The Dime Museum Murders

by Daniel Stashower

  “What a gruff and crusty fellow you are, Albert.”

  “I’m a realist, Dash. I know your brother is talented, but it’s not enough. His timing stinks. His delivery stinks. His patter stinks. His—”

  “All of those things will get better. I’m telling you, he’s a natural showman. He has a real instinct for drama. I’ve seen people literally holding their breath waiting to see if he’ll find a way to escape from an old nailed-up packing crate. All he needs is a chance to show what he can do. Now, if Mr. Beckman should give him one of the warm-up spots at Thornton’s, just a few minutes at the top of the show, I know Harry could—”

  “Dash. It’s a dance hall. Burleycue.”

  “Harry’s worked burlesque halls before.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t have thought he had the legs for it.” Albert looked at his watch and tossed away the stump of his cigar. “Do me a favor, wouldja? Run the bally for me? Chester’s down with the grippe.”

  The bally, I should probably explain, is an act performed outside the tent or the theater to lure the marks inside. A crowd gathers to see the act—whatever it is—and the talker launches into an elaborate spiel, describing the many miracles and marvels to be found just beyond the ticket window. If the talker is any good—and Albert was one of the best—the marks will just about knock him over in their haste to get inside. Sometimes the bally would be a sword-swallower; sometimes a fire-eater. The absent Chester was an accomplished blockhead—meaning that he could drive three-inch spikes into his nose with a hammer.

  Happily, Albert didn’t expect anything quite that exotic from me. There was a set of heavy wooden Indian clubs sitting by the entrance. I picked them up and started juggling—an easy overhand pass routine—while Albert delivered his grind. I don’t remember exactly how the patter went, but I do recall that it began with the words “Step right up, folks,” and that it promised “a world of wonders such as mortal eyes have never beheld.”

  Between Albert’s grind and my juggling, it wasn’t long before we’d gathered a crowd of perhaps fourteen or fifteen people, about as many as could be expected on a chilly Tuesday evening. Albert collected a handful of coins, issued paper tickets, and ushered our small audience through the door.

  The so-called Palace of Wonders had been established on the ruins of a failed butcher’s shop, and the smell of salty meats still hung about the room. Mr. Beckman had used red and gold hanging banners to cover the walls and display windows, but otherwise the space was much as it had been—a long, dingy room with high windows along the left-hand wall. No one had even bothered to sweep the sawdust from the floor.

  A narrow platform ran along the left wall beneath the windows, creating a performance ramp that Albert described as his “Arcade of Miracles.” It was perhaps two feet high and no more than four feet deep, and the performers stood there in plain view waiting for the show to start. They all snapped to attention as the crowd filtered in, and bustled around the platform trying to make themselves look interesting.

  Albert’s job was to herd the crowd from one edge of the platform to the other, allowing them the requisite 180 seconds to enjoy each of the acts. He did this with uncommon skill. “Hurry along, folks!” he would cry, with a slight edge of alarm to his voice. “You won’t want to miss our next Oddity of Nature!”

  The Oddities of Nature, it must be said, were looking a little haggard, since this was their tenth show of the day. Nevertheless, they managed to rouse themselves as Albert urged the crowd forward. It started with Miss Missy, the Armless Wonder, who sat drinking tea from a China cup daintily clutched between her toes, and moved on to the Human Skye Terrier, whose shaggy dog head benefited greatly from artfully placed chin and chop pieces. Next came the Tattooed Lady and the Moss-Haired Girl, followed by the Sword-Swallower and the Double-Bodied Wonder, who had a pair of tiny legs—meant to be the remnants of a Siamese twin—poking out of his mid-section. The Living Skeleton, the Human Telescope, and Vranko the Glass-Eater rounded out the entertainments.

  As each act finished in turn, the performers were given thirty seconds to hawk a souvenir item for a nickel or a dime, which gave them the chance to augment the meager salary they drew from Mr. Beckman. For the most part, these items took the form of a booklet or a keepsake scroll that related the performer’s brave and heart-rending struggle against the cruel hand of nature. Miss Missy’s story, I recall, was especially touching. It was a miniature volume entitled “My Blessed Life,” with her portrait on the front in all her armless glory. It began with the words, “I am never too busy to lend a helping foot.”

