Who Done Houdini

by Raymond John

  “Thank you. As you can easily see, Sir Alistair was so guarded in his actions that it’s very unlikely I would ever have become involved with the beast at all had it not been for the actions of a young constable in Brighton who, for personal reasons, became more curious in the missing persons cases than his fellow officers had been. It seems his betrothed had filed one of the reports and was unhappy about the lack of progress. She urged her fiancee to investigate more thoroughly. When he did, he was dumbfounded to realize there had been seven similar reports involving other young women over the course of less than a year and one half.”

  It was my turn to interrupt. “Isn’t that a rather large number of similar missing persons, even in a city the size of Brighton?”

  “Yes and no, Wiggins. Even today it isn’t uncommon for a woman to run away and marry, even though they usually eventually contact their families after a while. And, as you may have guessed, more than one of the young women was hopeful their prospective employer wouldn’t delve too deeply into their background. Most of all, everyone knew Brighton wasn’t East London. Now, may I continue?”

  “Of course,” I said with as much irony as I could muster. “Please forgive the interruption.”

  “Forgiven. Let me see. It was in late summer of ’96, and Watson and I had experienced an unexpected drought of work. I hadn’t been to Brighton for quite a while and welcomed the opportunity to revisit the bustle of the rides at the Pier and the joys of the Pavilion, so we caught a train on a Friday morning.

  “All the way I wondered what would entice a young woman to possible danger in a city with so many attractions. From the young constable I had learned that all the missing women were residents of the city. There might be others unknown, visiting from other parts of the country, but the fact that all known were from Brighton seemed to narrow down the scope, if just by a whit. It also occurred to me, that most of the women absent seemed to be honestly employed in laundries or as seamstresses and shop keepers or involved in similar labors. All were single, and likely to want to improve their station, either by marriage or better employment.”

  “I’m sorry, but I do wish you would come to the point,” Violet said with a forced yawn. “Any woman would have come to same conclusion years before you did.”

  “Perhaps it would be better if I stop at this point entirely. I seem to be doing a terrible botch job of enlightening you.”

  “Stop it, both of you,” I said. “I hate to put it this way, Violet, but go suck on a lemon. Please continue, Mr. Holmes.”

  “Perhaps I can shorten the narrative a bit,” Holmes said with amazing good grace. “I only include so much detail to illustrate our extreme good fortune in detecting the plot at all, and to show how many other harmless creatures could have perished but for what almost appeared to be divine intervention. How it relates to Mr. Becker will soon be clear enough, I promise you.”

  “Then I apologize,” Violet said in a much friendlier voice.

  “Apology gladly accepted, dear lady. As luck would have it, Watson remarked about the number of handbills he noticed as we walked from the railway stations. Offers of furniture for sale, clothing, men seeking work as bicycle messengers, employers looking for a day’s strong back to move building supplies seemed to be posted everywhere we looked. One that particularly caught my eye advertised for a young woman to assist in tending three children at the Pier on the coming Saturday morning, offering an astounding two shillings in compensation for a few hours’ work. Something about it captured my attention. That, and the almost unbelievably favorable bargain prices advertised on nearly all of the postings.

  “Inspired, I asked a young toff on the street if there was any particular area where young working women would gather to lunch. As luck would have it, he said there was indeed such a place, a square less than half a mile from the Pavilion. We found it easily enough and discovered several young lasses nibbling on sandwiches and luncheoning together in laughter and gay conversation. Better still, it was impossible to miss that all the trees and walls of the surrounding buildings had disappeared under a motley assortment of paper.

  “A quick scan netted nothing promising. As was my wont, I quickly hired a lad off the street to visit the square first thing each morning, and alert me if he ever found anything that at all seemed promising. Better still, I offered him a crown if he would bring me the posting, and a guinea if I was especially pleased with the find.

  “A fortnight later he called me, and I was sure he had earned his guinea. Watson and I were on the next Southern Railway train from Charing Cross. Our young agent decided to endure the pains consequent to dodging school for the chance of gaining such a fortune and promised, and met us at the station.”

  “Go on,” Violet cooed. “This is starting to get exciting.”

  “It is indeed. The poster offered the outrageously high wage of five pounds per month as well as room and board. I knew we had found what we were looking for. A cab took us to the address on London Road where the interview would take place. The room was already dark, and the proprietor said the gentleman who had rented it had concluded his business and left two hours before our arrival. A steady stream of young women had been arriving all day. He said the gentleman had paid cash for rent a week beforehand, leaving a postal box in southwest Brighton as his business address.

  “We weren’t too surprised to discover there was no such box, and no Cecil Enright living in the city. Needless to say, we were impressed at the lengths to which our suspect had gone to cover his tracks.”

