by Ed Ifkovic
“Houdini wants to say hello to you,” Homer said. “He sent me to ask you because he can’t escape the sycophants.” A strange run of words, mechanical and flat, said while looking over my shoulder and seemingly addressed to the wall behind me. I caught Houdini’s eye. He was being monopolized by the overbearing Helena Poindexter, Appleton’s quintessential clubwoman, all bosom and bamboozle. He couldn’t escape. Her dress had a sweetheart décolleté neckline, and under the overhead lights her wrinkled neck sported an ostentatious rope of pearls, a look that didn’t serve her well. Homer Timm slipped back to his necessary wall next to the frowning Mildred, while I made my way to Houdini, who looked relieved.
“You like my show?”
“Of course.”
“I knew you would. I’m the Handcuff King. The world flocks to my shows.” He actually puffed his chest out, a bantam on home ground.
And I’m the Queen of Sheba. Immediately I feared he could also read minds. “Very impressive.”
“I read your interview in the Crescent.”
“You did?” I was pleased.
“Wonderful. I love what you said about my devotion to my mother. And the money I make. I am a success story for Appleton.”
“You are, indeed.”
“I cut it out, two copies, pasted one in my scrapbook I carry.”
I thanked him, pleased. “I’m just…”
He cut me off. “You are going to say you’re just a small-town reporter.” I shuddered. My God, he did read minds. “You remember my advice to you?”
He waited for me to answer. “Concentration and imagination.”
He chuckled. “A good student.”
I caught my mother’s eye. Let’s go home, her glance indicated. But when I looked back at Houdini, suddenly I didn’t want to abandon the conversation because I had an idea. I leaned into him. “Mr. Houdini, perhaps you’ve read of the murder of Frana Lempke?”
He seemed startled by the quick shift in subject. “Yes, David Baum and I discussed it. It’s a sad story, no?”
“It’s baffling.” I tried not to raise my voice.
“Baffling?”
“The way it happened. We…I mean the police can’t make any sense out of the way it happened. It’s a mystery.”
“What are you telling me?” His head was bobbing, his face close to mine.
“Well, watching you tonight on stage…”
“You liked it?”
“Of course, but watching your show, I thought…” I stopped. What did I want from him?
Houdini watched me closely, his face now soft and his eyes unblinking. “And you think all mysteries can be answered? Like in my show?”
I was surprised. “I hope so. I’ve always believed there’s an answer to everything.”
“That may not be true.”
“But there is a murderer…”
“You know, my dear Miss Ferber, murders are like escape from handcuffs—there’s always gotta be an answer, even though it looks impossible. Concentration and imagination. Logic and romance, the two together, you know. Any crime has to have an answer. It’s just a question of how to locate the answer.”
“But that’s what’s baffling.”
He whispered. “Before I let anyone tie me up or handcuff me, I already know beforehand—always—how I will be free. Otherwise I’d panic. It would be chaos, disaster.” He paused. “Even death. You gotta know how to escape.” While he was talking, a young man was dragging at his sleeve, thrusting a paper and pen for an autograph. Houdini tried to ignore him but hurriedly scratched his name on the sheet. He turned to me, “A minute of conversation in my dressing room, perhaps. Is all right?”
I agreed. Hurriedly, I told my family to leave without me, though my mother didn’t look happy. I wove my way through the still-milling crowd to a side door where Houdini waited. Gustave Timm was standing outside his office, his hands holding a stack of papers, and he looked surprised.
Houdini winked at Gustave. “I have a reporter guest for a second.”
Gustave nodded.
As we walked by the open door to Gustave’s office, I spotted the imperious Cyrus P. Powell seated at Gustave’s desk. Oddly, Homer Timm was standing behind him, unmoving, his eyes focused on the money. Powell was counting the money with undue concentration, but he glanced up at Houdini and me, and his look was sour, disapproving. He looked ready to say something, but the stack of dollar bills he gripped seemed more appealing.
Gustave was stranded outside his own office, one he dared not enter.
