by David Jaher
The second of Margery’s conditions was that before the demonstration for the committee, her special sitters—the DeWyckoffs, Aleck Cross, and Roy’s sister Laura—had to form a “friendly circle” without the jury present. Her group needed to establish the proper atmosphere in the room, she said, and then attempt to contact Walter. Without her brother’s consent on the cage, there would be no tests, she warned. Houdini agreed to this as long as he and the other judges could stay until she was securely locked in the box. While he did not say so, he thought Margery was angling for time and privacy, in order to plot a way to defeat his fraud-proof cabinet.
With the program agreed on, the medium stepped into the black box and Houdini lowered the wooden flaps, each with a half-circle that formed the opening through which her head extended. Gently, he helped her thrust her arms through the slots created for them, then locked the padlock cover. As she had requested, Munn, Comstock, Houdini, and Prince quietly left the room just as the lights were lowered. Assembling in the hallway, they heard Walter’s whistle and Margery’s laughter. The ghost urged his friends to “be of good cheer.” He whispered that he “would take care of everything.”
At 9:45, Margery’s partisans, led by DeWyckoff, exited the séance room. Walter had given his OK to Houdini’s black box—the sitting could commence immediately. In the agreed-upon fashion, the jury formed around the table. Houdini controlled Margery’s left hand, Roy her right. Seated outside the circle, Prince grasped the handhold between the Crandons, while Comstock and Munn completed the chain. The table arranged, the red lights were turned off. Just eight minutes later, a violent, splintering noise was heard. It was the sound, Comstock realized, of Walter tearing his sister’s cage apart.
The front of Margery’s box had been forced open in the dark. Quick to deny the spirit a victory, Houdini explained that the fixture was secured with brass tacks: anyone leveraging their shoulders could sit in the cabinet and muscle it off. Exasperated, Dr. Crandon stood up. Neither Houdini nor Prince, he stated for the record, had given any indication that they felt the medium tense or strain—as she would need to have done in order to physically cause the phenomena. On top of that, Houdini had already admitted that any effects occurring while Margery was in the fraud-proof box had to be genuine. If the box was that secure, then how could he accuse Margery of such crude shenanigans? Houdini’s offer to demonstrate how easy it would be to force the front of the cage over the staples did little to mollify the doctor. Comstock was himself miffed that the supposedly stalwart oak box could be that easily manipulated. So heated were the exchanges that Walter ordered the committee to leave and the friendly circle reinstated. After his gang returned, the spirit whistled “with his best cockiness.”
At 10:35, the committeemen were invited back, with the Crandons’ friends this time retiring to the back of the room—from where DeWyckoff glowered in the darkness. Though tempers had quieted, Dr. Crandon asked if Houdini had a flashlight on him. In the tone of head of surgery, the doctor warned that any white light might endanger the medium. Houdini assured him that he had no flashlight and offered to be searched if anyone doubted it. Roy dropped the matter, but there was more awkwardness when the Crandons finally realized that Bird, who they assumed was uncharacteristically late, would not be attending the test séance at all. They were given no reason for his eviction from the circle.
Exactly eight minutes later, there was another disturbance when Walter hissed, “Houdini, you think you’re smart, don’t you? How much are they paying you to stop these phenomena?”
Having canceled bookings to sit with Margery, the showman was offended. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “It’s costing me $2,500 a week to be here.”
“Where were those contracts?” Walter persisted.
“Buffalo,” Houdini was about to answer when Comstock interrupted.
“What do you mean by this, Walter?” asked the scientist. “This talk isn’t psychic research.”
“Comstock,” the voice responded, “you take the box out into white light, examine it, and report back. You’ll see fast enough what I mean.”
After doing this, Comstock announced that a rubber eraser had been stuck between the clapboards on the bell box; it now took four times more force to cause it to ring. The Crandons would later blame Houdini for trying to squelch the effect, as he was the last to test the apparatus; and they noted that the bell box had been fixed in almost precisely the way Walter had predicted days earlier. For now, though, no accusations were exchanged. Houdini swore that he hadn’t tampered with the bell box. He asked Walter if the spirit thought he had. A stony silence ensued until, at 11:01, the séance ended.