  Other performers went for cheap wooden novelties. Harmi, the Sword-Swallower, offered little wooden sabers, and Benny, the Human Skye Terrier, did a brisk business in personalized grooming supplies. I can’t remember what my brother was selling that year—it was either his “Teach Yourself Magic” booklet or “Professor Houdini’s Ten Steps to Perfect Health.”

  When all the novelties were bought, Albert herded the audience toward the last act—Harry Houdini of Appleton, Wisconsin, performing as “The King of Kards and Konjuring.” My brother never got a lot of credit for it, but he was a pretty fair card mechanic in his day. While he waited for the crowd to shift down to his end of the room, he stood at the front edge of the platform plucking card fans from thin air. He was dressed in a black suit with a string tie and a straw boater hat, and had his sleeves pushed back to show off his muscular forearms. As the crowd circled, Harry went into some flashy hand-to-hand cascades while Albert introduced him.

  “Kidnapped by gypsies at the tender age of six months, the infant Harry was soon earning his keep by plucking coins and wallets from the pockets of unwary passers-by. By the age of five, the pint-sized prodigy was apprenticed to Signor Blitz, the greatest of all the magicians in the world, and by his twelfth year, the precocious prestidigitator was the favorite of the sultans and sheiks of far-away lands. He appears today by kind permission of the czar of Russia, to whom he serves as court conjurer. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the one, the only—Harry Houdini!”

  It was a stirring intro, and I could feel a building sense of anticipation from the small crowd as they awaited this extraordinary young man’s first miracle. Then Harry spoiled it. He talked.

  I was reading my brother’s biography the other day. It had many kind things to say about Harry’s “mesmerizing stage presence” and “compelling natural charisma.” Clearly the author had never been to Huber’s Museum. The truth is, Harry didn’t have a lot of natural charisma at that time. He was only beginning to learn to relax onstage. In a few years’ time he became a lot breezier, and learned to treat the audience as if they were all in on a big secret. In those early days, he came across like some sort of German physics professor. He lectured the audience, and directed them on the proper manner in which to appreciate the genius of Houdini. It might have played well in Europe, where they still dressed up their magic acts as “philosophical experiments,” but in New York, they just wanted entertainment.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” my brother said from the platform, “I am the Great Houdini, the justly celebrated self-liberator and eclipsing sensation of Europe. I will now entertain you.”

  My sister-in-law Bess stepped from behind a makeshift curtain, carrying a velvet-trimmed prop table. She was wearing what I always thought of as her “sugarplum fairy” costume. It was all gauze and puffs that made her look like a Christmas ornament with legs. Her legs were her best feature, and even though she wore tights, I never understood how she got away with that outfit in those days.

  “And now,” said Harry, “if it will please the ladies and the gentlemen, I urge you to direct your attention toward the glass bowl that I am holding. It is enormous, as you see, and very heavy, because to the brim it is filled with water.”

  He stepped forward, holding the bowl stiffly at arm’s length. “Observe closely, and you will see the little fishes swimming merrily in the water. Do you see them? They are very jolly little fellows, swi
mming back and forth.”

  Albert caught my gaze and rolled his eyes. Faster, Harry, I said under my breath. There’s a guy in the back who’s still awake.

  “I command your attention as I place the bowl onto this lacquered tray that my lovely wife Bess is holding. Now I display for you a large black foulard. You see it? There is nothing unusual about this cloth. Here is one side—here is the other. Now I cover the bowl and lift it high in the air. At this point, you must prepare yourselves for a miracle. It is really quite an astonishing shock, so I would ask that you steel your nerves for the amazement which I now present.”

  Just do the trick, Harry, I muttered. And for God’s sake, don’t mention the traveling circus.

  “Long ago, when I was a boy in Appleton, in the fine state of Wisconsin, the traveling circus came to town. It was a wondrous sight for a small American boy like myself. Jugglers they had, and clowns, and an elephant, and many tigers. But of all the wonders I saw that day, none amazed me so much as the magician who caused a bowl of goldfish—a bowl much like the very one I hold here—to vanish as if into thin air.”

