Biggs snorted. “So they’d freed themselves from the ropes! Where’s the mystery in that? Your brother does it all the time! It’s a simple escape!”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But at regular intervals during the demonstration, the assistants threw open the doors. Inside, the brothers were seen to be securely fastened, breathing hard as though deep in a trance, with their heads bowed and their eyes closed in concentration. When the doors swung shut, the strange happenings started up again—instantly.”
“A clever act,” said Biggs. “Nothing more.”
“The Davenports rarely—if ever—laid claim to supernatural powers, but their audiences were quick to form that impression, and the brothers did little to dispel the notion.”
“Sounds like overripe boilings to me.”
“The public seemed to like it, and it opened the way for a number of imitators. Harry and I were given the job of presenting something similar for the benefit of Dr. Hill’s company. We were in Topeka at the time, and we spent a couple of days—”
We both turned at the sound of thudding footsteps on the back stairs. I recognized the sound. It was my brother, having collected Bess at Ravelsen’s, returning home for the evening. By the reverberation of Harry’s tread, I knew that Bess had not responded warmly to his latest career plan, and that his “uncomprehending world” tirade would not be long in coming. After a moment, the kitchen door flew open, and Harry stormed into the room, followed by Bess.
“Dash!” he cried. “She will not listen! She does not wish to join the Portain Circus! Is this not madness? You must explain it to her! I cannot tolerate another day in the dime museum! Am I not the man whom the Milwaukee Sentinel called the ‘most captivating entertainer in living memory’? Yet I am squandering my youth working a ten-in-one! My talents are being wasted!” He threw himself down in a chair. “I feel as if I am alone with my genius in an uncomprehending world.”
“Harry,” I said, indicating Biggs. “You remember—”
But he was too caught up in his jeremiad. “I am the world’s all-eclipsing and justly celebrated master of escape! I have struggled for years to attain my present level of perfection in my craft! And now I have an opportunity to reach a broader audience, and my own wife would prefer to remain where she is! Madness! Dash, perhaps you can explain the importance of this new opportunity! She will not listen to me!”
“Harry,” I said again, “we have a—”
“Must I remain at the dime museum until I am old and gray, entertaining the groundlings for mere table scraps? Ridiculous! I am accused of being a jealous husband! Absurd! I am proud of my wife’s attainments! But at the same time I must endeavor to do what is best for my family, as every man must! Is it not vastly preferable that husband and wife should be together? This seems to me to be beyond dispute! I would even go so far as to say—”
As was often the case when my brother was well along on one of his harangues, it fell to Bess to quiet him. “Harry,” she said, laying a hand on his arm. “Stop.”
That was all it took. My brother blinked once or twice, as though emerging from a trance, then looked down at her with a curious expression. “What is it, my dear?”
“We have a visitor.”
Harry turned and registered for the first time that there was another person in the room. “Biggs,” he said, puzzled.
Biggs had stood to pull out a chair for Bess. “Hello, Houdini,” he said. “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Houdini.”
“Thank you, Mr. Biggs,” said Bess, smiling in a way that even a brass-plated bloodhound couldn’t possibly have resisted. “And how are you this evening, Dash?”
“I’m well, thank you.”
My sister-in-law had come directly from Ravelsen’s, wearing a cloth overcoat over her stage costume. Her chorus girl outfit was a gauzy, tight-fitting concoction of short bloomers, purple stockings, and a glittery sash. It was designed for ease of movement and showed her bare arms and stockinged legs to advantage. Although not quite as revealing as the familiar sugarplum fairy getup she wore on stage with Harry, it had much the same impact. Take my word for it.
Harry took his usual place at the table while Bess chatted brightly about the goings-on at Ravelsen’s. Mother served each of them a bowl of soup, while Biggs and I were given plates of Chicken Debrecen. Harry and Biggs regarded one another warily across the table.
