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work.”
    At this crucial juncture in her story, Mrs Houdini paused and began tugging distractedly at her lace sleeves. It was plain to me that her husband was not the only Houdini with a sense of the dramatic. “Well?” I asked. “What happened then?”
    She smiled very pleasantly at me. “After an hour, Kleppini’s cabinet was moved aside so that another act could go on. After two hours most of the audience had gone home. Four hours after Kleppini had entered his cabinet, he gave up and begged to be released from the handcuffs. In the presence of a newspaper reporter, Harry spun the cylinders to open the cuffs. Clefs was no longer the key word. During their fight on the stage, Harry had changed the letters to F-R-A-U-D.”
    I have seldom heard Holmes laugh as loudly as he did upon hearing this. While he soon recovered himself, I was left gasping and dabbing at my eyes with a handkerchief. Mrs Houdini, obviously delighted with the effect of her tale, smiled demurely and took another sip of tea.
    “Really, Mrs Houdini,” Holmes said after a moment, “though your story is a charming one, I fail to see how it concerns either Dr Watson or myself.”
    “That is what I am just coming to now,” she said, setting down her cup and saucer. “You must understand that all of this took place five years ago, and we have heard little of Kleppini since. Occasionally we have had reports that he still claims to have bested the Great Houdini, but in general he is regarded as a buffoon, and he obtains only the very worst bookings. So we did not think much about him until this morning when we received a very mysterious note in the first post.”
    “A note?” Holmes sat up and leaned forward. “What did it say?”
    “Only this, Mr Holmes, ’Tonight who the fraud is we shall see.’”
    Holmes walked to the mantel and began refilling his black clay. “Was that the exact wording?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you have the note with you?”
    “I’m afraid Harry would not let me have it. He insisted that there was no cause for worry, and did not wish me to concern myself with it.”
    “A pity. We might have learned a great deal from the note itself. You suspect this cryptic message came from Kleppini?”
    “The word ‘fraud’ led me to believe so.”
    “Quite. And the peculiar construction of the sentence suggests that the author is not a native speaker of English. You believe this message is a threat of some sort, not merely another escape challenge?”
    “What would be the point of another challenge? Houdini has been challenged dozens of times, and he always wins. The man has no equal. Surely Kleppini, of all people, knows that by now.”
    “But why threaten him? And why now?”
    “For the humiliation. For the damage done to Kleppini’s reputation and career. Have you never run across a grudge before, Mr Holmes?”
    Sherlock Holmes stood at the mantel staring down at the black and white ivory box which had been a gift from the murderous Culverton Smith. Had he ever opened its lid, Holmes himself would have fallen victim to a grudge of some twenty years’ duration, for the box contained a sharp coiled spring dipped in bacterial poison. *
    “It sounds to me more like a gesture of frustration than a legitimate threat,” said Holmes. “At any rate, I don’t see what steps we can reasonably take. We can’t very well confront Kleppini on the strength of your conjectures.”
    “That is not what I am asking. I want you and Dr Watson to come to the theatre tonight and be alert for any trouble. It would be only too easy for some sort of accident to befall my husband during one of his performances. By their very nature, his feats involve danger. If anythingwent wrong, for any reason, my husband could be seriously injured.” She drew in her breath. “Or worse.”
    “Really, Mrs Houdini. I am a detective, not a praetorian.”
    “A what?”
    “A bodyguard. You have brought me nothing but suppositions and yet you expect me to dash