Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  Bess was much quicker than Dash, much more attentive to my instructions, and much, much better looking! I billed us as “The Great Houdinis Introducing the Only and Original Metamorphosis— Change in 3 Seconds!”

  We started out at Huber’s Dime Museum on Fourteenth Street and then worked our way south playing beer halls and dime museums. By January of 1895 we reached Montgomery, Alabama. A week later we arrived in Taladega, Alabama in the middle of a driving rain storm and found that the rain on the tin roof of the town hall made such a loud noise we could not give a performance. No one could get into town anyway, for the roads were all washed out or thick with ankle-deep red and yellow mud.

  None of this concerned me, however, for a telegram was waiting for us when we arrived at the hall. It was from Tony Pastor in New York. He had received the letters about our act that I had been sending him and he was responding with an offer for a one week booking at his Fourteenth Street Theatre! I hired a farmer with a team of mules to drive us through the muddy road up to Anniston. From there we took the train to Atlanta and from there we caught another train for New York. This was It. We had finally hit the Big Time.

  Or so we thought. Pastor’s was the last word in elegance in the new version of legitimate family vaudeville, the pinnacle of show business at that time. Everything from the plush seats in the house to the dressing rooms backstage shouted “Money!” and “Success!” But we were spotted on the bottom of the bill at Pastor’s; that is, we opened the show while members of the audience were still finding their seats. At the end of the week I could only get Pastor to write an unenthusiastic recommendation for our act which he found “satisfactory and interesting.” We returned to the dime museums with their performing monkeys and fat ladies and midgets and assorted armless and legless human curiosities. I felt at home among the freaks— even felt I was one of the freaks myself. Bess, however, disliked the atmosphere, and one day at Huber’s she came to me backstage and said, “I just can’t stand it anymore, Harry, I just can’t stand it.”

  I knew what she meant, for we’d had this conversation several times before.

  “It’ll get better,” I said. “I’ll find something better for us.”

  “When? When, Harry?”

  “Soon.”

  “I thought so. I’m going home. You do the show by yourself. Or get Dash to take my place again. I’ll be your wife, but I can’t be your assistant anymore. I just can’t.”

  I finished the booking at Huber’s by myself.

  Then one day I came up to Bess while she was washing dishes.

  “I’ve got us a real booking, a featured spot— look!” I held up a letter that was boldly headed with the title “Welsh Brothers.”

  “A circus!” Bess gasped disdainfully.

  “Not a circus,” I said. “One of the best circuses in the country! We’ll be playing to big audiences in big towns! It’s just like big time vaudeville, only under a tent.”

  I convinced Bess to travel with me in the circus, but it was not exactly what I had promised. We joined the Welsh Brothers Circus in April of 1895 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania during a giant rainstorm. The Welsh Brothers Circus was what was known as a “mud sill,” an operation that traveled between towns by horse and wagon. The biggest wagons were converted railroad freight cars pulled by teams of mules. These cars contained the sleeping quarters for the circus cast and crew. When the circus proprietor Mike Welsh led us to our sleeping quarters inside one of these cars and Bess saw that it was nothing but a cardboard compartment with a cot, she broke down in tears. But she was soon to find that circus life was not as bad as she first thought. The two of us together were paid twenty-five dollars a week and food, some of the best food in the world, I might add. We also received what was called “FOUND,” which was pay for any kind of fill-in job that might turn up. In my case this meant playing “Projea, the Wild Man of Mexico.” I also “FOUND” work as a clown on the parallel bars and a Punch and Judy puppeteer. Bess “FOUND” work as a singer and dancer. Together we did a mind-reading act along with our regular magic act that included the trunk trick. I also sold bars of soap to the crowd between shows. Since we had no living expenses, we began taking in small buckets of money and we were able to save everything we made minus the twelve dollars a week I would send home to Ma. Bess had to admit that our fortunes were on the upswing, even though we did sleep on a cot in a cardboard room inside a railroad freight car.

  One night outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania we heard a commotion in the freight car just as we were about to fall asleep. A kerosene lantern glowed on the other side of the curtain.

  Then someone said, “Houdini.”

  After a moment I recognized the voice as belonging to Mike Welsh.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You have to come out here. There are some men here from the sheriff’s office. They want to talk to you.”

  “Sheriff’s office?” I asked. I looked over to Bess. She frowned and shook her head.

  “Let me get dressed,” I said.

  I got on my clothes and came out of our compartment. Mike Welsh was standing at the rear of the freight car. Two other men stood outside in the darkness. I went to the rear of the car and Mike Welsh and I jumped down to the ground.

  The two men with Welsh were very well-dressed gentlemen, wearing long overcoats and derby hats. One carried a cane with a brass knob. The one with the cane was tall and stony-faced, and seemed to be about forty-five years of age.

  “You’re the sheriff?” I asked the man with the cane who glared at me.

  “No,” he said. “I’m no sheriff. Neither is he.” The man indicated the other fellow standing next to him. “That’s just what we asked Mr. Welsh to say. We’re with the U.S. Army. You could call us advisors. We need your assistance in a confidential matter.”

