by Sesh Heri
It was like trying to cut melted butter. A lane of open pavement formed, its edges undulating with the movement of arms and legs.
Sheriff Barnet said, “Let’s get to the building while we still can!” He opened the door of the automobile and the three of us stepped down on to the pavement of Broadway and marched through the space created by the policemen.
I felt the eyes of the crowd upon me. Just a few days before I walked in this same place unnoticed; now I was the lodestone for twenty thousand. As I passed through the people, I heard such comments as:
“There he is! He ain’t tall!”
“Look at him, Odie! He’s got a spee-rit over him!”
“That’s him! That’s him— in the middle! Just like his picture!”
And then— from somewhere off to my left— a chant of numerous voices shouting in unison:
“Houdini! Houdini! Hip-hip-hooray! Houdini! Houdini! In Oakland today!”
We made it to the sidewalk where it was roped on either side of the front entrance to allow us to get into the building. The two big plate glass doors were propped open by their brass kick-stands. In we strolled across the tiled floor of the lobby to where Collins stood with three sailors and a crowd of newspaper reporters and Barnet’s deputies.
“Are you boys ready to tie knots that would hold a mad bull?” I asked.
“Aye, aye, sir!” the sailors replied.
“Then let’s go!” I exclaimed, and all of us marched to the elevator that would take us to the roof. I got on with Sheriff Barnet and George Ebey, and then Collins and the sailors came through the elevator door.
“No room for the gentlemen of the press?” one of the newspapermen asked from outside.
“We’ll take the Tribune’s man,” I said. “That’ll make nine.”
The reporter from the Tribune came forward and slipped into the elevator.
“We’ll send down the car for the rest of you boys,” I said. “Don’t worry. We won’t do a thing until you all get to the roof.”
The elevator operator pulled the doors of the elevator closed and sent us up into the building.
“Rather cold day for such a stunt as this, Mr. Houdini,” the reporter said.
“I’ve known much colder,” I said. “This is nothing. And no ‘Mr.’— it’s just ‘Houdini.’”
“So,” the reporter asked, “is this a cut-and-dried thing for you, or is there some real risk?”
I said, “If this was cut and dried, twenty thousand people wouldn’t be waiting outside.”
“Good answer,” the reporter said. “So are you worried?”
“Worry is for amateurs,” I said. “I plan, I practice, I perform. It is habit. But it is habit with awareness.”
“Awareness?” the reporter asked. “Awareness of what?”
“Death,” I replied, looking straight into the reporter’s eyes.
Our car jolted to a halt. We had reached the top floor. The elevator operator opened the doors and we all poured out into an office hallway. Another flight of stairs took us up to the roof.
Outside on the top of the building we could see the city of Oakland sprawled below us. Before us rose the terra-cotta cupola atop Oakland’s City Hall, the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Miles away to the northwest I could see the grey hills of San Francisco, now becoming shrouded in a bank of fog. Overhead, the sky was darker than ever. I could feel a mist begin to fall. The air was cold and wet and laden with the bracing scent of the briny Pacific Ocean only miles to the west.
“We’ve been testing the ropes up here all morning,” Collins said to me. “In all this wet air they’ve got a mind of their own and become molded into twists.”
“We’ve got ‘em all straightened now,” one of the sailors said. He held a piece of rope tightly in his hands and it was being strained by the weight of the two other sailors who pulled on its other end.
“That’s good,” I said. “The rope has to be straight when it’s wound on the windlass.”
“Sounds like you’ve done this a few times before,” the reporter from the Tribune said.
“A few,” I replied.
Collins and the sailors began carefully winding the rope on to the windlass. Meanwhile, the rest of the reporters arrived on the rooftop.
One of them asked Sheriff Barnet: “Now is this on the level? Are you going to put a real straitjacket on him?”
“Real as this rain that’s starting to come down,” Sheriff Barnet said. “Here’s the straitjacket.”
