Harry Houdini Mysteries Read online

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Platt, squaring a pile of documents on his desk. “Now, gentlemen, if you would be so good as to excuse me, I have some rather pressing—”

  “Mr. Platt,” I said, struggling to regain some purchase on his attention, “I beg that you give my brother some chance to demonstrate his value as an entertainer. I offer my assurance that he is the most exceptional performer in New York today.”

  “I must find a solution,” Harry was saying, musing aloud over the strange absence of restraining devices in Platt’s office. “I suppose that I could provide my own handcuffs in these situations, but people would naturally assume that they were gaffed in some way. What to do?”

  Platt ignored him. “Hardeen, I’ve already told you that I don’t place any stock in the entertainment value of a man who escapes from things. It’s a silly notion. I know that you and your brother are fair magicians, but I don’t have any need of magicians just now.” He paused as a new thought struck him. “Is Mr. Houdini’s wife seeking opportunities at present? I might have something coming open in the chorus at the Blair.”

  “She is fully booked at the moment,” I said. “My brother and I—”

  “Yes, yes,” said Platt heavily. “I know all about you and your brother.”

  “I suppose it is a question of advertising my intentions in advance,” Harry murmured to himself. “I could post a notice or handbill to the effect that the Great Houdini intends to accept any and all challenges to escape from regulation handcuffs. Then people would be forewarned to provide their own restraints. That might resolve the difficulty.”

  “Are there any other opportunities that might be suitable?” I asked Platt. “Anything at all?”

  Platt reached across the desk for a folded sheet of paper. “I shouldn’t think so,” he said. “But don’t despair, Hardeen. If your brother truly is the most exceptional performer in New York, the other agencies are undoubtedly clamoring for his services.” He unfolded the paper and ran the pince-nez over the print.

  “Perhaps there could be a trained locksmith on hand as I took the stage,” Harry was saying. “He could confirm that the handcuffs had not been tampered with or altered in any way. It would lend an official touch to the proceedings. The Houdini Handcuff Challenge. That would look well in print.” He glanced at me. “Don’t you agree, Dash?”

  “Harry, perhaps we might confine our attention to the matter at hand. Mr. Platt is consulting his books to see if—”

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing,” said Platt, tossing the folded sheet onto the desk. “Unless, of course, your remarkable brother happens to have a cast-iron stomach.”

  “Pardon?”

  “A cast-iron stomach. The Portain Circus has an opening in two weeks’ time. I’m looking to send a man with a cast-iron stomach.”

  “I don’t quite follow you,” I said.

  “A stone-eater,” Harry said impatiently. “An omnivore.” He made an exaggerated chewing motion. “Someone who will eat whatever the audience throws at him.”

  “Precisely,” said Platt. “I have the honor to represent Mr. Bradley Wareham, who earns a fine living in this manner. At present, however, he is indisposed.”

  My hand went to my midsection. “A stomach complaint, by any chance?”

  “Not at all. A gouty foot, as it happens.” Platt snatched a handbill from amid the clutter on his desk. “Mr. Wareham is proving to be a difficult man to replace. Listen to this: ‘For the amusement of all present the Man with the Cast-Iron Stomach will ingest all manner of small objects presented to him by the audience, including rocks and gravel, potsherds, flints, bits of glass, and other savories. Upon conclusion of the display, this Gustatory Marvel will allow onlookers to strike his stomach to hear the rattling of the strange objects within.’” Platt lowered his pince-nez and regarded us with a bemused expression. “I don’t suppose this is an act you might be willing to undertake.”

  “Certainly not,” I said. “The talents of the Brothers Houdini lie in an entirely different sphere of—”

  “Would I be able to take my wife?” Harry asked.

  “Harry!” I cried. “What are you thinking? You’re not a—”

  “The Portain Circus is a very reputable organization,” my brother said evenly. “If I could establish myself in the company, I might be able to win a spot more in keeping with the usual run of my talents. Moreover, I would be able to rescue Bess from her servitude in the chorus line at Ravelsen’s Review.”

  “Your reasoning is flawless,” I said with considerable asperity, “except for the part which requires you to eat rocks and glass. How do you propose to overcome that little difficulty?”

  Harry turned to Platt, who had been pulling contentedly at his clay pipe during this exchange.

  “You say that I would have two weeks to prepare?” Harry asked.