If Houdini was right about Margery being a lady magician in disguise, then his fraud-proof box had not lived up to its name. He was adamant that she would not succeed again in breaking his cage. The next day he and Collins reconstructed the box in Comstock’s apartment, adding thick metal staples, hasps, and padlocks to secure the top. Now let the ghosts walk! Houdini told his assistant that he had seen the Crandons huddled next to the cabinet after the séance ended. They appeared, he believed, to be measuring the opening between the top flaps for her head. It was too narrow, they had previously objected, even though Houdini felt there was ample space for the medium to stick her svelte neck out.
As Houdini and Collins worked on the black box, a third man entered the premises and approached the séance room. At that moment the phone rang, like a bell box that Walter had activated. Entering the hallway to answer it, Houdini encountered Comstock’s assistant, Will Conant, who was used to entering the apartment as he pleased. Accusing him of spying for the Crandons, Houdini chased him out. He trusted no one friendly with Margery—least of all silent intruders who hovered by the séance room while he worked on the psychic’s box.
Despite the rift, Houdini discovered that Margery rarely made critics feel unwelcome at Lime Street. After his run-in with Conant, Houdini arrived to inform the Crandons and their guests that all was ready for the séance that evening. The exchanges between Houdini and the psychic were refreshingly pleasant away from the Charlesgate. Margery even asked the magician, who admitted he was exhausted, if he wanted to take a nap upstairs rather than retire to the Copley. After accepting her offer, he followed her upstairs to her absent son’s bedroom.
She told him that John would be thrilled to know the Handcuff King had slept in his bed. Houdini replied that he would like to meet John sometime and entertain him. Privately, though, the magician could not understand why the Crandons sent their son away from home while any scientist who could quote William James was welcome to stay there.
Three flights down, while Roy conversed amiably, Orson Munn was under no illusions that anything had changed. The Crandons and Houdini had not relaxed their mutual suspicions, though he was glad to see their clashes confined to the séance room. Sometime later, Munn heard Margery descending the staircase. Joking that she had just tucked Houdini in, she rejoined them in the parlor. Prince seemed to lighten in her presence. Roy resumed discussing a nautical adventure. The waters were deceptively calm now, thought Munn. Sail on, Dr. Crandon.
Showdown at the Charlesgate
For life is full of boxes, closed,
And death follows right along.
The only difference that I can see
Is, you sing in your box when you’re gone.
—WALTER
Dr. and Mrs. Crandon knew every move that we were making.
—HARRY HOUDINI
The committee could not have chosen an eerier locale than the hotel at 535 Beacon Street that rose like a castle over Charlesgate Park and its scraggy Muddy River. With its green oriel windows, stone spires and turrets, and interior courtyard, the Charlesgate Hotel was an emblem of Victorian medievalism. But the magician who walked into the green-and-gold lobby did not think a medium would have any more luck with her dark art there. When he left the elevator carriage and entered Comstock’s apartment, he was surp
rised to see the individual he considered largely responsible for propagating her psychic humbug. Waiting for him was Malcolm Bird, who wanted to know why he had been banned from the Charlesgate séances.
At a meeting in Comstock’s office, Houdini told Bird that he was not welcome because he had “betrayed the Committee and hindered their work.” The Crandons, waiting down the hall, could hear every word of the ensuing argument: Houdini accusing Bird of undermining the psychic investigation, the editor denying the charge and retorting that Houdini was a blundering tyrant. Munn, who disliked acrimony, would have to either appease his editor or openly side against him. It was better for Bird not to participate in the séances, the publisher reluctantly decided. Whereupon, according to Houdini, Bird immediately resigned from the committee, realizing that no one trusted him.