I followed Houdini into a narrow hallway and trailed him up a small flight of stairs into a shabby square dressing room. I had expected something more glamorous than the threadbare chairs, the dirty chintz draperies, and the faded Currier and Ives prints hanging lopsidedly on the wall. It looked like a room nobody came to…or at least stayed in very long. A musty smell, years of unwashed bodies, too much stage makeup, forgotten clothes left piled in corners. Houdini sat opposite me, poured himself a glass of tonic water, and sipped it. He offered me some, but I refused.
“I don’t drink spirits. It harms my body, saps my energy. I don’t smoke either. Cigars, never.” He made a face. “The body must be kept pure. Remember that.” He smiled as he sat up straight, his eyes fixed on me. “Now tell me the facts. The story of the murder.”
For the next few minutes, a little in awe of the man who drew close to me, blue-gray eyes shiny in the flickering gas light, I narrated the saga of Frana sneaking out of the high school, the phony note, the rumors of assignation with an older man—he frowned at that—the finding of the body in Lovers Lane.
“But why do you think of me?”
I breathed in. “When I saw you get out of that box…” I told him of the locked storeroom, the dusty space with the smudged footprints…and Frana’s bit of ribbon.
“So?”
“So she got into that storeroom and we thought she hid there—or was held there against her wishes, perhaps strangled there—but a witness now claims he saw her running in Lovers Lane a few minutes later. It’s impossible.”
“It doesn’t sound too complicated.”
“Well, it’s baffled us all.” I waited a second. “It doesn’t seem possible.”
“She could have walked out. People miss what’s in front of their eyes, you know. Illusion.”
“You haven’t met Miss Hepplewhyte.”
He tilted his head to the side. “So it’s a box of illusion, that room.”
“Perhaps you can help.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no.”
This was not what I wanted to hear. “I’m bothered, Mr. Houdini, I must tell you, because the school janitor is considered the murderer, so far at least. He’s a gentle man, harmless, a German immigrant who doesn’t understand what’s happening to him. A witness claims he saw Frana and her friend frolicking”—I paused, hesitant with the word—“in Lovers Lane. Well, sir, Mr. Schmidt is not one to frolic. Believe me.” I was going on and on, becoming impassioned, and I realized that Houdini was smiling at me. No, he was grinning widely.
“What?” A little peeved.
“I enjoy your spirit.”
“Well…”
“It’s good, really. You write with flavor, and you speak with a passion. And you are how old?”
“Nineteen.”
“A child.”
“Hardly.”
“Are you married?”
“Of course not.” What was wrong with this man?
“I married my Bess young, knew her a matter of days. A slip of a girl, though the love of my life, this wonderful woman. She is better than my career, of course. In a few years I’ll stop this nonsense and have children. Lots of them.”
“I have no intention of getting married,” I announced, surprising myself.
“Then you better get famous fast.”
“Why?”
“We all got to have someone to applaud for us.”
That made no sense. I wanted to get back to the stor
y of Frana. “Mr. Houdini, people can’t walk through walls…”
“Of course they can.”
“No, no, realistically.” I was getting frustrated. “I know you do an act on stage, but you can’t just walk through a wall.” I pointed to an outside wall, bright under blazing gaslight.
“You just have to know how to do it.”
He was toying with me, as he’d done before, and, again, I realized I took myself too seriously. All right. But this pleasant banter was getting us nowhere. Frankly, it was time for bed. Eight hours of blissful sleep each night, my practical regimen, my requirement, no less.
“All along,” I emphasized, “I was thinking Frana was hiding in that locked, unused storeroom, but maybe she was running through the woods, happy as can be.” I made eye contact. “That means she got out.”
“Happy, until someone snapped her neck.” Houdini dramatically twisted his wrists.
I trembled. “It seems impossible.”
“Mysteries are like handcuffs…”
I interrupted. “I know, I know. They always have an answer.”
“Let me think on this. I’m here for three more days.” He stood. “Now I’ll walk you home.”
“Oh, no. That’s not necessary. Appleton is a safe town. It’s not that far.”
His face set, firm. “I am a gentleman. I can do no less.”
