“Nor can those who support them, those like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a man capable of creating a character as intelligent and analytical as Sherlock Holmes but incapable of seeing through the trickery of Margery Crandon, the witch of Beacon Hill.”
He went on to show how mediums manipulated the tables during a séance, how they manifested ectoplasm, how they rang the bells and chimed the triangles and blew the trumpets. He gave a demonstration of slate writing, showing us in clear view how he did it. It was fascinating, I suppose—the entire theatre was riveted—but I had a hard time paying attention. I could not shake the feeling that I’d done something I could not take back. But I knew that everything had changed.
One summer morning when I was about ten I was in the kitchen with my mother. My father came in and announced that Charlie, the family dog, had died. That dog had been with us since I was born, and was as much a friend to me as anyone. A boy and his dog, that old story. My reaction to hearing this news should have been shock, grief, almost anything other than what happened.
“So what,” I said, “he was a stupid animal.”
This was something my father would have said, I thought, or maybe there is more of my father in me than I know. It is inexplicable to me why I said it. But I did, and an instant later I was on the floor with my head buzzing and a throbbing jaw. My father stood over me, his fists tight at his sides, as angry as I’d ever seen him. I didn’t dare speak. I can’t say how long he stood there. He breathed hard, and then my mother came over and touched him lightly on the arm. This made him look at her and she looked back at him, and his anger faded. Without speaking he turned and left the room. I lay on the floor a while longer and then sat up.
“I’m sorry,” I said to my mother.
She looked down at me. “Your father loved that dog.”
“So did I.” My jaw was really starting to hurt now that the shock had begun to wear off.
“I know you did,” she said, handing me a wet cloth. “But some things once said can’t be taken back. Not everything is reversible, even if you’re sorry.”
Houdini’s speech came to an end. He bowed to us as we rose to our feet, holding nothing back. He came back several times for encores, and then the lights came up and the Princess Theatre reluctantly disgorged us into the street. We were tightly packed as we left, almost dazed, and somehow I became separated from the others. One second Clara was right in front of me and the next she was replaced by a woman with a feathered hat, who was an instant later replaced by a tall man whose overcoat smelled of pipe smoke.
Out on the street I searched for her, expecting to see her standing by a streetlamp, waiting for us. Waving when she saw me, a smile on her face. All I saw were the faces of strangers.
After a few minutes Will and Evelyn emerged from the theatre, spotting me immediately and weaving through the throng.
“Was that a show. Wow,” Will said, his face flushed.
“Where’s Clara?” Evelyn asked.
I shrugged. “Wasn’t feeling well.” I felt sick. We shouldn’t have gone to that coatroom. This wasn’t how it should have been. None of what was happening was right.
“She seemed fine at intermission,” Evelyn said. She scanned the street for her.
“I have to go,” I said. “I should have walked her home.”
Will, to his credit, seemed to know something wasn’t right. “Go do what you need to do, and come by the Pig and Whistle afterward. We’ll be there awhile.” I could tell he wanted to say more but not in front of Evelyn.
I walked away. Moving fast, I took the route that seemed the most likely one Clara would choose. She only had a bit of a head start on me, and I should have been able to catch up with her. After ten blocks I began to run. It was the only way to stop from thinking. My lungs ached from the cold air and my feet hurt, but instead of stopping I ran faster.
When I reached her house, I stopped and, hands on my knees, fought the wave of fatigue and nausea that had been chasing me. The lights at her house were all off. If anyone was home, they didn’t want it known or had gone to bed. I couldn’t simply walk up and ring the bell—what would I say if her father was home? There was no way to explain my presence, even to myself.
I stood there in the night air, sweating, unsure of what to do next. She was gone. Where I didn’t know. I pulled out my flask and unscrewed the stopper, tipping it to my lips. It was empty.
Wherever Clara had gone, she didn’t want to be found. I turned away from her house and began a slow walk back into town. I tried to keep my mind still, wanting to do anything other than think. My brain, as usual, did not cooperate.
