Nevermore

by William Hjortsberg

  “Why, Sir Arthur, I am nothing but a trickster, yet I have always been keenly aware of your interest in me.”

  The briefest moment of recognition ignited when their eyes met and they looked beyond the common ground of achievement and genius into the comic heart of human folly. Both men laughed, sharing the unspoken joke. They didn’t know one another well enough to be comfortable with such informality and the mirth soon subsided into more familiar postures.

  “Depend upon it, my dear Houdini, my admiration for you goes far beyond an appreciation of your conjuring abilities.” Sir Arthur stood, legs spread, arms behind his back, like an officer at parade rest; like a rugby coach embarking on a pep talk. “I am convinced, above all your protests, that you possess supernormal powers. I have the testimony of Mr. Hewat Mackenzie, one of the most experienced psychical researchers in the world, that when he stood near to you on stage, during an escape from a padlocked iron milk can filled with water, he clearly felt a great loss of physical energy of the sort experienced by sitters in materializing séances. I accept this as evidence of your ability to dematerialize.”

  Houdini was at a loss for words. How could this great man of letters believe such bunk? Further proof that the better a man’s education and the more impressive his brain, the easier it became to mystify him. The milk-can escape was a gag. Dash still featured it in his act. It pained him to think anyone he so respected could be such a sucker. “I give you my word of honor. The escape you mention was a trick.”

  “Then what about the time you escaped from regulation handcuffs at Scotland Yard? That was no stage presentation.”

  “All right. I’ll tell you about it. I’ve published most of my handcuff secrets.” Houdini lifted a heavy crate off a steamer trunk. He made it look easy. “It was my first trip to London. Spring of 1900. I was trying to get a booking at the Alhambra. Dundas Slater, the theater manager, liked my audition, but as it was a challenge act …” Houdini opened the trunk lid. Hundreds of jumbled manacles and handcuffs glittered inside like a pirate’s treasure chest. “He suggested in an off-hand manner that Scotland Yard might be the most infallible test of my skill.”

  “And you accepted immediately!” Sir Arthur beamed with boyish playing-field enthusiasm.

  “I came prepared to demand that exact challenge.”

  “Because you knew you possessed the power to dematerialize.”

  “Because I knew a little secret about the darbies used by Scotland Yard.” The magician showed a sturdy pair of handcuffs to Sir Arthur. “Jersey Giants. See the broad arrow and crown. That marks ‘em all. They have a simple spring lock. My study of the mechanism revealed a strategic flaw.” Taking the knight’s hand, Houdini quickly snapped the cuff shut on his wrist.

  “I say … ,” protested Sir Arthur.

  “I discovered if Jersey Giants were tapped sharply at a certain point …” Houdini locked Conan Doyle’s other wrist. “… against a hard surface, they would simply snap open. The morning of the Alhambra audition, before putting on my trousers, I strapped a sheet of lead to my thigh. It proved an unnecessary precaution at the Yard, as Superintendent Melville shackled my hands behind my back around a stone pillar. He said: ‘This is the way we handle Yankees who come over here and get into trouble.’ He then suggested to Slater that they return in an hour and release me.

  “I said, ‘I’ll come with you.’ One good knock and I was free. Slater signed me on the spot.”

  Sir Arthur stared uncertainly at his manacled wrists. “I hope you have the key.”

  “No need.” Houdini showed him the critical point on the mechanism. “Go ahead. Rap ‘em hard against the edge of the desk.”

  “Like this…?” Sir Arthur brought his wrists down smartly against the desktop. The handcuffs popped open as if by magic.

  “Simple, when you know the trick.” The magician flourished his fingers and plucked a silver half-dollar out of midair.

  “Skillful conjuring is an excellent distraction.” The knight dropped the Scotland Yard darbies back into the trunk. “Focuses attention away from your true psychic powers.”

  Houdini shrugged. “Nothing I can say will set you straight. I have prepared a mysterious entertainment for later this evening. The supernatural is not involved. Everything I do is the result of preparation, practice, knowledge, study, more practice, and physical abilities of an extreme sort. Maybe a little curtain-raiser might convince you.”