I acquiesced reluctantly, though flattered. As we walked out, Gustave Timm was turning off the gaslights and locking the doors behind us. Mildred Dunne had left. Cinderella back at the hearth, dreaming of September and her honeymoon at Niagara Falls. Outside, waiting for his brother, Homer Timm stood with his arms folded over his chest. He seemed startled to see Houdini and me together, Houdini cradling my elbow. We turned down the sidewalk, crossing the street. When I glanced back both brothers were still outside the Lyceum, two shadows against the dark façade, unmoving.
Under a moonlit sky, we walked to my home in comfortable silence. The only thing Houdini said was that the night reminded him of a recent stroll on the Nevsky Prospekt in Moscow.
“The sky was the same pale blue with a hint of sulfur in the air. Like here in Appleton from the paper mills out at the Flats. I never forget the odor of sulfur in the air. In Moscow I feel like I’m in prison. The Czar’s police follow you everywhere. It ain’t America, Miss Ferber.” He grew quiet, neither of us talking until I pointed out my house, dark now, on North Street. He bowed and I thanked him.
“I have an answer for you,” he said, suddenly. “There is only one possible answer.”
I turned back. “What is it?”
“Not yet.”
“When?”
He chuckled in the darkness. “The impatience of young people. I will sleep on it.”
He disappeared into the dark night.
Chapter Twelve
The next day I met Esther for a lunch at Volker’s Drug Store, famous for its curious cardboard sign in the front window: Hier wird Englisch gesprochen. On Thursdays Mrs. Beckerstrader baked her German delights, an array of succulent confections, plum tortes, Pfeffernusse, the cottage cheese kuchen, and the cinnamon rolls topped with slivers of almonds—the best in Appleton—and both of us knew the delicacies would be gone by Friday. Each week I treated Esther from the allowance my mother gave me from my salary. It made me feel…independent. Afterwards, sated, I staggered back toward the city room with Esther, who’d be shopping for her mother’s kitchen at W. L. Rhodes, Grocer, just around the corner from the Crescent office. As we approached Morrison and College, we nearly collided with Ivy Ryan, her arms around a basket of poppy-seed rolls.
Miss Ivy gushed, “You’d best get back to the office. You have a visitor waiting on you.”
“Who?”
“The man who warrants these rolls.” Miss Ivy’s eyes grew wide. “Sam first mentioned a pail of beer from Glassner’s Grog Shop, but Houdini said no. Never.”
In an awed voice she told us that Houdini had stopped in at the office asking for me, and Sam Ryan sent her to purchase some breads. The office was in a titter. “Even Matthias Boon seems at a loss for venom.”
Esther said goodbye, but I insisted she meet the great Houdini. Flustered, Esther started to hiccough, debating what to do. Her rabbi father had forbidden her coming with us to see the show at the Lyceum, but she’d peppered me with questions about it. “The opportunity of a lifetime, Esther.”
As we descended the five cement steps, Houdini stood, smiled, and bowed, first at me and then at Esther. Of course, he was immediately taken with Esther, which irritated me. After all, Houdini was my friend. Sort of. Somewhat. Esther slipped into a convenient chair and produced a smile that seemed frozen onto her captivating features.
Byron Beveridge was sitting back, his fingers idly tinkling the keys of his typewriter as he watched Houdini. Matthias Boon had maneuvered his swivel chair to the edge of his cluttered desk, as close to Houdini as he could be and still seemingly remain positioned at his own desk. He gave me a mock friendly look that reminded me of Homer Timm’s transparent attempt at friendliness at the high school. Sam Ryan slumped in his rickety chair behind that chicken wire fence (I wondered what Houdini thought of such a makeshift construction in a newspaper office), conducting a lively talk with Houdini.
Sitting back in a chair pulled close to Sam’s desk, Houdini seemed a nondescript man, as unassuming as the town cooper or gunsmith, someone stopping in to place an ad in the Crescent and chatting about local politics. Sam was puffing on his cigar, and a cloud of dense, stagnant smoke floated above the desk like a low-hanging storm cloud. Sam’s wrinkled face looked more creased and pitted than usual because cracking a smile seemed to set in motion layers of chafed, dry skin.