Was this how life worked? Were people there one moment, wound around you so tightly you couldn’t distinguish what was you and what was them, and gone an instant later? This couldn’t be how it worked. Could it?
In front of me was the Prince of Wales Hotel. Will and Evelyn were probably inside. I didn’t feel very social, and certainly didn’t want to have to talk about Clara, but I did want a drink. Maybe not just one.
An awful thought seized me. What if something had happened to Clara? What if she hadn’t vanished of her own volition but instead someone had taken her? I had to find Will. He’d know what to do.
I went through the heavy door and into the lobby, feeling a blast of warm air as the door swung shut behind me. A small crowd had formed at the far end, and as I passed by I saw that Will was there, speaking with a man I couldn’t quite see. I changed course toward Will and stopped. He was talking to Houdini himself. There were ten or twelve others with him, a few I recognized, and they were all listening raptly to Houdini’s response.
“He’s staying in the hotel,” Will whispered to me when he saw me standing beside him. Houdini seemed shorter up close, but it was immediately apparent how strong he was. He had a magnetism about him—even if you had no idea who he was, you would know immediately that he was someone important.
“Feel my forearm,” he said to one fellow. He flexed his arm and held it out to him.
“It’s like iron,” the man said.
“It has to be,” Houdini said. “Fools like Sir Arthur may say that the spirits help me in my work, but the truth of it is that I’m a mortal man, and all that keeps me alive is my wits and my training.”
At that moment my attention veered toward the stairway leading down to the Pig and Whistle. I did a double take as I saw Clara and Evelyn climbing the stairs. Will whispered, “She was here waiting for us all when we got here. She’s been wondering where you were.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d wait for us here. Is that what had happened? It didn’t make sense completely, but here she was.
I looked over to where Clara was, and she was staring straight at me. I realized that she wasn’t the one who had been lost. I was. And I, or anyone, could see that she was relieved to have found me. I knew from the look on her face—this woman loved me.
“Is it true that your stomach muscles are strong enough to withstand any punch?” Will asked Houdini, but I wasn’t interested in their conversation.
I was about to go to Clara when I put my hand in my pocket, and it emerged holding the letter my father had sent me. I dropped it onto the floor as if it were on fire. I began to bend to pick up the letter. Instead, I stepped forward, toward Houdini. My hand tightened into a fist and I swung hard, transferring my weight from my back foot to my front foot and striking him squarely in the gut. It was nothing like iron. I felt the air pushed out of him and heard him exhale a grunt, and then the force of my punch took me into him. His hand grabbed at my coat as we both fell to the floor.
There was a moment while we lay there when our eyes met. His face was serene, not at all in pain. He looked, if anything, relieved. Content. He made no attempt to fight back. I didn’t understand it.
Someone grabbed me by my shoulders and pulled me off him, though I wasn’t hitting him anymore and had no intention of doing so. I was roughly pulled away, and the last I saw of Houdini was h
im being helped to his feet, looking a little winded but otherwise unharmed. I couldn’t see where Clara was. I was ushered to the door and heaved onto the street. Will came outside and stopped a couple of meaty-looking guys from giving me a beating. I wished he hadn’t—I had no intention of resisting. He spoke quietly to them, trying to defuse things, and I turned away and started toward home.
For days after I ignored all knocks on the door, all shouts at my window, barely ate, barely slept. Every crack on the wall was enumerated. Each scrape on the floorboards was tabulated. I wished the world stopped, frozen until I could make sense of it. I sent away all voices that came to me and sat in silence, paralyzed by my actions and an inability to respond to them. It felt as if a great pit had opened up beneath me, and if I were to make any move at all I would fall into it.
Eventually hunger drove me out of my room. I went to a nearby diner and sat at the counter, ordered a coffee and a sandwich. I ate in silence. There was a paper on the counter from the day before. I had to reread the headline to believe it.