  Houdini sat in his desk chair, hooking his arms over the back. “Let’s assume my hands are tied behind me. In my line of work, you gotta be able to use more than hands.”

  Astonished, Sir Arthur watched Houdini slip out of one shoe and sock, deftly untying the other shoelace with his toes. Second shoe off, the nimble toes of both feet went to work retying the shoelace in a neat bow.

  “Absolutely amazing!”

  “No, Sir Arthur, this is amazing.” The magician lifted his right leg into the air, bending it toward him, contorting like a yogi adept. When it seemed impossible a human limb could twist any farther, the foot arched down and slipped into his outside jacket pocket. It reemerged in a graceful uncoiling, a needle-book and spool of thread gripped between his toes.

  Must never go anywhere without those props, Sir Arthur thought. Always prepared to perform on popular demand.

  Houdini dropped the needles and thread on the floor between his feet. Sir Arthur watched in wonder, scarcely able to believe his own eyes as the magician removed a needle from the folded paper and carefully threaded it with his toes.

  “Capital!” cried the excited knight.

  “Purely physical.” Houdini bounded to his feet like a prizefighter coming out of his corner. “My body is a trained instrument. Given time to prepare, I can withstand any blow.” The magician braced his legs, thrusting out his chest. “Go on. Hit me. I’m ready. Hit me as hard as you can.”

  “You can’t be serious?”

  “Go on… . Give it your best shot.”

  Sir Arthur placed his hands behind his back. “I used to be quite keen about boxing. Grand sport. Wouldn’t want to sully it with this sort of foolishness.”

  “Okay …” Houdini relaxed his stance. “It was just meant as a demonstration. Wanted to show you what the physical body was capable of. Watch this. Learned it as a kid in the carny.”

  Arching backwards, limber as a dancer, Houdini bent all the way to the floor and picked the threaded needle off the carpet with his teeth. Snake-supple, he returned upright. “Worked as an acrobat, tumbler, contortionist… . Watched an Indian fakir do this.” The magician thrust the needle through his cheek.

  “Dear fellow …” Nonplussed by this extraordinary behavior, Sir Arthur sputtered in Colonel Blimpish protest, even as his keen medical eye observed the needle’s passage to be completely bloodless. “No more, I beg you.”

  “Harry, dear …” Beatrice Houdini stood in the doorway of her husband’s office. “We don’t want our dinner to get cold.”

  “Coming, Mrs. Houdini.” The magician picked up his shoes. “Just showing Sir Arthur some of the tricks of the trade.”

  The other dinner guests were the magician’s attorney, Bernard Ernst, and his brooding, overweight wife. They engaged in immediate shoptalk. Conan Doyle deduced very quickly that Theo “Dash” Weiss also performed as a magician, using the stage name “Hardeen.” He toured on the rival Pantages Circuit with an act so similar it incorporated Houdini’s famous milk-can escape, which his brother no longer performed. The Weiss boys joked about cornering the market in the escape business. Hardeen’s success discouraged any serious rivals. Strictly a family enterprise.

  “When we bought this house twenty years ago, there were almost no Negroes living in Harlem,” Bess Houdini told Lady Jean. “This was a nice German neighborhood back then. Still is, really. The colored live mainly above 125thStreet. Of course, there’s an Irish section up here, too. And Italians on the East Side.”

  “The bottom dropped out of the upper Harlem real estate market in
‘ought-five,” Houdini interjected. “Speculators built too many new apartments, especially around 135th Street. Wanted to recoup their losses, natch. Fill up those vacancies. So, they started renting to Negroes. Cheap crooks’re getting one twenty-five a month for places that used to go for forty bucks.”

  “It wasn’t something you really noticed until after the war,” sighed Bessie. “That was when you really started to see the change. Used to be such a quiet residential place.”

  The conversation turned to the subject of the movies, something they all had in common. A film version of Sir Arthur’s novel The Lost World had recently been produced in Chicago with spectacular special effects footage depicting ancient dinosaurs. Houdini, veteran of a serial made in Yonkers and two Hollywood films, had started his own motion picture company in New York a couple years before. Another family enterprise. Dash took time out from his career and pitched in. Houdini was president as well as writer, producer, director, and star. Two new films were released. Both did poorly at the box office.