“Miss Ferber, join us.” Sam Ryan motioned to me. “There’s a man here to see you.”
As I walked by, Boon mumbled, “The novelty may be too much for her.”
I shot him a withering look. I introduced Esther to Houdini, though she remained frozen in a chair by the door. Houdini responded, “Lola Montez has nothing on you, my dear.” For God’s sake. What was I? Dishwater with an intellect? Yes, a part of me was pleased that a friend of mine garnered such attention. After all, I invited her here. Still and all…I surveyed the room. All the men were gaping at Esther, rapt as schoolboys at their games. I caught Miss Ivy’s eye when she looked up from placing the rolls onto a plate. Her puzzled glance suggested that men were such abysmal fools. They always missed the point. Beauty was…well…
“You came to see me?” I asked, loudly.
“I have an answer to your question.” Houdini looked into my eager face.
Sam Ryan was smiling.
“And?”
“And Mr. Ryan agrees with me.” A moment passed, Houdini’s face assuming a faraway look. “You know, Miss Ferber, Mr. Ryan actually remembers my family from years back. He remembers the early Jewish families moving in. The frightened immigrants in the strange town.”
Sam tapped his cigar in his ashtray. “His father, Rabbi Mayer Weiss, used to stop in with news items. A fine man, a scholar. Let me tell you—he created quite a sensation as he walked up College Avenue, looking like an old-world prophet in his Talmudic shawl, a white neckband, and that hat…”
“A barrett,” Houdini finished for him. “The four-cornered miter of German Reform Judaism. I used to be embarrassed…” He stopped. “A man who found nothing in America but sadness and death.” Then he shook his head. “Listen to me. Family stories.” He saluted Sam, pleased. “It’s good he is remembered.”
“And well,” Sam added. “A dignified man.”
Houdini nodded. “But now it is time for our business, Miss Ferber. I’ve suggested to Mr. Ryan a little of what I think needs to be done, but you and I have work to do. We have a performance to stage.”
“I’m not following this, sir.”
“Mr. Ryan has already contacted the chief of police, and we’re meeting at the high school at three, very shortly, when the students leave. I have an id
ea…”
“Tell me,” I demanded, hungry.
Houdini laughed. “I’m a showman, my dear. Seeing is believing. You asked me to perform magic. You have to learn that magic has its own rules. Would you rob me of my moment?” His tone became serious. “I’m not gonna name the murderer for you—I don’t have any idea on that, I tell you—but I think I can show you how to walk through a wall and not be seen. You have to find the murderer yourself.”
I held up my hand. “You misunderstand me, Mr. Houdini. I’m not trying to find a murderer…”
He interrupted. “Of course, you are. I know you, young lady.” He ran his hands through his hair, and a clump of hair jutted out. He left it there. “It’s a story that needs an ending.”
“We have a chief of police and a deputy…”
“They may need a little help from you.”
Sam Ryan was enjoying Houdini’s baiting of me. “Mr. Houdini,” he admitted, “is quite a persuasive man.”
“I can persuade men to chain me, tie me up, handcuff me, throw me into jail cells. People like doing that. It’s the freeing people from shackles that people resist. Wherever you look, people are in the chains they wrap around themselves.” His eyes got bright. “Freeing people is the job of the newspaper.” He stood. “We need to leave for my real Appleton show. Miss Ferber?”
A little dazed, I stood. Sam turned to Matthias Boon. “Matt, get your hat and notebook.”
I would have none of it. “This is my story.”
Sam shook his head. “Mr. Boon is the city editor, Edna. You know that. This is his story.”
“But I’m at the heart of the story.”
Houdini was watching me.
“No.”
And that was that. I glowered at anyone who looked my way. Matthias Boon preened, swelling up like a spoiled child indulged one too many times with sticks of sweet peppermint. So be it. Let the episode of Houdini be reported by a man who didn’t have a sensible notion in his fat head.