Houdini was dead. He’d died in Detroit the day before, from what the paper described as “a burst appendix brought on by an unexpected blow.” The paper went on to give a brief and vague account of what had happened in the lobby of the Prince of Wales Hotel. I wasn’t named, but I knew I was the one who had punched him. I was the one who had killed Harry Houdini.
I staggered out of the diner and went straight to my room. A panic seized me. I was the cause of the death of the most famous man in the world. It was only a matter of time before the papers figured out who I was. There had been plenty of people there that night who knew me.
My palms were sweating. I wiped them on my coat and felt in its right-hand pocket an unfamiliar weight. I reached inside and discovered a small, leather-bound notebook I’d never seen before. Scrawled inside were a jumble of letters that made no sense whatsoever.
SDBDWWHQWLRQLDPWDNLQJBRXRQDKXQWIRUWUXWK
There were about a hundred and fifty pages of this, and no clue as to what it all meant or how the notebook came into my pocket.
I set the book down and picked a letter off the floor. Someone had slipped it under my door while I was out. The envelope had no stamp or return address, only my name in bold lettering. I opened it. On a sheet of paper in the same handwriting was written
You need to leave. You cannot stay here.
Immediately I knew that whoever had written the note, whether it was a threat or a warning, was right. I had to go.
By nightfall I had packed my bags and emptied my room, sliding the key under the door as I left. I was operating on adrenaline, reacting to my situation without thinking. I had planned to go straight to the train station, but instead I turned toward Clara’s house. I didn’t know what I would do when I got there, and spent the walk in a half daze.
When I arrived there was a light on upstairs, and I knew she was home, but I couldn’t make myself knock on the door. What could I possibly say to her? I’d sealed my fate the moment I’d punched Houdini, but for Clara that wouldn’t matter. She had been wrong to love me. I had let her down, but if it hadn’t been this, then it would have been something else. I couldn’t even explain to her why I had punched Houdini—I didn’t know myself. I wished I had time to figure it out, to enumerate my failings and repair them. But whoever had warned me to leave had made it clear I was in danger. I couldn’t put Clara in danger too. As long as I was around, she wasn’t safe. If I really did care about her, then the only thing left for me to do was disappear. I turned away and walked the long walk to the train station.
I would vanish as completely as any man had ever done, if I could. Disappearing was all that mattered to me now.
HOUDINI
1904
MORE THAN FOUR THOUSAND PEOPLE CAME TO LONDON’S Hippodrome that day. They didn’t come to see the world’s most opulent theatrical building. They didn’t come for the stage large enough to present a circus complete with elephants or for the grand replica ship’s saloon. They came to see only one thing.
Six performers opened the bill. The audience had no interest whatsoever in them. As three o’clock drew closer their fidgeting and whispering became louder. The ushers and attendants grew nervous, and the manager wondered aloud in front of the gallery of a hundred journalists whether this was a good idea after all.
The last act finished and the stage was cleared. Onto it was carried a wooden cabinet about three feet tall and equally wide. The front was covered with a red velvet curtain. At the sight of the cabinet, the crowd cheered, startling the stage dressers and nearly causing them to drop it.
A man came onstage. He was tall and thin with a pale face, his long charcoal coat unbuttoned. His shoes were a deep black and polished to a fine lustre. The man walked with the confidence affected by someone who is in fact frightened. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly deep—he appeared more the sort of man to have a thin, reedy voice.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.” The crowd applauded with limited enthusiasm. They weren’t here for this man. “Please allow me to introduce to you Mr. Harry Houdini.”
All eyes focused on the wings, but Houdini did not emerge. Then the doors at the back of the Hippodrome were thrown open, their weight echoing down toward the stage, and at once the entire audience turned to see Houdini, in a black dress coat and white high-collared shirt, stride down the aisle like a marching soldier. By the time he reached the front row, everyone was standing, and their ovation lasted long after he leaped to the stage. He bowed once or twice to acknowledge them, but his trademark ebullience was not on display.
