Sherlock Holmes and the Houdini Birthright

by Val Andrews

  Eventually, all niceties of etiquette having been observed, we all repaired to the small room which had been prepared for the seance. There was a little table but none of the impedimenta of illusion so often provided by the professional medium. There were no cabinets, trumpets or indeed anything in the room save the table and a number of matching chairs. The single window was heavily draped with black material so that the room could be plunged into complete darkness at the touch of a switch. Before this happened, the Reverend Bridger made a speech:

  'Dear friends, we are gathered here tonight, united in one purpose, that of contacting the spirit of our dear, departed brother, Harry Houdini. I am the only one among us who knew him not in his earthly life. Despite this I am confident that I will succeed in my efforts. If Houdini comes through for us it will be a great triumph, to eclipse even that which some of us recently experienced in Atlantic City, where I was able to coax the spirit of Houdini's dear mother, Cecelia, to not only converse with us but to speak a secret word known only to Mrs Houdini as far as the living are concerned. As you know, Houdini in life was full of doubt...doubt about the existence of spirits even, save alone their ability to contact the living. In truth, his doubts were so strong as to build a wall between himself and the spirit world. That is why he never found a medium in whom he could believe. You do not greet even a living friend by saying, "I do not believe in you"! To infer as much to a delicate spirit would guarantee that no contact would be made. But there is no such impediment here tonight. After all those present, who are not perhaps convinced believers, have at least completely open minds. I feel this, I sense it and for this reason I am optimistic that we will be successful. In order to assure you all that there is no deception I would draw your attention to the fact that I use no intrinsic aids in my work. There are no rapping hands, planchettes, dark cabinets or slates and, to quote our dear departed himself, I have nothing up my sleeves.'

  He rolled up the sleeves of his jacket and gave us all an arch glance. This produced polite chuckles from Sir Arthur and myself and a sort of disguised choking sound from Bess.

  The Reverend Bridger concluded by saying, 'If I am able to contact Houdini he will be able to speak directly to us, although you may not recognize his voice as that with which he spoke when he took earthly form. This is quite often the case with spirits. Well now, let us begin to work. Mr Holmes, you are nearest to the light switch, would you be so kind as to plunge us into that friendly darkness which so much aids our concentration?'

  As Holmes pushed up the switch I reviewed the situation in my mind. As Holmes and I alone among us knew Houdini to be still very much in the sl much i land of the living we of course had to completely discount any sort of spirit message from him. If no such message was received Bridger might prove to be a genuine and sincere person. But if any message transpired, purporting to be from Houdini, he had to be a fraud.

  There was a silence, as complete as was possible in a large and busy New York hotel. No sound was heard for perhaps two minutes, save those of shifting feet and the rustling of the ladies' dresses. Then Bridger's voice was heard, with an even more dramatic timbre: 'I call upon my spirit guide, Chief Eagle Hawk, to aid me in finding one spirit among millions, the one spirit among them that we hope and pray to contact. Are you there Chief Eagle Hawk, please speak to us!'

  After some ten seconds or so a grunting monosyllabic voice was heard, 'I am here brother Bridger, who is it you wish to contact?'

  The reverend gentleman's all but natural voice resumed, 'Chief, please bring to us the spirit of our dear brother Harry Houdini, bring him here through the space of eternity to speak to us. His dear wife Beatrice is here, as are his friends Sir Arthur and Lady Conan Doyle, yes and two more friends from Britain, Mr Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. Please entreat dear Harry to speak to us.'

  The obliging Indian chief spoke again, 'Brother Bridger, friends, I have Harry Houdini's spirit at my side. Please speak to him.'

  Again Bridger's all but natural voice implored, 'Dear brother Harry, please speak, please say something to your dear wife who is here tonight.'

  What next occurred somewhat startled me I confess. For the voice which purported to be that of Houdini was as unlike his actual speaking voice as it might be possible for it to be. The tones were those more reminiscent of a Shakespearian actor than a vaudeville showman. It was a rich voice, rather like that of Sir Henry Irving yet with a transatlantic touch.

  'Beatrice, dear Beatrice, I am here, your own Harry! I guess I may sound a little different sweetheart, to the way I did in life but that is the way it is here. However to assure you that I am here, let me remind you of the words of our secret code, the one we used in our thought transference act, long, long ago. The words were, Rosabelle, answer, tell, pray, answer, look, tell, answer, answer, tell! Am I right?'

  Bess breathed, rather than said, 'Yes.'

  The voice purporting to be that of Houdini continued, 'Bess after I have returned to the spirit world, please remove your wedding ring and show our friends the word engraved on the inside of the band. The word is Rosabelle and you can tell the others what it means. You have never told anyone of this word, or yet shown anyone the inside of your ring! I want you to pay great attention to everything that dear brother Joshua Bridger tells you. He is a good man and can advise you as to certain matters concerning your future. I love you dear Bess, I must leave you for now but I will, God willing, be back to speak with you again...goodbye darling...sweet Rosabelle!'

  The voice grew gradually less in volume and finally Bridger spoke, 'Please put on the light Mr Holmes, I am so weary and must rest.'