  I looked over to Mike Welsh. He wouldn’t look me in the eye; he seemed to be frightened.

  “Don’t be concerned about your position with the circus here,” the man with the cane said. “We have already spoken to Mr. Welsh and he has assured us of his and your cooperation in this matter. It will only take an hour or two of your time this evening. You can then return here and go back to sleep. It is important that you help us. We have come from…afar.”

  I suddenly knew who these men were. The phrase “We have come from…afar” was an identification code used by agents of President Cleveland’s secret Interplanetary Unit within the United States Army. The words had to be spoken in a precise manner with a three second interval between the words “from” and “afar.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Just come with us,” the stony-faced man said.

  “Can I speak to my wife?” I asked. “She’ll be upset if I don’t tell her I’m going.”

  “By all means,” the stony-faced man said. “We’ll wait.”

  “Would you come with me, Mr. Welsh?” I asked.

  Mike Welsh nodded.

  Welsh and I climbed back up into the freight car. Bess was standing outside our compartment.

  “What is it?” Bess asked nearly in tears.

  “Nothing to get upset about,” Mike Welsh said.

  “They just need me to answer a few questions,” I said.

  “What are they accusing you of?” Bess demanded.

  “They’re not accusing him,” Mike Welsh said. “He’s a witness. They need him to identify someone.”

  “I’ll be back in an hour or two. Guess they’re taking me into town.”

  I kissed Bess and started off.

  “Harry,” she said.

  She threw me my coat.

  “Button it up,” she said.

  The two men outside led me to a closed carriage. The three of us got inside and the driver up top started the horses off at a fair clip of speed.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked.

  The man with the cane said, “We’re taking you down into a tunnel below the earth. We want your opinion on an artifact t
hat has been discovered there.”

  “What could I know about something like that?” I asked.

  “Perhaps nothing,” the man said. “Perhaps something. We shall see.”

  We rode along for quite some time. Then the carriage stopped, the man with the cane opened the door, and the three of us got out.

  We had stopped in front of an entrance to a coal mine. Down below on a trail in the woods I could see a crowd of people with kerosene lanterns.

  What I took to be a coal miner stood at the entrance to the mine. He was actually a soldier, for I noticed he held a rifle at his side. The soldier paid us no heed, just as if we weren’t there. I followed the other two men into the mine entrance. We reached an elevator cage manned by a fully uniformed soldier. I looked at his insignia and noted that he was a captain. The army captain closed the elevator doors and started us down into the mine.

  This was a very deep mine. Exactly how far down we went I couldn’t estimate, but at some point I turned to the man with the cane and stared at him. He must have understood my expression, for he said, “Oh, we have much further to go.”

  And we did. The elevator continued to descend into what seemed a bottomless pit. Finally the captain stopped the car and pulled the door open. Ahead of us lay a long tunnel lit at intervals with electric lamps. I could hear the noise of an electrical generator operating somewhere.

  We went down that long tunnel several thousand feet. It was a bit of a stroll. At one point I felt obliged to say something.

  “The fellows who cut this sure did some work!” I observed.

  The man with the cane looked over at his associate and smiled at him faintly. They kept walking.

  “So this is a coal mine,” I said.

  “No,” the man with the cane said. “This is not a coal mine. It is very old.”

  “How old would you say it is?” I asked.

  “I don’t know exactly,” the man with the cane replied.

  “Something on the order of tens of thousands of years.”

  “This one’s about fifty thousand years old,” the other man said. “It’s Atlantean.”

  I said nothing further, for I knew these men had brought me here because they had found something that involved the Martians. In another minute I found out what it was.

  At the end of the long tunnel we approached a brightly lit area where several men were working.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Archeologists from the Smithsonian Institution,” the man with the cane said.

  An older man among them came forward. The man with the cane said to him, “This is Harry Houdini.”

  The older man nodded and looked at me like he knew a great deal about me, and said, “Thank you for coming out this evening. We won’t keep you long. Would you please take a look at these inscriptions?”

  He led me over to a smooth vertical wall of granite upon which a great number of hieroglyphic figures had been inscribed.

  “Ever see anything like this before?” the older man asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Far away from here.”

  “Not in Egypt,” the older man said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Not on this world,” the man with the cane said. “Is that right?”

  “No,” I said. “Not on this world. On Mars.”

  The older man and the man with the cane looked at each other. I continued:

  “It was on a slab just like this, on an entrance to an underground city.”

  “These inscriptions are proto-Egyptian— Atlantean,” the older man said.

  “I recognize some of these figures,” I said. “They were on the Martian slab.”

  “We wanted to bring Mr. Tesla down here, but you were closer to us,” the man with the cane said.

  “Mr. Tesla can read these inscriptions,” I said.

  “I know,” the older man from the Smithsonian said. “I’ve discussed Egyptian hieroglyphics with him on several occasions. But the Martian inscriptions are a little different. Do you recognize any of these as ones you saw on Mars?”

