Harry Houdini Mysteries Read Online Free

Arthur’s boarding house now.”
    “I’m aware of that, Dash.”
    “Well, then?”
    “Is Mrs. Arthur the finest cook in all of New York?”
    “No, but—”
    “No, she most certainly is not. Your mother holds that distinction, and the last time I called upon her she gave me the most extraordinary lemon cake I’ve ever tasted. I still dream of it.”
    “I believe it’s a raisin bundt today, but you know perfectly well that my mother will never be content with a slice of cake at this hour. She’ll insist on giving you dinner.”
    Biggs made a show of seeming surprised. “Dinner, you say? How could I have been so thoughtless as to appear on your doorstep at the dinner hour? What an unpardonable breach of courtesy! You must think me a terrible—”
    “That’ll do, Biggs,” I said, pausing at the kitchen door. “Hardly your most convincing performance, in any case.”
    “No,” he agreed, as I led him into the kitchen. “I really must remember to leave the theatrics to you.”
    We found my mother hovering at the stove, as always, andthe rich aromas of simmering meats and cooling breads filled the room. She paused just long enough to pinch Biggs’s cheeks and comment on how thin he was looking before commanding him to take a chair at the kitchen table. After a moment or two of clattering through the silver drawer, she set an extra place and ladled out two steaming bowls of cabbage soup. This done, she turned back to the preparation of a Chicken Debrecen.
    “Come now, Biggs,” I said as he bent low over his bowl, “you’re lapping up that soup as if you haven’t eaten in a week. Surely Mrs. Clairmont puts on a respectable table?”
    “Very respectable,” Biggs agreed. “Although dinner was not the main feature of the evening.”
    “No?”
    He looked up from his soup bowl. “Not at all. That’s what I came to tell you. You see, Dash, I’ve seen a ghost.” He lowered his head and went back to eating his soup.
    I lifted my eyebrows. “Have you, indeed?”
    “Several of them, in fact. Mrs. Clairmont might as well be running a hotel for departed souls. The place was fairly swimming with apparitions.”
    “A séance,” I said quietly. “Augusta Clairmont invited you to a séance. You’ve been table-tipping with the upper classes.”
    He nodded. “The poor woman has resolved to make contact with her late husband. She can’t accept the fact that he did himself to death. It seems she wants to hear it from his own lips, if you please.”
    I glanced at my mother. “It’s difficult to lose a husband, Biggs,” I said. “If Augusta Clairmont chooses to sit in a dark room and console herself by reading auguries in a saucer of tea leaves, who am I to criticize?”
    “This was no ordinary séance, Dash. I know a bit about that type of jiggery-pokery. A group of people gather in the parlor after supper and decide that it would be a jolly lark to try to communicate with the spirit world. So they lay their hands on the table and wait for the spirits to arrive. After a while thetable begins to sway and finally gets up sufficient motion to tap with one leg. Then a question is asked—“Is that you, Uncle Chester?”—and an answer is given by the tedious process of reciting the alphabet and waiting for the table leg to tap at a certain letter. It can take an eternity to get a simple yes or no. I had a lady friend once who went in for that type of thing. She dragged me along on more than one occasion. It seemed to me that we were collectively pushing the table without really realizing it. In our eagerness to have something happen, we were causing the table leg to come down at the right moment.” He looked up as my mother filled his soup bowl again. “Thank you, Mrs. Weiss. Delicious, as always. Anyway, Dash, I hope you don’t think that I’m completely benighted where this type of thing is concerned. I know a bill of goods when I see one.”
    “I take it there was no table-tipping at Mrs.