“Biggs,” Harry said at last, “if you’ve come to drag my brother off to one of your bawdy houses, I’m afraid you’ll have to go alone. I need him for an important rehearsal this evening.”
“Oh, undoubtedly!” cried Biggs. “It’s apparent that all of New York is crying out for the debut of Harry Houdini’s latest miracle! Have you reserved the Palace yet?”
Harry’s face darkened. “It is only a matter of time, Biggs. Only a matter of time.”
“Strong words from Harry Keller’s hod carrier. Or was even that job too demanding?”
Harry slapped his hands on the table. “I’ll have you know that Mr. Kellar—”
A stern voice cut his words short. “That will be enough, boys.”
Biggs and my brother looked up to see my mother standing over them with her hands on her hips. “That will be enough, boys,” she repeated. “Don’t make me separate you.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Weiss.”
Harry folded his arms and stared fiercely at the opposite wall. Biggs beamed happily as my mother served him another portion of whipped potatoes. “You’ll spoil me, Mrs. Weiss,” he said.
“You looked as if you could use a little something on your stomach,” she answered.
“Biggs has been asking about spook shows,” I said, hoping to cajole my brother out of his foul humor. “I was just telling him about that night in Topeka.”
“Oh, I remember that night,” Bess said. “Very strange. I wouldn’t care to go through that again.”
“Nor I,” Harry said with a shake of his head. “I don’t know why I ever agreed to it.”
Biggs, his curiosity roused, set down his fork and leaned forward. “Agreed to what? What’s all this about, anyway?”
“It was supposed to be a simple spook show,” I said. “With a few ghosts and goblins dancing against a black screen. In the end it became something more. I’m trying to remember how we billed it. What was it, Harry?”
He closed his eyes as if picturing the handbill. “‘Professor Harry Houdini, the man who sees all, will give a Spiritual Séance in the Open Light,’” he intoned. “‘Grand, Brilliant, Bewildering, and Startling Spiritualistic Display and other Weird Happenings presided over by the Celebrated Psycrometic Clairvoyant. Assisted by Mlle. Beatrice Houdini.’” He opened his eyes and gave a sidelong glance at Bess. “You see, my dear. Even then I always took care to share the stage and billing with you.”
Bess, chewing a forkful of chicken, did not reply.
“What does ‘psycrometic’ mean?” asked Biggs.
“We were never quite sure,” I admitted. “It was a term the Davenports seemed to favor. We copied everything from them, except for the part about performing in the open light.”
“Well, that was the point,” Harry said. “I had hoped to present the thing in a fair and open manner, not like these cork-show Merlins who can’t even make a tambourine jangle unless the room is pitch black.”
“You’re getting ahead of me,” Biggs said.
Harry, who seldom had the chance to tell Biggs something he didn’t know, leapt at the opportunity. “It’s very simple,” he said. “In your ordinary séance room or spirit show, the so-called psychic will offer up a number of modest little parlor tricks. A ringing bell, perhaps. Or a scrawl of writing on a chalk slate. He dresses up these minor effects as ‘manifestations,’ and they are presented as indications of contact with the spirit world.”
“That much I understand,” said Biggs, bridling a bit at being on the receiving end of a lecture from Harry. “But what does that have to do with Topeka?”<
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“I planned to do something unique,” Harry said. “When Dr. Hill asked me to present a spirit show, I hoped to show that the Great Houdini was capable of doing such things under the glare of the stage lights. It—thank you, Mama—” He looked up as Mother served him a plate of chicken. “It seemed to me that if I could do these things in the open light, it would open the audience’s eyes to how easily such deceptions are practiced. I should have known better.”
“You couldn’t have known how they would respond, Harry,” said Bess.
“What happened?” asked Biggs, flashing another broad smile as Mother placed a slice of raisin bundt cake before him.
“I was too effective,” said Harry. “Too brilliant. It is a familiar problem.”