He surveyed the crowd. These people were London’s finest. The past four days had been a flurry of promotion and preparation. He had barely slept.
Houdini made his introductory remarks. There was no lock that could hold him. He was Houdini, the Handcuff King. He lauded the London public for their appreciation and dared all imposters to duplicate his feats. “I am ready,” he said finally, “to be manacled by the Mirror representative if he be present.”
The man who had introduced him, the only other person on the stage, stuck out his hand. “I am Richard Kelley. I represent the Mirror.” Houdini shook his hand and smiled at the man. Of course he had known who he was. It was all a game. He could see Bess off to the side, watching him. She was wearing black knickerbockers, which he didn’t like and which she wore, he suspected, to irritate him.
They each called on the audience for a committee of citizens to ensure fair play, and one by one nearly a hundred people came forward. Once the committee was assembled, Kelley brought out the handcuffs from his coat pocket. Houdini held out his wrists and Kelley fastened them. The key itself was over six inches long, and Kelley had trouble getting it into the keyway. He had to turn it a full six times to fully lock the cuffs. Houdini closed his eyes as Kelley struggled to lock the cuffs. The man was a fool, and he was showing himself as such to the world.
When the cuffs were locked, Kelley removed the key and placed it in his inside coat pocket. He moved a few steps away from Houdini, sweating, his hand routinely darting into his coat to verify the presence of the key.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Houdini said in his loudest voice, “I am now locked up in a handcuff that took a British mechanic five years to make. I do not know whether I am going to get out of it or not, but I can assure you I am going to do my best.”
The cheers were cacophonous, and while various members of the committee examined his cabinet he heard shouts of encouragement. The enthusiasm of the audience amazed and frightened him.
Once all were satisfied that his cabinet was as it appeared, he entered it and drew the curtain. The sounds from outside were somewhat muffled, but the feeling of four thousand sets of eyes trained upon the curtain was ever present.
The cabinet was a tight fit and he had to kneel. In his opinion this made his escapes seem more dramatic—a large cabinet would have given the impression that he was free to do whatever he liked and als
o would have admitted into the viewer’s mind the possibility that it held a confederate.
He inhaled until his lungs were as full as they could be. Tonight would be the culmination of his years of hard work. He had become Houdini, the Handcuff King, had escaped from every lock put before him. He’d toured America, Europe, and Russia with top billing, made more money than he’d ever dreamt of. After this challenge he planned to return to America and buy a fine house and pour gold into his mother’s apron, as he’d promised his father he would. Things with Bess would settle down too—without the demands of the road for a few months they’d be able to get back to their old selves. She’d see that he had done what had to be done to succeed, and that any dalliances along the way were not really his fault but simply a result of the pressure he was under; none of them meant anything anyway. She would forgive him everything.
Today was a nasty piece of business. Four days ago Richard Kelley had brought these damnable handcuffs to his show and asked him, onstage, to open them. He’d tried to shrug him off—they weren’t regulation cuffs, and the terms of the open challenge were that he would escape from any cuffs of regulation issue.
He had good reason to insist on these terms. Months earlier in Blackburn, a man named Hodgeson had fooled him and chained him up with plugged locks. There was no key or pick on earth that could open them—once they were closed, they were unworkable. It had taken him hours to free himself, tearing chunks of flesh off in the process. The show would have been a complete disaster, if not for a file passed to him by Bess.
Kelley hadn’t been deterred by his insistence on regulation cuffs. Houdini had been fettered by three other challengers, and within moments had freed himself, to everyone’s delight. Kelley then asked him for a pair of the handcuffs from which he’d just escaped. Houdini had assumed that Kelley wanted to see if they were gaffed, which they weren’t, so he handed him a locked pair.
The Confabulist Page 7
