Harry Houdini Mysteries

by Daniel Stashower

  “What about Bess?”

  “She’s fainted. The shock has been entirely—”

  “I’m perfectly fine,” Bess said indignantly, pulling off the clumsy sheet. “Stop fussing over me!”

  Harry grabbed her hands and knelt beside her. “If that creature had hurt you, I’d have never—”

  “Is she all right?” Lieutenant Murray came up behind Harry, his face taut with concern. “Mrs. Houdini?”

  “I’m fine,” she insisted. “What was that thing?”

  “Lieutenant, there’s no time for this,” I said, standing up. “We have to—Craig! Where’s Lucius Craig?”

  The lieutenant sprang to his feet. “I’ll be damned!” He pushed open the window and gave a blast on his police whistle. “I’ve got Flaherty outside. He won’t get away.”

  I made for the door. “We can’t wait! They’ll destroy it!”

  Lieutenant Murray grabbed my shoulder. “They?”

  “Come on!” I bolted for the door with Harry and the lieutenant at my heels, leaving the others frozen in their places with expressions of confusion and disbelief stamped on their faces.

  “Hardeen,” Lieutenant Murray called after me as we reached the hall, “who or what are we after?”

  “It’s a generator of some sort,” I said, pausing at the top of the stairs. “It’s somewhere in the house. Lieutenant, search the rooms on this floor. Harry, you take the upper story. Whatever you do, don’t let anyone leave!”

  “Hardeen, what the—”

  “Dash, how did—”

  “No time!” I turned and bolted toward the stairs, with my brother and the lieutenant calling after me,

  I took the main stairs four at a time, vaulting over the newel post at the bottom and landing heavily beside the door to the cellar. The door was locked. I had my picks out in a flash and matched the Orkam shaft-clasp with a number two diamond-head. The lock snapped open in seconds. I pushed the door open and hurried down the open wooden steps.

  At first it appeared to be an ordinary wine cellar. In the dim light I could make out seven floor-to-ceiling racks filled with dusty bottles, along with several open shipping crates and a vast quantity of packing straw. Beyond the furnace I could see a low opening that widened into a furnace room. Ducking through the opening, I found a double-sized Everson furnace, a supply of fuel, a metal washtub and wringer, and various other household implements. In the far corner were several wooden pallets pushed together and a long deal table, the surface of which was covered with sparking guns and glass retorts and rheostats and several other types of laboratory equipment. At the center of the table sat a piece of machinery unlike anything I had ever seen. It featured a heavy, open wooden cabinet with a small glass window at one end and a malodorous glass bulb burning within. A strange metal spindle jutted up behind the bulb, topped by a metal disk punched with holes in a spiral pattern.

  As I stepped closer to examine the strange device I became aware of a movement behind me. I turned and found myself face to face with the ghost of Jasper Clairmont.

  The apparition appeared far more solid now and human in scale, though I barely had time to register these facts before it lunged forward, cleaving the air with its glinting dagger. I threw myself back as the blade passed, feeling the chop of wind against my face. Reeling backward, I regained my footing as the ghostly figure turned and raised the weapon once again. I avoided the swing more easily this time and managed to snatch up a metal coal shovel from the floor.

  With this weapon in hand, I circled the apparition warily, looking for a chance to knock the blade out of its hands. The figure made a savage thrust at my face, but I parried and batted the knife aside with the shovel. A second thrust brought the knife slicing toward my neck. I brought the shovel up again, catching my assailant’s arm with the haft. Seizing the opening, I aimed a kick at my attacker’s knee. Beneath the flowing cloak of white, I heard a gratifyingly human cry of pain. The knife and the shovel clattered to the floor.

  Raising my fists, I let fly with a battery of jabs to the head. These drove the figure halfway across the room amid a series of grunts and curses. A right cross to the chin sent my assailant stumbling over the metal washtub, but he recovered quickly, gripping the fallen coal shovel and slamming it full force against the side of my head.