“It wasn’t so much brilliance as careful planning,” I said. “Harry and I knew all along that we’d need to soak up some of the local color if we were going to pull this thing off. We spent a couple of afternoons mooching about in the town, listening in on gossip, reading old newspapers at the library. As it happened, there had been a rather gruesome killing some months earlier—a bar fight gone bad—and the locals were eager to talk about it.”
“Don’t forget the cemetery,” said Harry. “That was my idea.”
“Yes, we went to the cemetery and copied down the names from the tombstones that appeared to be the most recent.”
“What’d you need those for?” Biggs asked.
“I’m surprised that a brass-plated bloodhound such as yourself has to ask,” I said. “We were priming the pump. We had prepared a few props and gimmicks, but we wanted to be certain that our patter was up to scratch.”
“We needn’t have worried,” said Harry. “My startling natural charisma carried the day.”
“Even so, I was eager to make sure we were properly prepared. We knew the house would be full that night. Our Celebrated Psycrometic Clairvoyant handbills had been posted far and wide. It was a big theater—quite possibly the largest crowd we’ve ever played.”
“Surely not!” cried Harry. “Have you forgotten our appearance at the Belasco?”
“No, Harry, I haven’t forgotten the Belasco. However, since we were serving as assistants to Harry Kellar at the time, I’m not sure we can claim credit for filling the seats—although you were wonderfully engaging as Brakko the Strongman.” I turned back to Biggs. “As I was saying, it was probably the largest crowd who had ever assembled for the specific purpose of seeing the Houdinis. We started the demonstration with a rough approximation of the Davenport act. We invited a committee of audience members to come up and tie Harry to a chair. They made a good job of it, with his hands double-knotted at the back. Then we brought in a cabinet of cloth screens—the same one we used in the Trunk Substitution Mystery—and drew the curtains in front of Harry’s chair. I stepped away from the curtain and asked the members of the committee if they were certain that they had tied him securely. The words were barely out of my mouth when the weird happenings commenced.”
“They were rather good,” Harry recalled, smiling.
“Weird happenings?” Biggs asked.
“First the audience heard a loud klaxon horn from within Harry’s cabinet. Then the horn itself was flung into the air. Next there was the strumming of a mandolin. After a moment, we could see the mandolin itself hovering above the enclosure.”
“Harry had escaped,” Biggs said matter-of-factly. “Quite simple.”
“It might have seemed so at first,” I allowed. “But each time there was a strange manifestation, I would fling open the curtains to show Harry still securely tied to the chair, his head lolling on his chest, as though in the thrall of unseen forces. But as soon as I drew the curtain again, we would hear another sound or see another strange apparition. After a time, the whole cabinet started to shake and pitch as though possessed by a restless spirit. Finally the screen fell forward in a heap, and there was Harry, free of the ropes, taking his bows.”
“I couldn’t resist,” Harry admitted. “I couldn’t allow them to think that those feeble sailor-hitch knots could hold me. I told the audience that I had been untied by spirit hands.”
“I admit it sounds like a very clever act,” Biggs said, “but I don’t see much of a difference from the Davenport act.”
“Ah!” Harry cried. “That would have been true if we had let it rest there, but I was not content to be a mere imitator!”
“That’s where things got a bit out of hand,” I said. “We decided to give them a spirit message service.”
“Pardon?” asked Biggs.
“It’s what they call it when the medium brings forth messages from the other side—for specific individuals in the audience.”
“Messages?” asked Biggs. “From the dead, you mean?”
“Or so they claimed,” said Bess, taking up the thread. “On the face of it, the entire thing seemed outrageous. If I had not seen it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed how effective such a display could be. Imagine if you went along to the theater one night, and the gentleman on stage called out your name across the footlights and delivered a few words that he claimed to be a private message from a dead relative of yours. Your grandfather, for example.”
“I would say that he was a charlatan,” Biggs declared. “Such things are not possible.”
