The Secret Life of Houdini

by William Kalush

  Smuggling in the tools was easier said than done. After the Russians made Houdini strip down to his briefs, four burly secret policemen spread-eagled him on an examining table and held him down as another agent probed his ears, his mouth, his nasal cavities, his hair, and every other available orifice for signs of concealed tools. “What a searching,” he later wrote a friend. “Three secret police, or what we would call spies, searched me one after the other, and talk about getting the finger, well I received it three times, but Mr. Russian Spy found nothing.” Franz Kukol, his assistant, had been forced to undergo the same examination.

  The Russians were meticulous in their search of Houdini. They probed, patted, and peered into every available potential hiding space and found nothing. For all their thoroughness, they neglected to note one simple little thing—Houdini had six fingers on one of his hands. Utilizing a metal, hollow, flesh-toned false finger that contained the necessary implements to aid in escape was a favorite technique of Houdini. He would keep the false finger in one of his trouser pockets and, when first examined, would strip to the waist only. When the examination of the upper part of his body, including the mouth, hair, nose, arms, and between the fingers, was complete, he would then remove his pants, but not before putting his hand in his pocket and attaching the false finger. Now the lower body could be examined thoroughly.

  Within a minute of his incarceration in the carette, Houdini had pulled off his sixth finger and was down on his knees, using the secreted tin cutter to slice a section a few feet long of the zinc floor at the corner of the carette. Then he carefully peeled back the zinc and began to saw through the underlying wood boards of the frame of the van, being careful to cut at an angle. When he had cut out a large enough section, he squeezed his way through to the ground, and reached back and pulled down the zinc flooring and replaced the sawed-off section of board. Then he ran across the yard to the relative warmth of the indoor offices.

  A lithograph of Houdini’s escape from the Russian carette.Nielson Magic Poster Gallery

  Lebedoeff was enraged. He subjected Houdini to another grueling body inspection and ordered his assistant to undergo another one too. “They thought that [Franz] had something,” Houdini wrote his friend Jim Bard. “They found his house key on him and they trued [sic] to open the door with it, but they have a swell lock on the cell and the house key is a cheap lodging house lock, so you can imagine how little it fitted.” Even though Lebedoeff refused to sign a certification of Houdini’s escape, the news of Houdini defeating the feared secret police spread through Moscow like wildfire. Houdini’s engagements in that city were extended for four months, and he drew the close attention of the royal family. “I think that I am to give a show for some grand duke or someother high muki kuck, will let you know,” Houdini told Bard.

  As difficult as it was getting out of the carette, it was equally difficult for Houdini, as a Jew, to get into Russia. But that story started months before. When Houdini was preparing to visit Russia, “Hebrews” were not allowed at all. While this stricture could be “overcome by simply denying your religion when you are having your passport viséd [sic] by the Russian consul,” it didn’t seem to be a prudent strategy for a performer who planned to test the police. The alternative was to “go into Russia with a license, like a dog; but no Jews are allowed to sleep in Moscow or St. Petersburg.” Later he would come to learn that Jews not only weren’t allowed to perform on any stage in Moscow, they weren’t even permitted to enter the city.

  By contrast, the magician had official permission to appear in any city in Russia, an extraordinary set of circumstances that bespeaks the close relationship between Superintendent Melville and the Okhrana, the imperial Russian secret police. Melville had cooperated for years with the Okhrana, whose chief officer for Western Europe, Piotr Rachkovskii, was based in Paris. Houdini’s bookings in Russia were made by Harry Day, a mysterious expatriate American who changed his name and met Houdini in London around the same time as Houdini’s first meeting with Melville. Day would go on to book Houdini for years in Europe, branch out and own a chain of theaters, the sale of which made him a multimillionaire. He eventually became a member of Parliament and did overseas espionage for the British government.

  On April 26, 1903 Houdini filed another field report with Melville. This time Melville acknowledged the importance of Houdini’s transmission in his diary entry: “Called at War Office to pass on letter from HH.”

  On May 2 Houdini prepared to depart for Russia. “We leave for Moscow this evening, and hope they will not send me to Siberia,” he ended his Dramatic Mirror column. Houdini took the courier train from Berlin and arrived at the border town of Alexandrowo, where Russian border patrolmen began to ransack Houdini’s baggage. When they attempted to go through the papers that Houdini was carrying in his combination desk-trunk, Houdini balked and decided to ship the trunk and its contents back to Berlin. Then the guards came across the tools of Houdini’s trade.

  “As I carry a lot of burglar tools in my baggage, I had to obtain permission from the Russian Ministerium to take them into Russia, and I think they would have sent me back to Germany had it not been that I carried a permit to take in the tools,” Houdini wrote. Apparently the permit worked wonders. The inspection came to an end and Houdini was allowed to proceed. But Houdini’s trip into Moscow was hellish. Passengers pushed their way onto the train and were literally hanging on the walls. “I think that a butcher in America would hesitate before he would ship his cattle in one of these third-class trains. There is nothing that I have ever witnessed that has equaled it,” he wrote in his first column from Russia.