  “I quite enjoyed The Man from Beyond” commented Sir Arthur. “The escape from the brink of Niagara Falls was spot on.”

  “Maybe so,” Dash fixed his brother with a cocky smile, “but Haldane was strictly from hunger.”

  Houdini ignored any implied challenge. “I shoulda done the Egyptian picture instead … Mistero di Osiris—” Suddenly brought up short, the magician cocked his head as if hearing a faraway sound, drifting away into thought. Everyone waited for him to finish speaking and the conversation dwindled, inhibited by his distraction.

  Conan Doyle cast about for a way out of the embarrassing silence. A framed photograph of an early flying machine hung on the opposite wall. The box-kite tail was emblazoned with the name HOUDINI in bold capitals. “Using aircraft for advertising.” Sir Arthur indicated the picture with a nod of his head. “Pure twentieth-century thought. I, for one, applaud it.”

  “That was my own machine,” Houdini said. “A Voison. Santos Dumont design. Had a British E.N.V. 60.80 horsepower petrol engine.”

  “By Jove, I didn’t know you were an aeronaut to boot.” Sir Arthur’s enthusiasm infected his grin.

  “I was the first man to make a successful airplane flight on the Australian continent. March 16, 1910.”

  Sir Arthur kept his grin in place. How absurd to speak in headlines like some demented town crier. Wouldn’t the celebrated Dr. Freud have a field day analyzing this man’s ego?

  Houdini pointed to a bronze plaque on the opposite wall next to the photograph: a winged globe in relief. “The Aerial League of Australia awarded me that trophy. I was touring down under. Next to shut. “

  “Beg your pardon… . Next to what?”

  “ ‘Next to shut’ is the featured turn on a vaudeville bill,” Dash interjected. “Shut is closing.”

  The magician firmed his jaw, still posing in the cockpit. “Shipped the Voison from Germany with all my gear. Put a mechanic on the payroll, too.”

  “Do you still fly?” inquired Lady Jean.

  “Took a spin in a Stinson four years ago. Out west making The Grim Game.”

  “Amazing aerial photography in that.” Sir Arthur positively beamed. “Your leap between two aeroplanes while handcuffed is the most reckless feat of daring I have ever witnessed.”

  “The midair collision was unplanned. Turned out to be a lucky accident. Willat kept the camera running in the third plane and we worked the footage into the story.”

  Sir Arthur, entranced with the memory of viewing this daring moment at the cinema, stared up past the ceiling. “The way they spiraled down through the sky, locked together, like giant insects spent at the climax of their nuptial flight.” Everyone around the table smiled at the daring sexual allusion so discreetly phrased. “You were fortunate no one was injured.”

  Houdini nodded in agreement. “The planes separated mere moments before crash-landing.” The magician made no mention of the piano wire safety harness, or of the double who made the jump that day. Houdini had watched on the ground, his arm in a sling, having fractured his left wrist in a three-foot fall during a jailbreak sequence filmed the day before. This was a closely guarded secret. Always best never to let the truth get in the way of legend.

  Bernard Ernst patted the leather cigar case jutting from his breast pocket with affectionate anticipation. “Houdini was quick to gauge the import of moving pictures,” he said. “Why, if he was to have done that plane jump stunt before an audience, the most he could hope to draw is ten, maybe twenty thousand. On film, millions get to see him.”

  “So, where were the millions for Haldane of the Secret Service?” Houdini made a face of mock nausea. “I’m all through with pictures. Maybe they are the future. I know all the vaude houses are showing two-reelers as part of the bill these days.”

  “Vaudeville is dying,” Mrs. Ernst said. “That’s the pity of it.”

  “What can you do about it?” The magician shrugged. “Mourning the past is a waste of time. Far better to prepare for the future. When my touring contract is over next year, I plan on putting together a full evening show and playing nothing but legitimate theaters. Thurston’s been working that side of the street pretty successfully for fifteen years now.”

  “Perhaps this is an impossible question to answer …” Lady Jean’s melodious voice captivated everyone at the table. “But … I’d be interested to know what you consider your most difficult escape.”