  As Holmes switched on the light I observed that Bridger was sitting limply in his chair, presenting an appearance of complete exhaustion. 'Dear sister Beatrice, please remove calease r your wedding ring that we may confirm that which dear brother Harry has told us.'

  Bess removed her ring, without much difficulty and cast it onto the table with an almost dramatic gesture. Sir Arthur asked her permission to examine it and having been granted it, scrutinized it carefully. Then he passed it around, saying, 'You will see that the word Rosabelle is indeed engraved upon the inside of the band.'

  Holmes peered at the inner side of the ring through his lens and agreed that the word was the correct one. 'Mrs Houdini, could you perhaps confirm that nobody has ever seen the inside of the ring since it was engraved?'

  She nodded. 'The words that Harry spoke were the ten words of a two-person telepathy code that we used about thirty-five years ago. With these words and their variations and different combinations he could convey almost anything to me as I sat blindfolded upon the stage. For instance, 'Rosabelle. Answer. What is this?' would be a watch. 'Pray, tell,' was a man and 'Tell, pray,' was a woman. Just a simple code, nothing fancy.'

  The Reverend Bridger began to recover his strength and we removed ourselves to the hotel lounge where Bess plied him with coffee. The Doyles were full of praise for Bridger, saying that they would look forward to further seances. I was curious about the name Rosabelle and asked Bess, 'What is the significance of this name that would cause Houdini to have it secretly engraved into a ring for you?' Bess was on her third Martini since the end of the seance. 'It was to do with a song that my girl partner and I used to sing when we were the Rahner sisters. The first time Harry met me he heard us sing it.' Somewhat to our general embarrassment, she started to sing in a grating soprano that attracted more than a little attention...

  Rosabelle, my Rosabelle,

  I love you more than I can tell,

  Over me you cast a spell,

  I love you, sweet Rosabelle.

  Wisely the Doyles decided to call it a night, wagging fingers at Holmes concerning his lack of absolute faith in the wonders of spiritualism.

  Sir Arthur said, as they departed in quest of a cab, 'Holmes the only thing that has ever even threatened to mar our friendship has been your scepticism regarding the supernatural in general and spiritualism in particular. Now
that you have had absolute proof I feel that we can become far closer. You know poor dear Harry always upset me greatly with his attitude towards mediums. Oh I grant you he exposed one or two obvious frauds but a couple of swallows do not make a summer and he had no right to make some of the accusations that he did, against really sincere and honest people.'

  Then he turned to Bridger. 'My dear sir, can we give you a lift somewhere in our taxi cab?'

  After this general exodus, Bess ordered more coffee for us and yet another Martini for herself. It was to me that she first spoke. 'What do you make of all that Doc?''

  'I find it all astounding!' I replied, in all sincerity.

  I did. For had I not been conversing with a very much alive Harry Houdini but days earlier I would have been convinced that only his spirit could have made possible that which the seance had revealed. I asked Bess to tell us a little more about the code and the thought-reading act.

  Well Doc, I'll tell you. In thridl you. e very early days, Harry and I were part of a circus troupe. Harry was the magician, did his escapes, was ringmaster and played the wild man in the sideshow. As for me I used to assist Harry but I also used to work with the clowns in a boy's Eton suit. We got about twenty bucks a week for the two of us, plus cakes, that's carny slang, means we got fed. Oh yes and in addition to the show we had to help put the tent up and pull it down. Even so it was OK until we stopped getting paid. Business fell off and the owner ran out of dough. Then one day he just upped and disappeared. The show was sold off by auction and Harry and I were stranded what seemed like a million miles from home. But Harry was a fighter and figured a way for us to get out of trouble. I was a pretty good mitt reader, you know, palmist and, for a while, we worked out of doors, in town squares in hick towns, me reading palms and Harry doing anything he could: magic, escapes and thought reading. That's how we started with the code. Soon we discovered that by playing on the superstitions of the country folk we could do better as spirit mediums!'

  I was shocked. 'You mean you held seances?'

  'Sure, we'd hire a hall and advertise a seance and get a bigger crowd than we could have got for any other kind of show. We would start with the thought-reading routine, using the code with me convincingly blindfolded. Then we would pretend to get messages from the dear departed and we even got the names right by mooching around graveyards in the dark and reading the inscriptions with a flashlight. We'd find someone who had died fairly recently, find out all we could about them and dish the information up as a spirit message. Then we would make a collection, which was usually quite good (remember we let them in for nothing). Finally, the blow-off - that's carnival slang for the jam on the bread.'

  Holmes had been quiet but now he spoke. 'What did you do, give private consultations?'

  'I'll say we did and I always held back a few bits of local gossip about the departed just for this. I'd work in a dressing room. The people would come out and rave about how amazing it all was. We'd charge a dollar a time in some places. The women would eat out of my hand. The men, they weren't quite so easy but I'd let them get just a little bit familiar with me in the darkened room. Oh nothing serious, just enough for them to be on my side. Of course we were not proud of any of this but it might give you some idea as to why Harry was so knowledgeable about fake spiritualists, although over the years he had tried to forget the whole affair. I guess his campaign was some sort of exorcism. Unlike Harry, I go along with these people, I need the publicity if I'm ever going to get back into some sort of business. Many hundreds of people must have seen our thought-reading act. Some of them were magicians who would have recognized the code for what it was and could even remember all ten words and their order.'