Barnet held up a straitjacket made of thick, white canvas and tan leather strips. The broad leather collar was attached to the canvas with brass rivets.
“This is our newest model,” Barnet said, “sent directly over from San Quentin.”
“They use this over at ‘Q’?” one of the reporters asked, noticeably impressed.
“On their worst incorrigibles,” Barnet said.
I thought of London’s Star Rover which I had just finished reading that morning.
“No one has ever escaped from one of those, I understand,” one of the reporters said.
“And I don’t think anyone ever will,” Barnet said, “or I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be party to a sham. But if someone wants a real test…. I don’t think you’d want it any other way.”
The sheriff had turned to me.
“No other way,” I replied.
“The rope’s prepared,” Collins said. “Block and tackle is ship-shape.”
“Then,” I said, “with your permission, Sheriff, Mr. Ebey, gentlemen of the press— I am ready to proceed.”
I took off my coat, hat, collar, tie, and vest, and handed them all to Collins. Sheriff Barnet came forward with the straitjacket and slipped the sleeves on to my outstretched arms.
Then Sheriff Barnet commenced the lacing of the straps in back. I relaxed for an instant, and then took in an enormous breath, filling my lungs to their complete capacity. My arms, which I had folded in front of me, I now held away from my chest. I had established my position for gaining as much slack as possible. Two of Barnet’s deputies, who had come up with the other newspaper men, now helped the Sheriff in the task of lacing me tightly into the jacket. First the strong cords were laced through brass eyelets like a shoelace and tied at the top, not in a bow, but in several square knots. Then, to insure that this tension was sustained against all resistance, the leather straps up the back of the jacket were drawn over the top of the lacing, through their steel hasps, and then buckled tight. Then the straps at the ends of the sleeves were drawn through their hasps and buckled. I could feel the pressure of the canvas all around me, a pressure that would have been suffocating to another, but that I had learned to fight with a resolve of steel. I still maintained a slight space between my arms and my chest. Suddenly, I felt a dull thrust to the small of my back; then I felt the sleeves being slightly released from their buckles, and then a kind of drawing tension on the sleeves I had never felt before. The canvas of the sleeves tightened, then tightened even more; the jacket started feeling like a sheet of metal, a sheet that began to force my arms against my chest, no matter how hard I tried to resist. One of the big deputies had his knee in the small of my back, and the Sheriff and the other deputy steadied him on his one foot as he pulled on the straps of the sleeves with his clinched fists.
“Whoa!” a newspaperman exclaimed, “You guys are going to crack the man’s ribs!”
“We know what we’re doing,” Sheriff Barnet said. “It’s all regulation. Cinch him tight. Cinch him tight. Don’t let him breathe.”
My arms collapsed against my chest, tightly pressed in a suffocating bondage. I had lost my slack. But I still had the air in my lungs.
“He’s holding his breath,” Sheriff Barnet said. “Get it tighter. I said tighter. That’s it. Keep squeezing.”
Incredibly, a mirror held by the Sheriff flashed in front of my face, and I was shocked at my reflected image— at the agony I saw on my face. A final squeeze from behind and hal
f the air in my lungs came out. The image of my face in front of me fogged over.
“That’s it,” Sheriff Barnet said. “Now snap the buckles— before you loose the tension in the straps!”
I could feel the straps of the sleeves lock in place along my back. Not only had the straps closing the jacket been tightly drawn and buckled, but the straps at the end of the sleeves had been stressed to their limit and locked into an extreme tension. I had never been laced up in a straitjacket as tightly as this before. But I knew this suffocating procedure, for I had just read about in Jack London’s Star Rover.
“That’s how we apply the straitjacket in California,” Sheriff Barnet said. “No human on earth can escape from this— they either break and scream for mercy— or die. That’s why I was willing to be part of this public demonstration. Now when you fail in your attempt every criminal in the state will sit up and take notice.”
“Sheriff Barnet,” I gasped, hardly able to breathe, “I am so sorry that I will have to disappoint you.”
Barnet laughed.
