, having a thought like that?”

“I don’t blame you for a minute!” Baggett said loyally.

Moving slowly, Wanda went to the bureau and opened the second drawer. From a welter of paraphernalia, she removed a pair of steel handcuffs and two small metal objects.

She brought the handcuffs to Baggett, and said, “Do me a favor, Tommy? Put these on?”

He blinked. “You mean it?”

“Please.”

He held out his wrists willingly, and she clamped them around them, pushing the lock into place.

“Now try and get out,” she said.

Baggett, a thin, romantic type, strained mightily, until the blood rushed up in a crimson column on his neck.

“I can’t do it!” he panted.

“Of course you can’t. Nobody could, not even Ferlini, unless he happened to have this on him somewhere.” She held up a small key, and handed it over. “Now try it,” she said.

Twisting his fingers, his tongue tucked into the corner of his mouth, Baggett managed to insert the tiny key into the hole. He turned it, but nothing happened.

“It’s not working,” he said. “The key doesn’t turn.”

“No,” Wanda said dreamily. “It doesn’t, does it?”

“But why not? What’s wrong?” There was a hint of panic in Baggett’s voice.

“It’s the wrong key,” Wanda said. “That’s the problem. This is the right one.” She held up a second key, then came over and inserted it herself. The lock sprung free, and the handcuffs came off. Baggett, rubbing his wrists, looked at her questioningly.

“I think you better go now,” Wanda said.

Phil Roscoe was pleased with the results of his publicity campaign. Four local newspapers in the Denver area were touting the event, and one major news service had put it on the wire. But the great Ferlini wasn’t so easily pleased; his visions had been of television coverage, national magazines, and Hollywood offers, but these were sugarplums that Roscoe had been unable to obtain.

“For the love of mike,” Roscoe told him, “don’t expect the moon out of this. It’s not big news anymore, not since Houdini did it. Be satisfied with what you got.”

Ferlini grumbled, but was satisfied.

On the day of the event, Wanda Ferlini woke up looking older and more haggard than ever before. It had been a bad night; her husband had twice startled her out of sleep with his wild dreams of incredible escapes. But it wasn’t only sleeplessness which dulled her eyes and slowed her responses. It was anticipation, the dread of something going wrong.

Roscoe had hired a chauffeur-driven, open-top Cadillac for the occasion; they drove up to the site of Ferlini’s adventure in style. Wanda, sitting beside Roscoe in the back seat of the car, wore her best dress and never looked worse. Roscoe, flushed with excitement and bourbon, held tightly to her hand. Ferlini, riding the high seat of the Cadillac, waving his arms to the crowd, wore a full dress suit with a white tie, his muscular shoulders stretching the glossy fabric almost to the point of bursting seams.

If Ferlini had any further complaints about Roscoe’s publicity build-up, they were forgotten now. The crowd on the edge of Lake Truscan numbered in the hundreds. Roscoe’s efforts to enlist the mayor in the program had failed, but there was a city councilman, the chief of police, the assistant fire commissioner, and two of the town’s leading businessmen in attendance. The supper club had supplied the affair with its full six-piece orchestra, and their ragtime marches made the occasion seem more festive and significant than it really was. Best of all, there were a dozen newsmen and photographers.

Roscoe had planned it all well, but there were still some disappointments. The public address system developed a high-pitched squeal that made its use impossible; so there were no introductory speeches. The weather had seemed ideal in the early morning, but by one-thirty, a black trimmed cloud had moved overhead. Wanda Ferlini shivered when she saw it. Roscoe, moving busily among the officials, tried to speed up the program before rain made Ferlini’s escape attempt even more difficult.

They were ready to go at two.

The handcuffs were snapped on first, by the police chief; it seemed appropriate. The chief, a bluff man with a forced smile, examined the handcuffs carefully before placing them on Ferlini’s wrists, and pronounced them thoroughly genuine.

The two businessmen were selected to wind the thick rope about Ferlini’s body. He stripped off his coat jacket, his white tie, and his formal shirt, and then kicked off his shoes. In the T-shirt, his muscular chest drew admiring exclamations from the crowd’s female element. The businessmen were both short and pudgy, and they were puffing by the time they had the fifty-foot rope coiled around Ferlini’s body.

“Knot it, knot it!” Ferlini urged them, exposing the teeth made strong and sharp by years of tearing and biting at ropes. They knotted it, in odd, lumpy knots that accented the coil from head to foot. They were so busy that neither they nor the spectators were aware that Ferlini was pumping his lungs full of air, increasing the circumference of his chest by almost seven inches. He smiled complacently when they were through, confident that he could wriggle free of his bonds in only a few seconds.

The assistant fire commissioner was given the task of assisting Ferlini into the cloth sack. He rested it on the ground, and Ferlini was lifted over it; then the official lifted up the cloth until it covered the escape artist completely. The crowd murmured when the cloth was securely fastened over Ferlini’s head.

But it was the sight of the huge iron chest that brought the sharpest reaction from the spectators. Somewhere in the throng, a woman screamed, and Roscoe grinned with pleasure. It was great showmanship. He sought Wanda’s eyes to share the moment, but he found her face pale and drawn, her own eyes closed and her lips moving soundlessly.

Then Ferlini was deposited inside the chest, and the chest was locked and bolted by the city councilman. The committee examined it, declared it escape proof, and then stood back as a quartet of hired musclemen lifted the chest from the ground and deposited it in the stem of the motor boat that was moored to the dock.

The supper club orchestra struck up the funeral march, swinging the mournful melody. Roscoe stepped into the boat first, and then helped Wanda — who looked like a bereaved widow — aboard. The pilot of the craft, a jaunty crew-cut young man, waved at the crowd and unfastened the line. He started the engine, and moved the boat slowly out towards the deep of the lake.