  Houdini’s expression suggested pensive cogitation. How the man thrives on attention, thought Conan Doyle, shifting his gaze to his wife’s lovely smile.

  The magician ignored the servants clearing the table. “I will merely repeat what an old friend once said to me. For two and one-half years, starting when I was fourteen, I worked as an assistant necktie cutter for H. Richter’s Sons. Five-oh-two Broadway. Twelve hours a day. I cut linings only. Assistants were not permitted to handle the better goods. It was then I first practiced card sleights and other tricks.

  “Years later, after making a name for myself as a magician, I returned to Richter’s cutting floor on a sentimental visit. My old partner came up to me and said: ‘You know the greatest escape you ever made? It was escaping from this necktie factory.’”

  Everyone laughed, including the Ernsts, who presumably had heard the story often before. Bernard Ernst laughed loudest of all. Conan Doyle watched Houdini’s broad smile, pleased to note this pompous, heroic man also had a sense of humor.

  Coffee and dessert were served in the drawing room. The gentlemen had permission to smoke. Sir Arthur stuffed his pipe as Ernst warmed a cigar over a candle flame. Houdini posed by the fireplace. “I have prepared a test for Sir Arthur,” he said, picking a schoolboy’s slate off the mantel. “Please examine this.” He handed the slate to the knight.

  Conan Doyle drew on his pipe, turning the slate over and over. “Appears to be exactly what it is.”

  “You’ll notice two holes bored in the corners of the wooden frame.” The magician produced twin lengths of brass wire with S-hooks wound onto either end. Hooking one into each hole, he handed the wires to Sir Arthur. “Hang these anywhere you see fit, so that the slate dangles freely in space.”

  Conan Doyle rose and hooked one wire over the top of a picture frame. The other, he attached to the spine of a large book on a shelf standing opposite. The slate swung in the middle of the room.

  Houdini used his coffee spoon to stir the contents of a small bowl. “White ink,” he said. “You may taste it if you wish.”

  “I’ll accept your word as a gentleman.”

  The magician took four small cork balls from his pocket and placed them in a line in front of the bowl. “Pick one at random and cut it in half.”

  Conan Doyle selected the left-hand ball. It was about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. He sliced it in half with his penknife. Pure cork throughout.

  Houdini dropped the other three in the bowl of ink, stirring them with the spoon until all were evenly coated. “We�
�ll let these soak for a while. Sir Arthur…? Have you a bit of paper and a pencil about your person?”

  Conan Doyle pulled his notebook from an inside jacket pocket. “Always carry the tools of the trade.” He slapped the small leather-bound volume against the palm of his hand.

  “I would like you to leave this house. Walk as far as you wish in any direction. Once you are satisfied you are alone and unobserved, write some phrase or quote on a piece of paper. Then, fold it, put it back into your pocket, and return here. We promise not to drink all the coffee.”

  Sir Arthur felt exhilarated as he walked east on 113th Street. He loved games of every sort. Delighted in mystery. His pipe glowed red as a demon’s eye with each excited puff. He turned uptown on Seventh Avenue and paused beside the B. S. Moss Regent Theater on the corner of 116th. Tearing a leaf free from his notebook, he wrote down words from the Old Testament that popped randomly into his head: “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin …”

  The knight was back in the Houdini parlor before ten minutes had elapsed. Everyone stared at him. He felt in their curiosity his own isolation; guardian of the secret message.

  “You have done as I have instructed?” asked the magician.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I have devised this test, Sir Arthur, to teach you what can be done in the realm of the miraculous by means of pure trickery. The illusion you’re about to see is one to which I’ve dedicated a great deal of thought, working on it, off and on, all winter. I assure you, it’s accomplished entirely through natural means. I want you to remember this demonstration and be careful in the future when endorsing phenomena as bona fide supernatural just because you are unable to explain them.

  “Your wife and the others will swear nothing has been touched in here.” The magician handed the knight a spoon. “Please, choose one of the three remaining balls.”

  Sir Arthur scooped the middle ball out of the bowl, cupping his free hand beneath the dripping white ink.