  “Don’t keep us hanging,” Rose said, unmistakable excitement in her voice. “How did you trace him?”

  I had to wink at Holmes. He had become a fine performer at his particular brand of magic.

  With a faint smile he continued. “How did we locate him? By the handbill. It was professionally printed on a peculiar shade of pink paper. I was certain it was especially designed to attract a young female’s attention. As luck would have it—or perhaps again it was the hand of Deity—we passed an advertisement printed on just that shade of paper on our way back to the railway station. The advertiser had left his phone exchange.”

  “Was he the monster?” Violet squealed.

  “No. Merely a merchant offering to provide flowers for upcoming nuptials. But our florist gave me the address of the printer who had done the work. The printer recognized our handbill as a printing job he had performed for Dr. Alistair Gordon. Using pink paper was the printer’s idea, bless the deity. His client, Dr. Gordon, a noted physician in South Sussex, and a supplier of cadavers to the medical schools in Cambridge and London, would never have permitted anything so incriminating.”

  Violet cried out. “Cadavers? Oh, God, no! The poor girls.”

  “As strange as this may sound, I would have been much happier if Dr. Gordon had turned out to be just another William Burke. Selling cadavers was a far less odious crime than what we uncovered. Sufficient to say, there are far greater horrors, and I shall spare you the details.”

  Violet and Rose began to cry and grasped hands for consolation.

  “Take cheer, my dears. There is much better in the offing. In brief, Watson and I discovered Dr. Gordon had recently purchased an antique clock at Christies. I had a friend at the company who hired us on to make the delivery. The doctor was very affable, and even introduced us to his daughter, Clara, and his newly hired governess, a pretty young red-haired nineteen-year-old named Phoebe.”

  “Did she die, too?” Violet asked, nearly sobbing.

  “No. I’ll spare you that heartache. It was a near miss, but she survived. It was for the sake of the two innocents that I had to resort to such extreme measures in dealing with the doctor. We made our delivery, and before we left the manor, I made sure I had unlatched a window in the music room where he wanted it placed.”

  “Good!” my dear wife thundered.

  �
�It was indeed. I learned that the estimable doctor had regular billiards tournaments on Tuesday nights, leaving the estate in the hands of the governess and Clara. The following Tuesday, Watson and I hid on the grounds and watched him leave. After he did, we easily found our unlocked window.”

  Though both women had tears in their eyes, Violet grabbed one of my hands and squeezed, and Rose the other. Even I was joining in the rising excitement, though I couldn’t imagine what his narrative had to do with Albert Becker. I could tell Holmes was enjoying at center stage.

  “Watson, carrying his bag of tools, led the way. The house was dark and silent, though a central chandelier provided more than enough illumination to light our path and we had to use our torch for only a short time. We had earlier decided to limit our search to the first floor of the manor. It was, it turned out, a wise decision. A heavy door at the extreme eastern end of the building was securely locked. I also could hear muffled angry barking from within.”

  “Whatever was in there, Dr. Gordon intended to keep secret,” I said.

  “Stop interrupting!” Violet snapped. “Get on with it.”

  “As you wish, my dear. Watson had no difficulty with the lock, but we didn’t know what we would encounter with the dog. Watson’s kit included a metal-reinforced sleeve that would protect him from being severely bitten, but we also didn’t know if the governess or her charge would suddenly appear.”

  “Forget the dog,” Violet interrupted. “What did you find?”

  “A sinister laboratory with an operating table with manacles, surrounded by miles of hoses connected to gauges. I expect there were well over a hundred dated bottles with preserved specimens of what I couldn’t even imagine, though I did recognize a fetal kitten. The room also had a large refrigeration unit. I could tell the floor had been covered with newspapers because there were pieces still stuck to the floor, but there were splotches of blood wherever you looked. The lab in Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein couldn’t have been more grotesque. Watson discovered scores of handwritten notebooks describing the experiments Dr. Gordon had been performing.”

  He stopped, obviously overcome with emotion. “Do you know how much blood a person can lose before the loss causes death? Dr. Gordon did. He knew how much skin could be removed, and the areas where removal caused the earliest and most painful deaths. Some of his other experiments involved female violation so abominable I refuse to even call them to mind, now sealed away from the pains of torture anyone could inflict upon me. Monster was far too mild a term for the evil creature who bore the honored title of doctor.”

  “Show us some mercy,” I whispered. “You’ve proven how much the demon deserved his end. Give us the joy of finishing the story, and showing how it relates to Becker.”

  “Gladly. As feared, we were interrupted by the governess and the doctor’s daughter. I had Watson push them back into the hall. He stayed with young Clara while I escorted Phoebe into the laboratory, and shut the door.