  I pointed out a pictogram that looked like a star.

  “That one?” the older man asked. “In ancient Egyptian it was pronounced sahba. It meant ‘gate’ or ‘star.’”

  I nodded, and pointed to another pictogram that was shaped like a bell.

  “You saw that?” the older man asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “What does it mean?”

  The older man looked at the man with the cane.

  “We don’t know,” the man with the cane said. “We were hoping you could tell us.”

  “Me?” I asked. “How would I know?”

  “Perhaps Mr. Tesla told you,” the man with the cane replied curtly.

  “No,” I said. “He has never mentioned it.”

  “Are you sure?” the older man asked me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Be certain!” the man with the cane snapped. “Try to remember! Think!”

  “I told you…”

  “Perhaps Mr. Tesla mentioned it casually to you in passing,” the older man said.

  “Never,” I said. “I would’ve remembered.”

  “Do you think Mr. Tesla would tell us what it means?” the older man asked. “We’re to be trusted.”

  “If you know what it means it is best you tell us now,” the man with the cane said.

  “Look,” I said, “I’ve told you all I know. Why is this sign so important? What is it? A picture of a bell? What’s so important about a bell?”

  “I don’t think he knows anything,” the older man said to the man with the cane.

  “Very well,” the man with the cane said. “Make pencil notes and take them to Tesla. No photographs.”

  Then the man with the cane turned to me, and snapped, “That’s all. Let’s go.”

  I started back down the long tunnel following the man with the cane and his associate.

  As we were walking along, this other man, who had been fairly quiet up until then, turned to me and said, “You will speak to no one about what you have just seen. You weren’t even here tonight. You were asleep in bed.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied.

  The man turned to face me.

  “I’m asleep in bed,” I added.

  The two men turned back around un-amused, and we continued on down the tunnel.

  Back at the circus camp the carriage stopped and I got out.

  “Remember,” the man with the cane said, “this never happened.” He closed the door of the carriage and the driver sent the horses off in a gallop.

  Mike Welsh came out of the shadows.

  “They told me to say that you went to town to identify a pickpocket you saw earlier today,” Welsh said. “That’s what we’re supposed to tell everybody.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Harry,” Welsh said. He looked about, and then said very quietly, “They frightened me.”

  To make this understandable, I should mention that Mike Welsh was a very big, strong man who, up until then, seemed to me to be incapable of fear.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “They told me not to talk,” Welsh said. “They…they made threats. Just who are these people? And what do they want?”

  “Forget about it,” I said. “It’s all over with. They won’t do anything. Just keep what happened to yourself and you’ll be fine.”

  I started to walk away.

  “Harry,” Mike Welsh said.

  I turned around.

  “Is this kind of thing going to happen again?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. I hope not.”

  I went back to our sleeping car, opened the back door, and pulled myself up inside. Bess must have heard me open the door, because she immediately came out of our compartment. She was fully dressed.

  “What’s the idea?” I asked.

  “I was ready for anything,” she said, almost hysterical.
/>
  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s try to get some sleep.”

  “What was it?” she asked.

  “Pickpockets,” I said. “I spotted one today working the crowd. They caught him in town and wanted me to identify him.”

  “Oh,” Bess said, almost disappointed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Didn’t think it was important at the time,” I said, shrugging. “Come on, you need rest more than I do.”

  As it turned out, Mike Welsh never had to deal with the men from the Interplanetary Unit again. But I was far from through with them.

  Bess and I continued to struggle in the small time show business for several more years. After the season ended with the Welsh Brothers, I used our savings to buy an interest in a burlesque company, “The American Gaiety Girls.” The production folded on its last legs in Woonsocket, Long Island in the spring of 1896. We signed on with Marco the Magician and played Canada. We later returned to New York, tired and broke. I thought of quitting the show business. But then we signed on with Doc Hill’s California Concert Company, a one-horse medicine show that played the Midwest. This show soon folded also. In desperation Bess and I began doing a fake spiritualist act. When I saw people were taking us seriously as real psychic mediums, I quit the racket in disgust with both my own self and the whole sordid thing. If we were going to fail, at least we would do it honestly. We went back to the Welsh Brothers Circus for another season and then it was back to the grind of the dime museums and beer halls, a grind that Bess had come to loathe.

  “When, Harry?” Bess would ask. “When?”

  “Soon,” I would say. “Soon.”

  How often would she ask me this? It seemed almost like every day.

  “Soon” finally came. It was in a way that I would have never expected.

  One morning in early January of 1899 I heard a knock on the door of our hotel room in Chicago. I opened the door. There on the other side stood my old acquaintance Lieutenant Andrew Rohan of the Chicago Police Department.

  “Hello, there, young fellow,” Lieutenant Rohan said. “How have you been?”

  “Well, Lieutenant!” I said. “Come in and meet the wife!”

  “Oh,” Rohan said, “I’ll just say ‘hello’ here at the door.”

  Bess came to the door and I introduced them.