  The blow sent me flying backward. Staggered, I found myself on my knees as blood flowed freely from a gash across my forehead. I scrambled to my feet as my opponent raised the metal shovel for another swing. I barely managed to raise my arms as the weapon came crashing down. I heard a sharp crack in my forearm and felt a fiery jolt of pain. My knees buckled and I sank back to the floor.

  “Your arm is broken, Hardeen,” said a familiar voice. “You might as well give in.”

  Cradling my wounded arm, I struggled to my feet. “That device,” I said, my voice coming in ragged gasps. “That device—it’s some sort of ghost projector! You used it to kill Edgar Grange!”

  “A ghost projector?” my assailant said, pulling the white canvas hood from his shoulders. “Not at all, Hardeen. It is something far more incredible. It’s called television.”

  With that, Sterling Foster raised the metal shovel and brought it crashing down over my head.

  I have no idea how long I was unconscious. I only know that I woke up with my head and arm throbbing with pain and found that one eye would not open. I tried to shift my weight and immediately wished I hadn’t—I was bound to a chair with my hands strapped behind my back. Even the slightest movement brought spasms of agony.

  “You’re awake,” said Sterling Foster pleasantly. “How nice. I’m not ready for you yet, however.”

  “Ready for me?”

  “Oh, yes. I have plans.” He turned and busied himself with the strange wooden cabinet on his work table.

  I glanced at the opening that led into the wine cellar and the steps beyond. My right arm was useless but I still had feeling in the left. Tentatively, I worked my fingers to test the constraints at my wrists. Rope. Heavily knotted. With two good arms, this would not have been a problem, but now?

  “If you’re waiting for your brother and Lieutenant Murray to come to your rescue, you needn’t bother,” Foster called over his shoulder. “They’re still chasing after Lucius Craig. They left the premises more than half an hour ago. I popped upstairs, you see, and told them I’d seen the lot of you running off toward Park Avenue—you, Craig, that policeman out front. We won’t be disturbed. Not for some time.”

  “I don’t understand. What is this place?”

  “It’s my laboratory. Augusta knows all about it, of course, and it amuses her to think of her dear, sweet, drunken brother pottering around with his glass tubes and copper wires. Of course, no one imagines that I actually do any work down here. They think it’s just an excuse to spend time in the wine cellar. Being a drunk can be terribly convenient at times. Terribly convenient.”

  He bent forward to make an adjustment to the perforated disk at the end of the spindle. “The dish with the marbles,” I said. “In the drawing we found in Grange’s office. They weren’t marbles at all. They were holes. Holes on a metal disk.”

  “That’s right,” he said, tightening a screw on the spindle. “It’s the central feature of mechanical television transmission. The beating heart, if you will.”

  “Television,” I said. “I’m not familiar with the term.”

  Foster gave a laugh. “I’d be very surprised if you were. No one’s heard of it apart from a few enlightened souls on the fringes of the scientific community. But soon enough this device will spread throughout the entire world.”

  “But I don’t understand. You used your—your televisor device to make—”

  “Television,” he said.

  “You used your television device to make the ghost appear in your brother-in-law’s study? Is it a cinema projector of some kind?”

  “No, not precisely. It is a mechanical scanner. It’s like sending pictures over a Marconi wireless s
et.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “So they say.” He reached for a double-headed wrench.

  “I know a little about wireless radio. You couldn’t possibly send a picture. It’s technically impossible.”

  He turned away from the device. “Not at all,” he said patiently. “The process uses a narrow beam of light controlled by the rotation of the scanning disk. The holes on the disk are located in a spiral so that the successive openings provide scanning of small, elementary areas of an image in a tightly measured sequence. This has the effect of breaking up an image into a rapid series of narrow lines. These are then converted into electrical impulses here in the Foster tube.”

  “The Foster tube?”

  “Yes.” He indicated the malodorous glass bulb positioned in front of the disk. “Of course, I can’t claim credit for the entire system. A man named Paul Nipkow invented the scanner disk; that was years ago. I studied with him in Germany for a time. He never put his ideas into practice. Couldn’t resolve the problem of synchronizing the two disks.”

  “Two disks?”