“So you might think,” Bess continued, “but what if the message contained some private, deeply personal piece of intelligence—something that no stranger could possibly have known? A pet name, for instance, or a memory of some birthday or anniversary?”
Biggs hesitated, stirring the crumbs of his bundt cake with his fork. “I still wouldn’t believe it,” he said.
“Nor would I,” said Bess, “but a fair number of people in Topeka were persuaded otherwise.”
Biggs set down the fork. “You told them that you were communicating with their families?”
“Not in so many words,” I said. “We brought the lights low, and Harry walked forward and stood alone at the edge of the stage. He looked out over the audience and told them that he could see spirit forms hovering in their midst. His voice quavered as he said this, and his hands were seen to tremble.”
“I was mesmerizing,” said Harry.
“It was one of his more remarkable displays,” I agreed. “He spoke in a quiet, reverent voice and kept his eyes closed and his body rigid, as though the exertion of this contact with the other side was threatening to overwhelm him. Then he started to call out names. ‘Mr. Alexander Botham. I sense the presence of your wife. She is here with us tonight. She is happy on the other side. She wishes you well. Mrs. Mabel North, your daughter Helen is being well looked after by her spirit family. Your mother is with her, and your Aunt Catherine.’”
An expression of distaste passed over Biggs’s face. “That’s cruel, Houdini. Giving people false hope that way. You got those names off tombstones.”
Harry nodded and his eyes grew unfocused. “It was unforgivable,” he said quietly.
“Believe me, Biggs,” I said, “we’ve both had occasion to think better of what we did that night. At the same time there was something quite moving about it. I found I couldn’t take my eyes off the faces in the crowd. There was something extraordinary in the way they kept glancing at one another, half afraid, yet half hoping that Harry might call upon them. If we had stopped it there, I might actually have persuaded myself that we had given them a strange form of consolation. But we took it too far.”
“How do you mean?” Biggs asked.
I glanced at Harry. He looked away. “After half an hour or so, Harry suddenly drew back, and his eyes went wide with alarm, as though he had sensed a new and dangerous presence in the theater. He walked to the lights and peered out over the heads of the crowd, focusing on something that only he could see. ‘Who is this?’ he said. ‘It is a man, but who is he? He is badly injured, I can see. He walks in a halting manner. He does not speak, yet I can sense that his soul is restless and troubled. He draws closer. What do I see? Wh
y—why—it is horrible! His throat is cut! The blood flows freely from the wound, and he—’ “
“The dead man,” said Biggs. “The one who’d been killed in the bar fight.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And it caused an uproar. By the time Harry called out the man’s name, women were screaming from the balcony. Men were on their feet with their fists raised, ready to fight off the angry spirit. There were some who fainted dead away and others who ran from the theater.” I shook my head at the memory. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It was inexcusable,” said Harry. “It was only then that I realized how easily one might prey upon the fears of the public. I might have become a considerable success as a medicine show huckster, but I could not bring myself to walk that path.”
“Oh, come now, Houdini,” said Biggs. “I saw you jump off a bridge once, and I’ve always been convinced that you stayed underwater longer than necessary just to throw a good scare into the crowd. Isn’t it much the same thing? Aren’t your escapes just another form of spook show?”
I expected that the accusation would send Harry into an indignant bluster. To my surprise, he appeared to weigh the question carefully. “There is an important difference. When I do my escapes, the audience feels a degree of fear because they themselves are afraid of what I am facing. They are afraid of being confined. They are afraid of dark places. They are afraid of drowning. But they are afraid on my behalf, not for themselves. And when I am successful, it is as though they have seen their fears conquered. Not so with the spiritualists. There is nothing honest in what they do. They do not conquer death. Instead they feed upon the fear of death. Such false coin must be nailed to the counter at any cost.”
Biggs looked at my brother as if for the first time. “You sound almost human, Houdini.”
Harry Houdini Mysteries Page 3