  “I defy the police department of the world to hold me,” Houdini bellowed, gesticulating wildly. In response, a few birds shot out of a nearby tree, and a drunk stirred out of his stupor, raised his head, peered at Houdini for a second, and went right back to sleep on his bench. Undeterred, Houdini continued his walk around the isolated racetrack on the outskirts of Moscow. He was about to open in Moscow and that meant practicing his stage patter in Russian. The stage manager of the Establishment Yard, where Houdini would play, had gotten him an interpreter, but now he was trying out his Russian on an imaginary audience.

  “I challenge any police official to handcuff me,” he stopped and thrust his finger in the air, punctuating his defiance. “I am Houdini, the greatest of the jailbreakers and handcuff kings.”

  Houdini’s voice was so strong and mellifluous that not only would it carry to any part of a vast theater, he could even be heard out in the lobby. So the sight of a bushy-haired, oddly dressed man screaming to himself and gesticulating majestically was bound to draw attention in a society as repressed as Russia’s, especially when he was challenging the police to restrain him.

  At first there were just two tall men, out on a stroll, who watched him with acute curiosity. Houdini nodded to them and continued his perambulations.

  “There is nothing supernatural in what I do,” he screamed, still strolling the grounds with a frenetic pace. He was so preoccupied with his address that he failed to see that there were at least three men who had begun to follow him around the racetrack. He was pleased how quickly he had picked up the language.

  After another twenty minutes, Houdini called it quits. He was about to exit the racetrack, when ten uniformed men jumped out from behind some large shrubbery and tackled him to the ground.

  They began to pepper him with questions, but the extent of his Russian was confined to his stage patter. Uncertain whether he was a dangerous insurrectionary or merely insane, the policemen snapped some cuffs on him and led him to a waiting police van. Houdini knew better than to try to escape these cuffs. He was taken to a police station and thrown in a cell, with six armed guards standing duty in front of it. When he missed dinner, Bess became alarmed, and with the manager’s assistance, eventually located him. After an explanation, the sheepish entertainer was released.

  The Russian secret service would certainly go on to assume a large
role during Houdini’s stay, keeping him under steady surveillance. Yet, just as in Germany, for a mere entertainer, Houdini gained unprecedented access to Russian prisons. He observed court arraignments, watched convicts being marched through the streets, and made many visits to Russian jails, later pronouncing them “some of the vilest prison pens describable” and “foul-smelling, reeking dungeons.”

  Houdini also showed interest in the state of the Russian army, information that was of vital concern to Melville. It’s interesting that an apolitical escape artist paid such close attention to the budding Russo-Japanese conflict, expressing amazement that the “Japs were able to bring the Russian bear to his haunches.” At that time, both Melville and Wilkie had few operatives in the field, relying on information gathered by private citizens and off-duty officers on vacation who traveled to countries of interest to them. Houdini’s reports of such things as the strength and character of the Russian army and the army’s perceptions of Japan’s willingness to enter conflict, were very helpful. There was even an opportunity for Houdini to transmit this information directly to Wilkie, who, while Houdini was in Moscow, was in the midst of a two-month tour, in July and August, meeting with his secret service counterparts all across Europe.

  “Aha, Mr. Houdini, I am afraid that this task will be impossible for even such a wonder-worker as you,” the Grand Duke Sergius said as he looked up from the slip of paper he had just read.

  “Isn’t that my job, your highness,” Houdini countered, “to make the impossible possible?”

  Some of the other members of the royal family chuckled. They admired the brashness and the spunk of this young American. And they had been secretly pleased when he had managed to escape Mr. Lebedoeff ’s Black Maria. A feat like that only attested to the supernatural powers that he must possess.

  “Well, what is it? The suspense is killing me,” the czar said.

  Sergius uncrumpled the slip of paper. Houdini had asked each of the assembled guests to write down on a slip some impossible thing they would like to have performed. The slips were collected by Houdini, placed in a hat, and then Sergius had been asked to fish one out.

  “Can you ring the bells of the Kremlin?” Sergius announced. The women giggled on hearing the request.

  “Well, that just might be impossible,” the czar said. “Those bells haven’t pealed for more than 100 years. And I don’t see how even a mystic like you could effect such a thing. The bell ropes have rotted to dust by now.”

  “I can’t promise anything. But I will certainly accept such a challenge,” Houdini said and strode purposefully over to the large window that overlooked Kremlin Square. The others moved closer and gathered around him as he withdrew a handkerchief from his right pocket. Fishing some strange-looking purple powder out of his vest pocket, he sprinkled it on the handkerchief.

  Outside, the snow fell slowly, blanketing the ground. Across the square, the Kremlin bell tower stood in mute testimony to the impossibility of this performance. Houdini began waving the handkerchief, forming arcs in the air in front of him.

  “Powder travel through the night, your assignation before dawn’s light, from Seventh Heaven to deepest Hell, do our bidding and ring the bell!” Houdini intoned, then dramatically threw one of the huge windows open. The silence was suddenly shattered by the pealing of the Kremlin bells.