Bird told it differently. He said he gave up his title because his situation was untenable: he could not continue to function as secretary and still oppose Houdini. Regardless, Prince was summarily elected as the new secretary of the contest. Bird then found himself in the humiliating position of having to retreat from the apartment and abandon the enterprise that he, more than any single individual, had created and advanced. “When do you leave for New York?” Houdini asked. “You go to hell!” snapped Bird, and then left after saying goodbye to the Crandons.
The commotion that Sir Arthur warned would ruin the Scientific American tests appeared to have shaken Margery. Even so she was ready to attempt another demonstration for the jury. Retiring to Comstock’s bedroom, she removed her dress, slip, and stockings. Standing as naked as Houdini when searched before a jailbreak, she was examined by a female stenographer, who vouched that there was nothing on her person that God had not given her. Then, having slipped back into her garments, she entered the séance room and stepped into Houdini’s box. The same group as the night before—Dr. Crandon, Comstock, Prince, Munn, and Houdini—surrounded her, while the stenographer sat in an adjacent room with sliding doors kept partially open, so that she could hear Mr. Munn dictate what followed. The locks to the cabinet were examined by the jury, and the bell box by Houdini, who stated that the medium could not reach it. Punctiliously, she requested that it be moved even farther from her black cabinet, but Dr. Crandon said that it was fine where Houdini had stationed it. Then came a reshuffling of the circle: a game of musical chairs that would have been amusing were the atmosphere less volatile. Houdini wasn’t going to allow the doctor to control his wife any longer. Prince therefore assumed Roy’s customary position on Margery’s right. In reaction, Dr. Crandon insisted on a strict control for the escape artist. While Houdini seated himself on Margery’s left and grasped her hand, Comstock, the sitter most sympathetic to the Crandons, was entrusted with the control of Houdini’s left hand, left foot, and head. To accomplish this, he placed his foot atop Houdini’s, then held the magician’s hand high in the air, resting his elbow on Houdini’s shoulder and leaning their linked hands against his head. At this point they were more intertwined, observed Munn, than Spanish dancers at the Lido-Venice nightclub.
Houdini suspected that the Crandons wanted to ensure he didn’t have the range of movement to detect psychic trickery. But their object, they had said privately, was to prevent him from planting anything in the bell box or the cage that might incriminate Margery. To Munn, it appeared as if both Margery and Houdini were on trial. After he locked the door to the hallway and the light was extinguished, the most contested of Margery’s test séances began. Houdini had a hunch she would attempt to smuggle into her cage an instrument to ring the bell box, which she would access while the box was being locked and before her hands were restrained. As the sitters linked hands, he watched her face carefully. By her expression and the way she tensed her neck, he determined that she was reaching for something she had dropped on the floor of the locked cabinet. Thus the magician repeatedly irritated Prince, and offended the medium, by reminding him not to let go of her other hand.
“What’s the matter with you, Houdini, that you keep on saying that?” Margery demanded.
“Do you really want to know?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Well, I will tell you. In case you have anything smuggled in the cabinet-box, you could now conceal it.”
“Well, do you want to search me?” she proposed.
“No, never mind, I am not a physician.”
With Margery’s permission, Houdini stuck his hand into her box, discovering nothing suspicious, though he could not reach to the floor—where he believed she had something stashed. But if Margery were indeed cheating, she now demonstrated why she was the match of any Ten-in-One-Show trickster who lived by their wits.
Almost immediately the medium went into trance. Walter’s shrill whistle signaled his arrival in the séance room, and at once he began his attack.
“Houdini, you are very clever indeed but it won’t work…I suppose it was an accident those things were left in the cabinet?”
“What was left in the cabinet?” the magician asked.
“Pure accident, was it? You were not here Houdini but Collins was.”
Before Houdini could answer, the ghost flew into a rage. “Houdini, you goddamn son of a bitch. Get the hell out of here and never come back; if you don’t I will. What did you do that for, Houdini? You’re a bastard for putting up a plant like that on a girl. There is a ruler in that cabinet.”