  “I daresay I hardly expected her to believe me, but she told me that Clara had said how much she liked Phoebe and hoped she wouldn’t get sick and have to leave, as all the other governesses had done in the past. Phoebe also told me she had recently been falling into deep sleeps and waking up feeling weak. I noticed a bruise and small puncture mark on her left arm at the inside of the elbow and knew it was from a hypodermic needle.

  “As much as I loathed having to do it, I showed her the diaries and let her inspect the specimens and devices. She finally told me she realized what I said was true. I told her she had to stay with Clara and make sure she didn’t come downstairs from her room until Dr. Watson led them out of the house. I found several canisters of petrol in the carriage house—Dr. Gordon owned one of the pioneer Arnold automobiles in Britain at the time—and doused the entire laboratory as completely as I could, then awaited the doctor’s return.”

  Violet and Rose stopped crying and sat with angry anticipation. I found myself craving the arrival of the pending blazing inferno as impatiently as they.

  “I saw the lights of his vehicle in the oval in front of the manor an hour later. He was greeted by the sight of his dog with its leash wrapped around the figure in the fountain in the front yard. As expected he dashed directly to the laboratory.

  “I pushed him through the door, leaving it open far enough so he could hear sentence passed on him. Tossing a match wasn’t nearly sufficient. He needed to know there was no point in my confronting him about the unbelievable cruelty of what he had been doing. I told him I knew his position in society put him beyond the reach of ordinary justice, as did the existence of his innocent child who didn’t deserve knowing what manner of devil she had for a father.”

  Showing uncharacteristic emotion, Holmes said, “I also told him I knew I couldn’t continue my life in London if he were allowed to live, and that vows I would be safe were a waste of breath. Most of all, I made sure he understood he couldn’t continue to exist unpunished with the souls of all the innocent young women he had brutalized awaiting their deserved justice. His only defense was an indignant statement that he was doing nothing more than a scientist performing research that would help the future of humankind. I told him he was incapable of knowing what a human being was.”

  Holmes paused, seeming to realize the depths to which he had descended. “In the depths of the greatest anger I had ever known, I lit a match and tossed it through the door. The blaze nearly scorched my arm in the process. I closed the door and locked it.”

  He was interrupted by cheers from the women. I didn’t join them. Tales of avenging angels always were told on the sharpest angle of a double-edged sword.

  “To conclude, Watson and I left before the fire brigade arrived. John told me later he had told Clara we were very bad men who had been paid to murder her father, and she could have done nothing to stop us. It seemed the best way for her to deal with her loss.”

  The women were weeping again. Even I had to swallow hard.

  “I can see some similarities to the story about Moriarty, but how does it apply to Albert Becker?”

  “It seems Herr Becker wasn’t a mere anti-Semitic spiritualist medium. I received a wire from Mycroft informing me that Becker’s mother and father were involved in active espionage during the Great War. Sometime afterward, Becker apparently learned Houdini had been working as an agent spying for England on his various tours of Germany and Russia.”

  “I always wondered why Houdini seemed to enjoy his cinema role as spy as much as he did. He actually was one. “

  “Indeed. But that, in Becker’s eyes, wasn’t the greatest affront. The famed magician’s actions also threatened Hitler’s fund-raising mission in this country. It seems that was Herr Becker’s primary job, and essential to Hitler’s plans. Fortunately for Becker, Houdini had antagonized the entire Spiritualist population around the world, and there was no shortage of individuals who wanted the man dead. It gave Becker the opportunity to kill Houdini without arousing suspicion. When the doctors diagnosed appendicitis, Becker was sure he never would hear any more about it.

  “Houdini the spy was dead. More important, the man who most threatened Hitler’s plans had been stopped before he could cause irreparable damage. Dr. Croydon undoubtedly provided support and the poison. Proving anything at all now is likely impossible. Bess refused to order an autopsy.”

  I groaned. “You didn’t tell me that. My once in a lifetime story is gone.”

  “It appears so, but lamentable as Houdini’s death is, preventing the damage Becker could have caused to the world if Hitler succeeds is many times more important. As with Moriarty and Dr. Gordon, Houdini’s murder was only the least of a number of unspeakable crimes. Hitler’s fund-raising machine will undoubtedly be rebuilt, but it no longer will have the same imprimatur or potential support of the entire Spiritualist community, not only Sir Arthur and Margery. If the world is lucky enough, he m
ay never rise to the level of his ambitions.”

  The room fell silent.

  I turned to Holmes. “I don’t know how much you’ve done to prevent the rise of Adolf Hitler, but I do agree it needed to be done. You are a far braver man than I could ever be. I would never be able to bear the burden of my actions for the rest of my life.”

  “Being a fictional character has its advantages,” Holmes said with a wry smile.