South by South East by Anthony Horowitz Page B

road, I saw him disappear round the corner. We had split up again, but maybe that was for the best. At least one of us might get away.
    I skidded to a halt and looked around me. As I’d run in, I’d thought the building was a library or perhaps a museum. But now I saw that it was in fact a small, old-fashioned theatre. There was a ticket-office beside the door and a poster showing an old man in an evening suit. There were cards tumbling out of his hands and the name, Mr Marvano, written underneath. A magician – just what I needed. Maybe he could help me disappear.
    The show had already begun. The ticketseller was reading a newspaper and there were no ushers on the door. I tiptoed through the foyer and into the darkness of the auditorium. I just hoped Scarface and Ugly hadn’t seen me go in.
    Mr Marvano was standing on the stage, an old man with a round, pink face and silver hair, looking rather sad in his tails and white bow tie. As I came in he had just finished some sort of trick with a cane and a silk scarf. He had turned one of them into the other. There was a thin pattering of applause. Mr Marvano picked up a pack of playing-cards and began to explain the next trick in Dutch. I took a seat in the back row. There were plenty of empty seats.
    It was cool inside the theatre. I could feel the perspiration beading on my face. I wondered how much of the show I would have to watch before it was safe to go out. It didn’t make any sense. How had Scarface and Ugly managed to turn up at the station? Charlotte had said that Charon seemed to know everything she did – before she did it. How? In London, at the ice-rink and now in Amsterdam, Charon always seemed to be one step ahead.
    There was more applause and I glanced at the stage. A Queen of Spades was rising, seemingly on its own, out of Mr Marvano’s top pocket.
    “Was this the card you picked?” the magician asked. He said it in Dutch but I understood anyway. I’d seen it, and heard it all, before.
    Somebody appeared, walking down the aisle, and stopped at the end of my row. I looked round and froze. It was Scarface.
    I half rose, planning to slide out the other way. But another shape loomed out of the darkness, blocking that way, too. Ugly had come round the other side. I was trapped between them.
    The magician was calling something out from the stage. Ugly produced what looked like a folding comb and pressed a button on the side. It was a flick-knife. About twenty centimetres of steel sprang out of his fist, slanting towards me. Scarface began to move closer. Ten seats and he would be on to me. I had a wall behind me and people in front. I had nowhere to go.
    Mr Marvano had finished what he was saying. There was a long pause. Ugly was closing in from his side, too. The flick-knife flashed momentarily in one of the lights trained on the stage. I looked back the other way. Scarface carried no weapon but his fingers, long and skeletal, stretched out towards my throat.
    “And now, please, I require a volunteer from the audience.” Mr Marvano had tried it in Dutch and found no takers so now he tried English. Only three seats separated me from Scarface on one side and Ugly on the other.
    My hand shot up. “I volunteer!” I shouted.
    Every eye in the theatre turned to look at me. A spotlight swivelled round and everything went white as it hit me in the eyes. Scarface and Ugly froze where they were, just outside the beam. Somehow Ugly had managed to spirit away the knife. Ignoring them, I clambered over a seat, almost landing in the owner’s lap. But a moment later I was away, moving towards the stage while the audience urged me on with another round of applause. For the time being, anyway, I was safe.
    Mr Marvano had wheeled a big, multicoloured box onto the stage. It was about the size of a washing-machine with a round hole in the top and about a dozen slots around the sides. I didn’t much like the look of it but it was too late to back out now. Mr Marvano grabbed