  From the platform, Bess caught my eye and flinched slightly. She still held the black lacquered tray, waiting for her cue to leave the stage. She never lost her frozen smile, but her eyes were haunted.

  “On that day,” Harry continued, “I promised myself that I would grow up to perform that trick just as well as that man in the circus. And because this is America, I knew that a boy with a dream in his heart could grow up to become whatever he wished. A doctor, a lawyer, a politician... even a magician! And so, ladies and gentlemen, behold the miracle of the vanishing goldfish! I throw the foulard heavenward—and voila!—the enormous bowl has vanished!”

  Let me tell you three things about the goldfish trick. One, it’s the best stand-alone vanish in the history of magic. Two, it needs to be done fast, without a lot of anecdotes about the circus. Three, my sister-in-law Bess is quite a bit stronger than she looks.

  It’s a brilliant trick when it’s done right, but you wouldn’t have known it by the six-thirty crowd at Huber’s Museum. Their reaction, as Harry flicked the cloth heavenward, left much to be desired. One might have called it a respectful silence. I suppose there must have been some scattered applause, and perhaps a bit of it was done by someone other than myself. Most of the others simply shuffled their feet and coughed politely.

  When I think back on it, I remember something that Will Rogers once said about my brother. This was years later, of course. Rogers was watching from backstage while Harry worked on a particularly difficult handcuff challenge. The thing about it was that Harry had gone into a little curtained cabinet while he worked on the handcuffs, so the crowd couldn’t actually see him. There wasn’t a thing going on, but the whole audience was happy just to sit there and wait for my brother to finish. It took him an hour and a half, and the crowd never took its eyes off the cabinet. When Harry finally emerged, holding the handcuffs high over his head, they jumped to their feet. Will Rogers said he couldn’t possibly follow an act like that. He said, “I might just as well have gotten on my little pony and ridden back to the livery stable as to have ridden out on that stage.” It was a fine compliment, but I can’t help thinking what Rogers might have thought if he’d ever seen Harry at the dime museum. In those days, Harry couldn’t hold the audience even when he was standing right in front of them. It was so quiet you could actually hear the floorboards creak.

  Albert was just about to move the crowd off when I caught him by the elbow. “Let him do the new bit,” I said. “The trunk trick.”

  “Aw, knock it off, Dash,” he said. “We’ve been over this again and again.”

  I pulled out my most prized possession, a gold Elgin pocket watch. “Let him try it,” I said. “I promise you, each one of these people will be cheering at the end. If the crowd doesn’t go wild, I’ll give you the watch.”

  Albert looked at my face and saw that I was serious. He glanced at his own watch, a tin conductor’s chrono, and looked back at me again. “Sorry, Dash,” he said, not without regret. “You know the rules. He’s already had his three minutes. If I let Harry pad his slot, then Harmi’s going to be after me to make time for that ridiculous ‘Dance of the Seven Sabers.’ Everything’ll get longer and before you know it we’ll be down to five shows a day.”

  “Come on, Albert. Just this—”

  He held up his hand. “Sorry. I’m going to the blow-off.”

  I turned away and shoved my watch back into my vest pocket. Albert stepped forward and asked the crowd to gather round for a “very special added amusement.”

  Every sideshow worth its salt had a blow-off—an extra act tacked on at the end to lure an extra nickel from the marks. This was always staged in a special annex—a small extra tent or a back room of some kind—or, in this case, an abandoned meat locker. Most of the time the blow-off would be a creepy, scary sort of illusion, like the old Headless Lady effect. In that one, you walked into the room and saw the body of a young woman sitting in a chair. She appeared normal in every respect, but for the fact that she had no head. There would be a bunch of wires and tubes filled with gurgling liquid sprouting out of her neck. The talker would explain her predicament in a low, quavery voice. “Decapitated in a tragic railway accident, this brave young lady is kept alive by a miraculous combination of modern medicine and American know-how...”

  The blow-off was always especially good at Huber’s, but Albert had an uphill climb trying to work up any enthusiasm from the crowd. My brother Harry had left them in an unhappy stupor, and no one seemed terribly eager to cough up an extra nickel for whatever awaited them in the so-called “Chamber of Chills.”

