The Case of the Mad Scientist

Chapter 23: Performance

Chapter 23: Performance

The auditorium was filled. A beautiful female escape artist was a good draw in Japan, a country that had a few good ones of its own. But the fact that she was an American beauty, taller than most Japanese men and of radiant golden tresses, was something no red-blooded Japanese male could resist. The surprising part was that there were a fair number of women in the audience as well.

A couple Japanese magicians did the warm-up, but the biggest applause was when Stella came out in that gorgeous skin-tight electric blue costume of hers. It was sort of like a one-piece bathing suit with large diamond sections cut out on the flanks and in the middle from the top of her breasts down to just below her belly button. A goodly portion of her breasts was showing in that diamond. The nipples were covered but easily seen trying to poke through the tight, thin material. The suit did not bother with anything below her crotch, and the sides were slit upward so that what there was to cover her pubic area was damned little. The high heels displayed her legs at their best, which was very good. Her long, golden hair framed her smiling face and fell to mid-back behind her.

Tara, in a similar but less revealing costume, was standing by. One of the magicians came back on the stage and was handed two pairs of handcuffs by Tara. Eagerly, he went to Stella and locked her wrists behind her back in one pair, then secured the other pair on her arms just above her elbows. He made sure that they were clicked down tightly enough to obviously be cutting into her flesh. He did not want her to get free of them. National pride, or something.

Stella did a walk across the stage near the front, turning now and then so that everyone could see how securely she was restrained. Returning to the Japanese magician, who was grinning something fierce, she struck a pose next to him, then slowly walked around behind him but kept facing the audience. Her walk was slow, true, but still she was behind him for only a couple seconds, and during that couple of seconds her bound arms were totally out of view of the audience. When she emerged from behind him,

her arms were still behind her. But as soon as she was level with him, she brought them around in front and handed him the handcuffs.

The audience applauded. Tara took the disappointed magician by the arm and escorted him off the stage, the now empty handcuffs still in his hand. She returned with a handful of ropes, loosely coiled. They were hemp ropes of the type popular in Japan for binding women. The announcer came out and invited some volunteers from the audience to come up on the stage and bind Stella with those ropes. He told them they could do it in any way they wished, and use all the ropes. Two middle-aged gentlemen came up. Apparently they had been picked beforehand, both being local officials.

There followed a scene much like those early on in Stella’s career. When she was beginning, and before she became famous, she worked the smaller clubs and theaters, doing simple escapes. But one of the biggest draws was when she let people from the audience come up and tie her. Then, in plain sight of all, she would free herself from the ropes. There was nothing magical about it, nor were the ropes modified in any way. She simply counted on the fact that most people, usually men, simply did not know how to tie a woman very well. Occasionally, she would run into a man who did know what he was doing, and that would make the escape a real challenge. Only once did a man manage to tie her in such a way that she could not free herself. The results of that failure were threefold. First, Stella apologized to the audience and put on a strip tease that got rid of what little costume she had to begin with. Secondly, she made careful note of the way he had tied her, and had her friend, but not yet part of the act, Tara bind her that way repeatedly until she could defeat it. And third, she invited the man to give her a private demonstration of that form of bondage later in her hotel room. She made numerous mental notes about how he did it, where the knots were, how each winding of the rope was cinched down, and such. Then she thanked him by telling him to go ahead and use her body any way he wished.

Every time Stella was back in that city, that man always dated her on any night she was free. They were still good friends to this day, and as Stella got better and better at escaping, it was partly due to

Roger’s inventive mind coming up with new challenges for her.

It was no problem for her to work her way out of those ropes. She felt sorry for those men’s wives if this was the best they could do. The audience applauded those simple escapes but there was a certain apprehension in the air. They knew that she would be doing a new, especially hard escape called the Hanging Water Death Trap.