“Good,” Sheriff Barnet said. “That’s what I want— a real fight.”
Now the deputies stepped back and Collins came forward with one of the sailors. I braced my legs rigid, and Collins and the sailor took hold of my shoulders and gently lowered me downward as I pivoted at my heels upon the rooftop surface. I came to rest on my back, trussed up like a Thanksgiving Day turkey, an image that suddenly flashed in my mind, no doubt because Thanksgiving was only two days away and I hadn’t ate a thing all morning.
Collins directed the sailors in tying my feet. It was the crucial point in the whole procedure. If it was not done correctly, my ankles could be broken, or worse, the bindings could unloosen while I hung in mid-air, resulting in my instant death on the pavement below. First, my ankles had to be amply padded with a strip of cloth stuffed with a layer of cotton batting; then the coiling of the rope around my ankles, each cord of the coil parallel with the one next to it; then the tying off of the first coil with a square knot; then back down toward my ankles again with another coil tied off at my ankles. Here some special knots devised by Collins and myself were employed, and then a third coil of rope was wound, tied mid-way of the coil underneath, and then wound back down to my ankles, and tied a final time. This final tying allowed a loop of ropes that would be slipped over a hook on a pulley. A second safety rope, extending up to pulleys in the crane overhead and directly back to the windlass, was tied around my ankles at the very bottom. This was the tying procedure we had been using up until this day in Oakland. We were about to see reasons to change it.
Collins intently studied the ropes. I looked up at him. His spectacles were fogged over and the mist from the sky was beginning to turn to rain and land on his bald forehead as tiny droplets.
“That’s it,” Collins said to me.
“Let’s go,” I said to Collins.
Two sailors came forward and lifted me bodily into the air.
A murmur arose among the newspapermen. I heard one of them say to one of his fellows: “My God, this isn’t what I expected. Is he really going through with this? Look at this rain starting to come down.”
Sheriff Barnet heard the reporter, and said to me, “Want to stop? Want to call it off?”
“We go,” I said.
The reporters fell silent. Collins directed the two sailors who were carrying me to walk toward the rooftop’s parapet. We reached the wall and the sailors set me down on the surface of the rooftop again. Now Collins and the sailors manned the windlass and crane. The ropes attached to my ankles began to draw up through the long arm of the crane overhead. Then the ropes tightened and I felt the initial pull; my legs went up into the air; then my torso; then the back of my head lifted off the surface of the rooftop. I went up. I looked about. I could see the reporters, Sheriff Barnet, and Mr. Ebey staring down at me, all of them upside down on the rooftop. It was an illusion. I was upside-down and they were standing upright looking up to me where I hung in the air.
Collins worked with the sailors to turn the arm of the crane. I started to move laterally in the air as the arm of the crane above me swung around over the edge of the rooftop. The surface of the rooftop with the upside-down crowd of men swung away from me, and suddenly I passed over the side of the building. Far below— to me a ceiling— the massive crowd flashed into my view; it engulfed the street, making islands of the streetcars, and spread off for many blocks down half a dozen boulevards radiating away from the central intersection.
A great rush of sound rose up from the teeming crowd, a rolling roar of voices that echoed back and forth in the canyon of the buildings.
On the roof, Collins and the sailors slowly unwound the rope from the windless. I began to descend toward the crowd on the street, story after story. The sea of hats and umbrellas seemed to stretch out at it edges, and those below me enlarged as if they stood under a massive magnifying glass.
I stopped descending at about seventy-five feet, which put me at the sixth floor of the bank building. I hung in place, studying the crowd, and they studying me. I could hear the murmur of their voices with perfect clarity, as the sound seemed to rise up the wall of the building.
It was here where I thought of Mr. Tesla and his terrifying words. Doubt and fear had no place here; but now I was visited by the specter of supreme terror— universal cataclysm, the destruction of worlds. The image of the Bell floated before me in my mind’s eye above the heads of the crowd. Could such a thing be out there in space again, hovering above us all? Who would think— who would guess— that such a thing could be possible?