  “One for scanning, one for receiving. The problem is that the two disks have to be spinning at exactly the same rate or the system won’t work.”

  “I take it you’ve solved the problem.”

  “Nearly. I’d have gotten there soon enough if that skinflint brother-in-law of mine had advanced me the necessary research funds. It’s quite simple really.” He walked to the device and unscrewed the glass cylinder. “This is the Foster tube, a combination bulb and focusing lamp. It has a broad enough spectrum to compensate for any deviation in the synchronization of the disks, and at the same time it resolves and focuses the image in the manner of a—are you following this at all?”

  “A bit.” I shifted in the chair, trying to keep the movement of my arms hidden from view. “Somehow you used this apparatus to project the image of a knife-wielding ghost to your brother’s study.”

  “Very effective, wasn’t it? Unfortunately, in its present state my device is only capable of producing shadows and flickers, and even these are barely discernible much of the time. It is my primary difficulty at present. As it happens, however, these crude impressions and pulses of light are just the thing for creating the impression of a spirit visitor. What is a ghost supposed to be, anyway, but a translucent shadow? Primitive, yes. I might have improved the image somewhat, but I was reduced to using those foolish spirit curtains as a screen.” He pointed to the glass window on his wooden cabinet. “When the device is perfected, the images will be properly focused onto this receiving lens.”

  “You projected an image of yourself onto the screens behind Craig’s chair? How? The séance took place on a different level of the house! There must be a dozen walls separating the two rooms.”

  He smiled encouragingly, as if I were a schoolboy just beginning to grasp the fundamentals of geometry. “You are still thinking in terms of a cinema projector. This is not a cinema projector. I do not need a line of sight.”

  “But it must be a distance of some hundred feet!”

  “Young man, when my technology is perfected, I will be able to transmit images much farther than that. Perhaps as far as a dozen miles. More, when I’ve solved a few technical hitches.”

  “But there were no wires of any kind!”

  “None were needed. There was a receiving scanner hidden in the music box. I projected the image onto the screens using a conventional arrangement of mirrors and lenses hidden in the speaker trumpet.”

  I recalled seeing a smaller version of the disk and spindle inside the music box. “It’s too fantastic,” I said, shaking my head. “You couldn’t possibly have managed it. You never left this room.”

  “There was no need.”

  I shook my head again. “It can’t be. Edgar Grange was stabbed to death in that room. You couldn’t have done that. Not with flickers and pulses of light.”

  “I didn’t. I only televised an image of myself doing so. My accomplice did the actual stabbing.”

  “Your accomplice?”

  “Lucius Craig, dear boy. Of course, he’s of no further use to me now.”

  “Lucius Craig stabbed Edgar Grange? I don’t see how. Not the way we had him tied.”

  “Yes. Your brother with his clever knots. Tell me, Mr. Hardeen, did it not strike you as at all strange that Lucius so readily volunteered to be tied up? That he knew where a length of rope might be found?”

  “You’re saying he wanted to be tied?”

  “It was the best means of insuring that he would not be accused of doing the dreadful deed. If your brother hadn’t suggested it as a safeguard against fraud, Lucius would have asked to be constrained so as to avoid following the siren call of the spirits to the other world. Like Odysseus lashing himself to the mast.” Foster adjusted the flame of a Bunsen burner. “Of course, once your brother declared himself to be the world’s greatest magician and escape artist, Lucius saw little difficulty in getting him to agree to the constraints.”

  I tugged again at the knots binding my own wrists. Every movement brought a searing flash of pain. “How did he get out of the ropes?”

  Foster flicked a trip switch and watched as the metal disk began to spin. Frowning, he flicked the switch off again.

  “How did he get out?” I repeated.

  “He didn’t. Not in the way you mean. I thought your brother might have stumbled across our little secret when he began poking around the séance table. He realized that the table had been specially constructed to Lucius’s exacting standards. What he didn’t fully appreciate was that the chairs had been, as well.”

  “A break-away armrest,” I said. “I’ve only read about such things. The European mediums sometimes make use of them. A medium’s arms can be securely bound to the armrests, but that’s no hindrance, because the armrests themselves pull away cleanly from the base of the chair. When the medium is done ringing a bell or shaking a tambourine, he simply drops the armrest back into place.”