Stella performed a couple more escape, each harder than the last. She was done up in a black leather straitjacket, the straps being pulled and buckled by another couple of male volunteers. Tara attached some padlocks on the buckles and then Stella was sat down and the overhead hoist lowered its cable and hook. Her ankles were tied together and then she was lifted up by them until she was almost lost in the top curtains across the front of the stage. She was a good twenty feet off the stage, hanging upside down, with her long blonde hair hanging straight down. Then she escaped from the jacket in about two minutes, demonstrating exceptional flexibility.

Having used the increasingly harder escapes to build up the hype, she was ready for the finale. The back curtain of the stage was opened and the water tank pushed out to center stage. It took four men to push it, and they had to go slowly so as not to slosh out the water. They then rolled out two large mirrors, positioning one on each side of the tank and behind it. They were turned so that the audience could see behind the tank.

When the tank and mirrors were in position, Tara rolled out the cart with the large clock. From the back of the cart, she pulled out coils of rope, this time white cotton rope that Stella preferred over the thicker, coarser hemp rope, and began binding Stella in the extra tight manner they had rehearsed. The audience watched in fascination as the ropes were expertly and very tightly applied. They were not used to escape artists using ropes instead of carefully constructed props. The incredibly tight binding of Stella was a treat for them.

The final touch before Stella was lifted up by her ankles was the adding of the ball gag by Tara. That was also a nice touch, because other escape artists never used gags. It added a more personal touch to the act.

Up she went, again her hair trailing down. As she rose up, those in the back rows had a good view of how she was bound. Then the hoist was moving her over the tank. She paused there, her head just above the top of the tank and her hair already trailing in the water. Then she was lowered. As her body came lower in the tank, her hair fanned out like a cloud in the water. When downward movement finally stopped, her head was just above the bottom edge of the tank, and her bound feet were visible just under the top of the tank. A little water splashed out as her body elevated the water level.

For a few seconds, Stella did nothing but hang in the water. Outside the tank, Tara started the clock running and the second hand began its circles. Then she went to the tank and pulled the curtain across the front. She returned to the clock and stood there, already looking worried but trying to smile. Truth was, her expression was both show and for real. She worried about her very close friend (and lover) every time she did an escape, especially one that was as dangerous as this one. Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

Compared to the minute hand, the second hand seemed to rush around the face of the clock. Most of the spectators kept their eyes on the covered tank with only occasional glances to the clock. One minute passed. All that could be seen of Stella was the cable holding her by the feet. It moved back and forth some, and occasionally shook a little, leaving the observers to wonder what she was doing in there. It had not gone unnoticed that the tank was so slender that she could not have bent her body in half to get her head above water. The only way she could get to the air that she would soon be in desperate need of to stay alive, would be to free herself of those ropes.

Two minutes.

Three minutes.

The cable shook harder for a few seconds, then stilled.

Four minutes.

Tara was looking more worried. Some of the audience were fidgeting in their seats. The tension in the room was increasing.

At the five-minute mark, when some of the audience were making worried sounds, Tara slowly walked to the curtain and pulled it aside. There was Stella, upright in the water, just kicking the last of the ropes off her ankles. Then she kicked off the bottom of the tank and, grabbing the cable, lifted her head above the water. She pulled one leg up and put her foot in the hook, and then the cable began lifting her out of the tank. With one hand, she reached behind her head and unbuckled the ball gag. She tossed that down to Tara and lifted that hand triumphantly as the hoist lowered her to the stage.

Tara brought her towel, but as she toweled herself down she made sure that most of that fine body was not covered for long. A man came on with a microphone in his hand, announcing something that could barely be heard over the ovation from the crowd. When he handed the microphone to Stella, the crowd quieted. She thanked the people in Japanese: “Arigatou gozaimasu.” Then added that it was a pleasure to perform in their country and that she wished the best for the survivors of the disaster. She did not speak Japanese, but had memorized the words carefully and spoke them almost without an accent. The audience applauded even harder.