It might be. As I mentioned before, Project Gutenberg often offers free e - books and short stories for reading, so there's a chance it could be found there for free. Some independent authors also post their short stories for free on their personal websites or blogs, but I'm not sure if the author of 'Eisenheim the Illusionist' does that.
Yes, it could be. There are websites that focus on promoting new and classic short stories for free. They might have 'Eisenheim the Illusionist' in their collection. Also, some universities or educational institutions may have made it available for free on their internal reading platforms for educational purposes. But in general, it's not always easy to find a free version, and you may need to do some extensive searching across different platforms and websites.