  “In this case the medium was able to reach across and stab a man in the back. Of course, Lucius never expected that he would be making use of the device in quite this way, but it couldn’t be helped.”

  “But why do it in this manner? Surely there are simpler ways of killing a man.”

  Foster shook his head sadly. “Hardeen, you really must try to understand. Don’t you see, if this had gone as I’d planned, I would have gained complete control over the Clairmont fortune! Not only would Edgar Grange have been removed, but I would have provided proof positive of Lucius Craig’s so-called spirit powers! So long as Augusta believed that Lucius was bringing her in contact with Jasper, I would have been able to control her like a puppet! How do you suppose my sister would have responded if Jasper’s ghost had told her to support my work? I’d have had all the money I needed.”

  “And Lucius Craig was willing to kill Edgar Grange for this?”

  “Not precisely.” Foster bent over a coil of wire. “Of course, he was only too happy to follow along with my plan at first. It would have brought him a comfortable living at Augusta’s expense for as long as he cared to avail himself of it. He wanted no part of Edgar’s death, however. I had to find methods of persuading him.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “Well, yes. Obviously. Suffice it to say that his daughter is not quite what he says. He has had trouble along those lines previously and has been at some pains to erase those unfortunate memories. He was terribly eager to see that no mention of this was made to the authorities.” Foster straightened up and brushed off his hands. “And now, Mr. Hardeen, I believe I’m ready for you.”

  I strained at my bonds. The pain nearly overcame me. “Craig wasn’t the one who killed Jasper Clairmont, was he? That would have been before his time.”

  Foster looked at me with interest. “What makes you think that anyone killed him?” he said carefully. “My brother-in-law killed himself.”

  “I’m not a great believer in coinci
dence,” I said. “According to Mr. Grange’s appointment book, he had a meeting scheduled with Jasper Clairmont on the day of Clairmont’s suicide. The notation made reference to filing papers at City Hall. Since there was a patent application attached to the drawing we found—”

  “It wasn’t fair!” Foster shouted, suddenly roused to a high state of agitation. “My brother-in-law was going to steal my invention right out from under me. Jasper had agreed to fund the research only if he retained a ninety-five percent share of the company. As though that were not sufficiently absurd, he wanted the patent made out in his name! He wouldn’t have known a Nipkow disk from a wagon wheel, but he expected me to hand over all future profits to him for a few thousand dollars.”

  “So you killed him.”

  Foster studied his hands. “I did not intend it. My—my temper got away from me when he made his ridiculous demands. I threatened him. I may have struck him across the face once or twice. In any case, he felt it necessary to draw his revolver. I swear to God that I meant him no real harm. I was just angry. But at the sight of that revolver—” He paused and pressed a hand to his temple, as though the memory was causing him pain. “I pretended to calm down and eventually he set the revolver down on the desk. I took the gun and shot him at close range through the head. I was scarcely conscious of what I was doing. I seemed for a time to be under the control of a force outside of myself, as though mechanically synchronized with some distant transmitter. I could hear the others rushing toward the room and a plan came into my mind. Perhaps it was there all along. I heard my sister’s voice calling to her husband from the hall, and I knew that I did not have much time. I placed the gun in his hand and tightened his fingers around it. Naturally the others assumed it was suicide.”

  “But the door was locked and there was no place for concealment in the room. How did you avoid discovery when they came through the door?”

  “It wasn’t difficult. I simply stood behind the door and hid there until they finally managed to unlock it. It swung open, and I pressed myself between the open door and the wall. Naturally they weren’t concerned with checking behind the door. They rushed in and went straight to the desk. After a few seconds, while their attention was fixed on my brother-in-law’s body, I simply stepped from my hiding place and rushed into the room, as if I had just arrived. I went into my drunk act. No one had any difficulty believing that I had been slow to respond to the sound of the shot.” He closed his eyes and gave a shudder. “I regret killing him. It was a decision made in the heat of the moment.”