  The royalty was dumbfounded. Houdini smiled at Bess and was thankful that Franz, who was standing on a balcony in their hotel across the square, had been able to see their prearranged signal through the snow. As soon as Kukol saw the handkerchief waving, he aimed his air gun and fired off a volley of shots at the bells, making them ring for the first time in a century.

  After that night, Houdini had become quite friendly with the Grand Duke Sergius and his wife, the duchess. They often summoned Houdini to their Palace Kleinmichel, where he never failed to astound them and their guests. On May 23, Houdini and Bess performed their Second Sight mind reading act at the palace. Dating back to the fifteenth century and newly popularized by Robert-Houdin, the Second Sight routine had been their staple. It worked on a very simple principle. Houdini had taught Bess a code that could be transmitted both by nonverbal and verbal cues. By moving his facial muscles, wiggling his ears, even changing the position of his feet, Houdini could cue information to Bess. For example, if he wanted to convey the number one, he might stand with his left foot forward of his right, for number six, he might stand with his left foot in back of his right, with his left heel raised—and other previously agreed on positions.

  It was even more amazing when Bess could glean information when she was blindfolded. They did that by using a code where seemingly casual words would convey specific information, in this case a number.

  By combining the words, repeating some, Houdini could transmit either numbers or specific letters of the alphabet to Bess, and when she would then repeat the correct answers, it would seem like a miracle. The duchess was so intrigued by Bess’s ability to identify objects while blindfolded that she took Houdini aside and asked him if it would be possible to transmit this knowledge to her. Houdini took the duchess to another room and gave her a quick lesson in the Second Sight code. When they returned to the guests, the duchess announced that Houdini had imparted to her the power to receive transmitted thoughts. The other royals were amazed as Houdini roamed the room and the blindfolded duchess was able to correctly identify objects that Houdini pointed to.

  On another occasion, in June, the grand duke ordered the governor of Moscow’s prison to bring his most difficult handcuffs to try to defeat Houdini. Houdini was surprised when he saw that the irons were wrapped in soft leather to avoid chafing the wrists.

  “Do you find Russian handcuffs very cruel, Mr. Houdini?” the duchess asked.

  “In fact, I have never seen one less cruel or one more comfortable,” Houdini replied.

  The duchess smiled sadly. “Won’t you tell this to the world, so they won’t think Russians so cruel.”

  In some way, the duchess was most responsible for the fascination by the royal family and Czar Nicholas toward Houdini. She had taken a liking to Houdini at their first meeting and had imparted a very valuable piece of information to him. Before the end of his first performance before the royals, the duchess informed him that anyone who accepted money for their performance before the royal family was immediately relegated to a menial position. Since Houdini was more interested in prestige and maintaining an air of mystification, he took her advice and indignantly refused the grand duke’s offer of a fee. On the defensive, the grand duke implored Houdini to accept gifts as a token of their esteem. Houdini deigned to accept an antique ladle that was used by Count Kleinmichel to dispense champagne, some rings, and allowed Bess to receive a fluffy white Pomeranian that they named Charlie.

  In Russia, as in Germany, many people thought that Houdini effected his escapes and rapid trunk substitutions through an innate ability to dematerialize. One Moscow newspaper went further. When Houdini gave a performance in front of a special committee at the Restaurant Yar on May 1, the reporter marveled at his supernatural abilities. “Mr. Houdini, in front of the serious committee, was able to turn into a woman, then turn into a baby, then come back to his regular appearance.” Possessing ability like that marked Houdini as a “wolshebnik” or miracle man. And there was no person in all of Russia more convinced that Houdini was a wolshebnik than Czar Nicholas himself.

  For some years before Houdini’s visit, Czar Nicholas had been disproportionately influenced by the occult and by strange religious beliefs. He believed that God spoke through the mouths of idiots, and consequently, he had collected scores of these blessed “simpletons” and installed them about the palace. One of these soothsayers was a thirty-year-old woman named Matronushka Bosoposhka (Matrona, the barefooted one). She was an itinerant mentally challenged woman who always walked around Petrograd barefoot. When the czar heard that she had the power to foretell the future, he brought her to the court, where he and the
czarina would spend hours listening to her prattle on about nothing, all the while ecstatic to receive her blessings. When Matronushka lost her luster, the czar replaced her with Vastil Tkatchenko, a seventy-five-year-old soothsayer. Oftentimes, the czar’s foreign policy was dictated by these outcasts.

  By 1900, there was a significant faction of the royal family that had had enough of Nicholas’s foolishness. This clique, led by the czar’s uncle, the Grand Duke Vladimir, and his wife, the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, was bitterly opposed to what they viewed as the czar’s liberal tendencies and reforms. When Nicholas convened a disarmament conference in Hague in 1899, cosponsored by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, the reactionary element had had enough. Maria Pavlovna had seen an exhibition of hypnotism conducted by a man named M. Philipp. Enlisting him in their cause and paying him dearly, they introduced Philipp to the czar, who was entranced by his mystic powers and personality. Their reactionary agenda was promoted by Philipp in a series of hypnotic sessions, and the resultant actions of Nicholas in harshly suppressing a student movement and violently putting down peasant revolts were attributed to Philipp’s own brand of brainwashing.