A collapsible ruler would be just the tool for Margery to activate the bell box beyond her reach, and Houdini believed that Walter’s outburst was a sign that the medium was frustrated and trapped. It was chilling, however, what Margery’s dead brother said next. “You won’t live forever, Houdini, you’ve got to die. I put a curse on you now that will follow you every day until you die. And then you’ll know better.”
Houdini did not react to the curse. More disturbing to him was that the ghost had called him a bastard. “If a man would have said that to me, I would clean the floor up with him,” he later threatened.
According to Dr. Crandon’s report—which Bird, Richardson, and Doyle would publicize—Houdini reacted more like a whimpering cad: “I don’t know anything about any ruler; why would I do a thing like that? Oh, this is terrible. My dear sainted mother was married to my father.”
Houdini, of course, denied Dr. Crandon’s account of how Walter caught him laying a plant on Margery, and how he cowered when found out. Roy claimed that Houdini bent forward with his head in his hands and cried, “I am not well. I am not myself.” In a letter to Sir Arthur, he even conjectured that the trickster might have swiped the ruler from his son’s room when he took his nap that afternoon.
Contrarily, in Houdini’s report, this was a triumphant moment in his campaign against psychic fraud. Margery was still in her box, most likely with a pilfered device on the floor. She was trapped red-handed, he thought. No one appeared to doubt that a ruler was in the box. It was one of Walter’s few claims the Great Houdini did not deny.
Houdini and the Crandons are generally in agreement on what happened next. In effect, Comstock broke up the tussle between the magician and ghost. He told Walter that his accusations and threats were detrimental to psychic research. He reminded him that rulers are used in box construction and it was reasonable to believe that one was dropped there by mistake. Since Walter had accused Houdini’s assistant of the act, Orson Munn summoned the old stagehand to answer the charge. Standing under the carmine light that made all the sitters look indecent and ghoulish, Collins produced his own folding ruler from his hip pocket. To bolster his assistant’s statement, Houdini made him swear on the life of his mother that he had nothing to do with the one in the box.*1
Whatever lay in the cabinet, Houdini no longer seemed worried about it. The instrument would have no bearing on any effects that might occur the rest of the night, he promised, as the control would be too tight. Once again hands were linked and, at 9:45, the lights turned off and the séance reconvened. The atmosphere was “volcanic,” C
omstock later said, with the entire circle “on edge.” When Walter returned, he apologized for his nasty words and asked for them to be removed from the record, but, “being the brother of the kid,” he said he had to defend her. In the meantime, Margery was sweltering in a box that contained no ventilation; it may have inhibited the secretion of ectoplasm, but not her perspiration.
Leaning toward the medium, so that she could feel his breath in her face, Houdini said that he could be stripped nude, searched, and locked in the box, his hands held by Dr. Crandon and herself, yet he would still ring the bell box, tie knots in a handkerchief, and rattle a tambourine.
“That would not prove anything,” Comstock retorted.
“It would prove that these things could be done by trickery,” Houdini declared.
Margery insisted that Houdini would have to smuggle a tool into the box to perform. The conjurer smiled in the dark: Like you did, he thought. He maintained that he could perform these marvels without concealing any device. “Your husband, Dr. Crandon, can search me as only a surgeon can, and I will guarantee to do these things. Do you want me to do it?”
She did not. She only said that if Houdini could do such wonderful things, he must possess psychic powers himself.
“I wish I did,” he answered, as if disappointed that she did not want to see his tricks.
Later, when it was clear the séance was a blank, Margery grew irritated. She accused Houdini of trying to ruin her for his own financial gain. She knew that he was going to give a performance at Keith’s just after the test séances were over, and it was theatrical motives, she complained, that drew him to her work.
Houdini responded that he had booked the show in June, long before the sittings had been arranged. Furthermore, he “was in demand all over the world” and could dictate his own dates. He said that he could change them, if she wanted him to, even now.