I felt a vibration in my ankles. I started moving downward again. Collins was easing me into the final position from which I would make my escape. This we had pre-determined would be at just above the second-story level of the building. The first story being some thirty feet high and the second about fifteen, this would put me about forty-five or fifty feet high in the air.
Now my descent ceased once again. I had been breathing short, shallow breaths. Now I tried to expand my lungs to their full extent, and pushing with my elbows against the confinement of the jacket.
Unknown to Barnet, a new straitjacket makes an easier escape than an old one. With a new one, the canvas fabric has not been stretched to its mechanical limit. This was a new jacket, and I began an assault upon the actual fabric itself, not the straps. In a moment I had worked out a space that allowed me to fill my lungs. With full lungs, I began another assault on the canvas. I knew I had to work rapidly, because now the rain was coming down in a steady shower, and once the canvas became soaked, my work would be ten times harder.
But just then, another quantity entered into the equation of my confinement: the wind began to blow.
I began to swing to and fro like a pendulum. I noted the wall of the bank building coming to meet me at intervals, but I continued to work on the jacket. The crowd below me grew silent until I could only hear the wind. I worked frantically.
Collins and I had miscalculated. The canyon of buildings surrounding this square acted like a device to amplify the power of the wind coming in from the Pacific. This effect could only have been noted now, when it was too late.
Now I began to turn in the wind. The subtle twist in the ropes had memory and the ropes were now returning to that twisted shape. Then suddenly a gust of wind came up from below and almost seemed to lift me; I swung instantly to the side of the building, my face rushing toward a cornice. I turned my head, and tried to bend at the waist.
The back of my head cracked against the cornice. I saw stars, and, perhaps, for an instant blacked-out. Now in a stupor I struggled to regain my senses.
Below me the vast crowd became a surging sea. My stomach twisted; my head felt aflame. The jacket, soaked and heavy, closed in about me. The rain from above poured down upon my body— flood and fire, suffocation and darkness.
I closed my eyes, and in the blackness repeated to myself: I am Houdini. I am Houdini. I am Houdini.
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This is my ultimate secret: the knowledge that I am Houdini. What is Houdini? That cannot be expressed in words. But I know it. Moreover, my body knows it.
My body began to respond. Houdini did not care about the crack on my head, or the nausea in my stomach, or the fear— the terror that was now suddenly engulfing me. Houdini was not capable of caring, only of escaping.
I felt the muscles of my arms expand and contract rapidly. Another motion and my left shoulder had become dislocated by the force of Houdini. My left arm slithered in wet fire, snaking its way through canvas. Down, down came my hand, the head of the snake. Houdini drew the head of the snake on downward within the sleeve of the jacket; my elbow moved away from my chest a fraction of an inch. Houdini made another thrust of my left arm, and the sleeve responded and yielded. My elbow went up. My left forearm inside the sleeve swung forward. For an instant I felt the cessation of rain as the left sleeve of the jacket came up in front of my face. The searing pain in my left shoulder sent waves of fire up and down my back and legs. I was unable to move, but without pity for my agony Houdini forced my left arm on downward until it was completely over my head. Now I noticed that my right arm was following the motion of the left. In a moment both arms were passing over the top of my head. The work of Barnet’s deputy on the sleeve straps had proved futile against the will of Houdini.
I stretched out my left arm and felt the snap of the joint re-locating, and the instant cessation of pain.
Now my left hand began working on the buckles along my back, my fingers working inside the canvas sleeves. My fingers fumbled, but then two of the buckles opened up. Houdini had opened them. My right arm came around to my back and through the canvas found a third strap on a buckle. The fingers of my right hand worked on the knots of the laced cords. Houdini loosened the knots and pulled the lacing apart. I felt the tension in the jacket release. I took a full breath. My left hand inside its canvas sleeve reached up along my back as far as it could and grabbed canvas and steel. Houdini pulled on it.