  “This attraction is not for the faint of heart,” Albert warned. “This hideous freak of nature is the only one of its kind in the entire world, an unholy coupling of man and insect, a poignant hybrid of beauty and terror. I must caution you, ladies and gentlemen, the mere sight of what lies just beyond this room has made women faint and strong men buckle at the knees. Who among you has the courage, indeed, the fortitude to venture past this fateful portal?”

  By the time Albert finished, nearly all of them had summoned the necessary fortitude. Albert collected a handful of nickels and shepherded the crowd through the door into a small, candle-lit room. There, sitting on a small wooden pedestal, was the most beautiful Spider-girl I ever saw. She had a furry, dark thorax with a bright yellow hour-glass shape on the back, meant to suggest the markings of a black widow. There were eight hairy, segmented legs—two of which were moving slowly up and down—and it had the head of my sister-in-law, Bess Houdini, with a bright ribbon in her hair and red polish on her lips. “Howdy, folks!” she called, waving one of the furry legs.

  “Be careful, ladies and gentlemen,” Albert warned. “Whatever you do, don’t make any loud noises! I know she looks calm and friendly, but we had a fellow in here last week who—well, let’s just say it wasn’t a pretty sight.”

  Bess cocked her head and wiggled her thorax as Albert continued. “Folks, I’m sure you’re all wondering how this hideous conjoining came to be. How did such an angelic face come to be transplanted onto that eight-legged horror? Only seven years ago, Alice Anders was the daughter of a world-renowned explorer, joining her father on a dangerous journey along the Amazon River. One night, while the explorers lay asleep in their tents, a sinister creature stole into the camp, lured by the sweet smell of young Alice’s perfume. When the party awoke in the morning, they found a spectacle so ghastly that they were driven mad by the mere sight of it. There before them lay—”

  We never discovered what the explorers saw, because at that moment Albert was interrupted by a loud crashing noise which, if you really stopped to think about it, sounded an awful lot like a pair of cymbals.

  “Heaven help us!” Albert shouted. “The Spider-girl is attacking! Run for your lives!” At this, Bess pulled her lips back in a snarl, revealing a pair of gleaming fangs. As she edged forward just
slightly, a thin stream of red liquid dribbled from her bottom lip. Not a lot of people were there to see that. Most of them had already run screaming for the exit door, which Albert held open in an obliging manner.

  No sooner had the last of the marks bolted through the door than the Spider-girl broke off her attack.

  “Very nice, Mrs. Houdini,” said Albert, dusting off his hands. “I doubt if Miss Bernhardt could have done better.”

  “And the costume suits you,” I added, gesturing at the bobbing thorax, “but don’t you think you’re showing a bit too much leg?”

  “Very funny, Dash,” she answered. “I hear Weber and Fields might be looking for a third comic. Why don’t you run on down to the Palace?”

  “I just came from there,” I said. “They don’t need comics, but there’s a spot for a dancing girl, so long as she has eight legs. Say, you don’t suppose... ?”

  “Just help me out of this thing, would you, Dash?”

  I walked behind the pedestal and helped to disengage her from the apparatus. Bess stood up and stretched to work out the kinks. “Tell me you’ve found us another booking, Dash,” she said. “Please tell me you’ve found us another booking.”

  “Nothing yet,” I said.

  “Father preserve us,” she said. “Have you told him yet? Have you told the man whom the Milwaukee Sentinel called the ‘most captivating entertainer in living memory’?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I wish you luck,” she said, dabbing at some blood on her chin.

  I could hear Harry in the main room, shouting something about towels, clean water, and performers of a certain “exalted magnitude.” Then the door banged open and my brother hurtled into the room, chin first, looking like a boxer coming out of his corner. I knew that if Harry followed his normal pattern, he would need about three minutes to blow off steam. The steam usually blew in my direction.

  “Dash!” he called, barreling toward me. “See what has become of the Great Houdini! Have I not proved myself? Have I not created a unique, exceptional act as the justly celebrated self-liberator, renowned for his death-defying acts of bravery?”