“You all right?” Roscoe asked the woman.

Wanda murmured something, and reached for his hand.

When they were five hundred yards off shore, the pilot cut the engine.

“This okay, Mr. Roscoe?”

“This’ll do fine.” Roscoe trained binoculars on the edge of the lake, to see what the newsmen were up to. They were watching him just as eagerly; the photographers, some with telescopic lenses on their cameras, were hard at work.

“Let ’er go,” Roscoe said.

Wanda cried out feebly, and the pilot grinned, put his hands against the iron chest, and tipped it over the side. It fell into the water with a splash that sprayed them all, and then vanished from sight, spreading a huge ripple all the way back to the shore.

Then they waited.

Roscoe looked at his watch. When thirty seconds went by, he looked at Wanda and smiled reassuringly.

Then they waited some more.

At the end of the first minute, the pilot’s grin faded, and he began to whistle off-key. Wanda shrieked at him to be quiet, and he stopped.

At the end of the second minute, Roscoe could no longer look at the terrible chalk-whiteness of Wanda’s face, so he lifted his binoculars again and studied the shore-line. The crowd had pressed forward to the water’s edge by now, moving like some dark, undulating animal.

“My God,” the pilot said. “He’s not coming up, Mr. Roscoe I”

“He’s got to come up! He’s got to!”

Three minutes passed, but there was no sign of the great Ferlini.

At the end of six minutes, Wanda Ferlini moaned, swayed, and fainted. Roscoe caught her falling body before it struck the floor of the boat. Five minutes later he ordered the pilot to head back for shore.

They recovered Ferlini’s handcuffed body late that night.

Baggett tried to see Wanda on the day of the funeral but it was Phil Roscoe who refused him admittance. Phil didn’t care about Wanda’s love life; he had too many problems of his own. But he was still a businessman, and Wanda was still a client, even without her famous husband. It just didn’t seem smart to have Wanda appear as anything more than a tragic widow.

Wanda was playing the role well. By some strange cosmetic alchemy, her sorrow made her look younger. Her white-powdered face and pale lipstick contrasted well with her black mourning attire.

Roscoe had made the funeral arrangements, and they were almost as spectacular as the water escape itself. The turnout was large and well-covered by the press; a horde of show people, not averse to being seen themselves, were on hand to mourn the passing of the great escape artist. The funeral procession wound slowly through the streets of the town, requiring a full half-hour to pass any one city block, but by the time Ferlini’s coffin had reached the point of no return the crowd had thinned out considerably. Only a handful watched the final ceremonies in the graveyard.

Wanda sobbed against Roscoe’s shoulder, and he patted her consolingly.

“It’s the way he wanted it,” he said inanely.

“I know, I know,” Wanda said.

The eulogy, delivered by the town’s most prominent clergyman, was brief. He spoke of Ferlini’s courage, of his devotion to his art, of the pleasure he had given so many people in his lifetime. As he spoke, Wanda’s eyes glazed oddly, and for a moment, Roscoe was fearful that she might swoon again.

They brought the coffin to the edge of the grave. The bearer in front, a waiter in the supper club, seemed puzzled by something, and murmured to the man beside him. Roscoe stepped forward, spoke briefly to them, and then conferred hastily with the minister. The conference piqued the curiosity of the solitary newsman on the scene, who came out of the sidelines to ask what was happening.

“I dunno,” Roscoe said, scratching his head. “Freddy here thinks something is wrong. Says the coffin feels strange.”

“How do you mean, strange?”

The waiter shrugged. “Light is what I mean. It feels too light.”

“Really,” the minister whispered. “I hardly think—”

“No, he’s right,” another bearer said. “Hardly weighs anything at all. And you know Ferlini, he was a big, hefty guy.”

They looked at the coffin, waiting for someone to make a suggestion. It was Roscoe, finally.

“I hate to do this,” he said softly. “But I think we’d better open it.”

The minister protested, but they were already working on the lid.

“What’s happening?” Wanda said. “What’s going on, Phil?”

“Keep back,” he pleaded. “I don’t want you to see this, Wanda—”

But there was no way for her to avoid it. The lid was opened, and the truth was revealed to the sight of all. It sent a shock through the crowd as tangible as a blow.

The coffin was empty, and Wanda Ferlini was screaming like a high wind among the treetops.

Dr. Rushfield rolled a pencil along the blotter of the desk, and said, “Go on, Mr. Roscoe, I want to hear it all.”

Phil Roscoe licked his dry mouth and wished he had a drink.

“You’ve got to understand how it is in my business, Doctor. Everything is showmanship, everything. That’s why Ferlini made this deal with me, maybe ten, twelve years ago.”

“And just what was this deal?”

“Nobody else knew about it, just him and me. It was crazy, I told him that. But you don’t know how stubborn a guy like that can be. He made me promise that if anything ever happened to him, I mean if he died, that I would arrange for one last trick — something that would make him remembered even longer than Houdini. That’s what it was, Doc.”

“A trick?”

“A real easy one. I just slipped the undertaker fifty bucks, and he arranged to have Ferlini buried some place in secret. Then he put an empty coffin in the hearse, and that was that. You see what I mean, don’t you? Honest-to-goodness showmanship.”

“I see,” Rushfield said, frowning. “But I’m afraid that it had quite an effect on Mrs. Ferlini. I gather that she wasn’t too well-balanced before this happened, and now...” He sighed, and stood up. “All right, Mr. Roscoe. I can let you have one look at her, but I can’t let you talk to her. I’m sorry.”

Roscoe followed the doctor down the hall. They stopped at a door with a small barred window, and Roscoe looked inside. He drew back, appalled, at the sight of Wanda, her eyes round and unseeing, her arms straining uselessly to escape from the tight, unrelenting grip of the straitjacket.