  'My dear Mrs Houdini you have saved me the trouble of voicing my own thoughts concerning the code. But now we come to the matter of the ring and the engraving inside it. Did you ever speak to Bridger about this?'

  'Sure, I told him about the word inside but I never told him what it was!'

  'Quite so and was it in Atlantic City that you told him?'

  'Sure!'

  'But you have taken it off recently, perhaps for the first time in years?'

  'How can you tell?'

  'You slipped it off after the seance without much difficulty. Yet its scar upon your finger told me that it had remained there for many years undisturbed. I deduce therefore that it was recently removed, for the first time in many years.'

  'You are right, I was out shopping in Atlantic City with the reverend. He steered me into a jewellers, saying he wanted me to look at some tie pins and give him my thoughts on them as a present for his nephew. While we were there the storekeeper offered to clean the ring for me for free. It was a bit of a job for me to get it off but I don't pass up a free offer. He cleaned it and I slipped it back on but Sherlock, old sport, Bridger was still across the store from me, looking at the tie pins.'

  'Quite, he had previously bribed the storekeeper before steering you in there, to glimpse the word in the ring. Remember, you had already told Bridger that this secret word existed.'

  I thought that Bess took all this very calmly, almost as if she did not care that she had been duped.

  'He is an ingenious son of a gun isn't he? A man after my own heart.'

  'That might be only too true Mrs Houdini, a fortune hunter if ever I saw one.'

  This seemed to irk Bess a little. She finished her fourth Martini and said, 'OK, Mr Holmes, let's have a little seance - you be the medium and show us what you can do in that direction.'

  To my utter amazement Holmes agreed to this. Of course I realized that he had been putting off the evil moment when he must tell Bess of our findings but I felt this was going a bit far.

  Holmes went through a sort of pretence at going into a trance, then said, 'I call upon the spirit of Harry Houdini to whisper to me a secret word, something that passed between his dear wife and himself, which nobody else could possibly know!' Then he relaxed and said, 'Houdini whispered this secret word into my ear and Mrs Houdini, I am obliged to whisper it to you also.'

  Bess's expression was enigmatic; she leant her expensively coiffured head nearer to his. I saw his lips move but could not read anything from them, as a deaf person might have been able to. What happened next came as a great shock to me. Beatrice Houdini brought her right hand across Holmes's face with a resounding slap. His prominent cheekbone seemed to redden but he was as impassive as the wooden Indian that we had passed daily outside the cigar store. Her hand fell slowly to her lap, her face alert, her eyes huge and dilated. After what seemed like an age she spoke: 'The sonofabitch is alive, ain't he?' Holmes nodded gravely.

  I tried to calm the atmosphere by saying, 'Dear lady, you must be delighted to know this?' She did not answer me but gave me a look that bordered upon hatred.

  Between us Holmes and I told her of our discoveries in Hungary. Everything indeed that had happened during the week or so that had passed. She asked many questions which were answered by one or other or both of us with accuracy, yet still her wonder and, to some extent, her resentment grew. At length there was little more to tell her, save of Houdini's invitation for her to join him if she so wished.

  She all but snorted, 'He's gotta be kiddin'! Does he suphe Does hpose I want to live in some draughty old castle and watch him and this Mazurka, or whatever her name is, produce kids? Oh no. I hired you to find me the proof that I wanted, proof that Harry had been rubbed out so that I could be a really wealthy woman. Well, so I have to settle for a little less than that, always assuming that you keep your mouths shut about Harry. How much is that going to cost me?'

  I was shocked at her inference of possible blackmail but Holmes took it calmly. 'Mrs Houdini, you asked, nay implored me to make certain investigations. I have made them and what I have found out has not been to your liking; indeed it would all have been better left alone. But unless I am directly questioned by some authority with the right to demand answers of me, my work is done. I cannot anticipate my part in any of
this being of interest to police or government.'

  She was relieved, arose and began to walk somewhat unsteadily towards the lobby. Before gaining that objective she turned and said, 'Mr Holmes, you will be getting my cheque. Oh and say, I'm sorry I belted you one!'

  We stayed a little longer in the lounge of the Hotel Algonquin where Bess's bizarre outbursts had gone all but unnoticed beside those of its regular denizens, the Benchleys, the Hemingways and others of their kind. We discussed, Holmes and I, the whole incredible affair of the Houdini birthright. We drained the coffee pot and Holmes charged his pipe in anticipation of the short journey to the Hotel Brownstone.

  'Holmes, now that this affair is concluded do you feel able to confide to me the secret word that Houdini imparted for Bess's ears alone?'

  'Oh yes, as my oldest, nay only friend, I feel that I can trust you not to disclose it to anyone else, especially to the readers of your incredibly romanticized versions of my exploits!' He leant over and whispered a single word in my ear. He need hardly have worried, for I could hardly disclose it in print but let me just say here and now that I am hardly surprised that Beatrice Houdini clouted him.