  Platt folded his hands. “Yes, Mr. Houdini. Two weeks. But I warn you, this act is no place for an amateur. Do you really think you’re up to it?”

  By way of an answer, Harry reached across Platt’s desk and plucked the clay pipe from his fingers.

  “Harry!” I cried, as he placed the smoldering bowl into his mouth. “Don’t—”

  But he had already bitten off the bowl of the pipe at its stem and was now happily chewing on the glowing contents.

  “What did he say?” Platt asked, as Harry tried to speak through a mouthful of clay and burning embers.

  “I can’t be certain,” I said, “but I believe it was ‘Hoonga-boonga.’ “

  2

  A MOST DELICIOUS POCKET WATCH

  “HARRY,” I SAID, AS WE JUMPED ONTO AN OMNIBUS HEADING BACK across town, “what were you thinking? You’re no stone-eater! You can’t possibly be ready to tour in two weeks’ time! You’ll only ruin your health in the attempt!”

  “I’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said, settling himself onto a wooden seat near the back. “I shall apply the same rigorous conditioning and training techniques that have made me the world’s foremost escape artist.”

  “But—”

  “Dash,” he said calmly, “the Portain Circus would be a vast improvement over our current run of bookings. You know that perfectly well. As for my lack of experience, I shall simply ask for some pointers from Vranko.”

  “The Glass-Eater? How long has he been on the bill at Huber’s now? Five years? Six?”

  “Seven,” said Harry.

  “Seven years. Vranko isn’t exactly a headliner, Harry. Not after seven years at the dime museum.”

  “Perhaps, but he can certainly instruct me in the rudiments. My startling natural charisma will do the rest.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Your startling natural charisma. How careless of me to overlook that.”

  Harry gripped the arm rail as our driver whipped the horses around a corner. “Dash, I just want to have Bess working alongside me again. I hate to think of my wife thrown among those wolves at Ravelsen’s, helpless and vulnerable.”

  “Harry, do you recall that theater manager in Loon Lake? Bess nearly chewed his ear off for daring to suggest that she use a more ‘enticing’ shade of rouge. Your wife could scarcely be described as helpless or vulnerable.”

  “Even so, Dash. I can hardly be faulted for wishing to take her out of the chorus line.”

  “She enjoys it, Harry. This wouldn’t have anything to do with her pay packet being heavier than yours, would it?”

  He colored. “Certainly not! I am delighted that my wife’s talents are so highly prized!” He drew back from the open window as a hansom cab clattered past in the opposite direction. “In any case, the disparity is only temporary and will soon be rectified.” He tugged at the corners of his bow tie. “Yes, a temporary disparity. I believe we are approaching your stop, Dash. I shall collect Bess at Ravelsen’s and join you at Mama’s. We have much to discuss.”

  “Harry, be careful of how you break this news to Bess.”

  He looked at me with surprise. “You don’t
think she’ll be pleased?”

  I stood up as the omnibus slowed. “I’d approach the matter with caution, if I were you. Use your startling natural charisma.” I descended the wooden stairs and made my way north on foot.

  The rain had slackened by the time I reached my mother’s apartment on East 69th Street. As I approached the familiar building I found my friend Biggs lounging in the doorway with a cigarette. It was not often that I saw him away from his compositor’s desk at the New York Herald, and he retained the hunched and focused attitude that marked him as a working journalist. He wore his customary baggy tweed suit with an open waistcoat and a loosely knotted wool tie, but even so his appearance was markedly spruce. His thinning red hair, which usually resembled a thatch of chick-weed, had been neatly pruned and swept back. His nails were carefully groomed and polished, and his cheeks fairly glowed with ruddy vigor.

  I gave a two-tone whistle as I approached. “Biggs!” I cried. “Who’s the lucky girl?”

  “Augusta Clairmont,” he replied without hesitation. “I don’t clean up for just anyone, Dash. We don’t all share your foppish disposition.”

  “Augusta Clairmont?” I asked, climbing the front steps and pulling open the outer doors. “Jasper Clairmont’s widow? Isn’t she just a bit old for you, Biggs?”

  “She invited me to dinner last night,” he said, following me inside. “I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon receiving the attentions of my tonsorialist. Shave, haircut, steam—the works.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’ll be days before I regain my usual sickly pallor.”

  “But I thought Mrs. Clairmont had gone into seclusion after—after—”

  “Her husband’s suicide? She did go into seclusion. She only sees her closest friends and relatives now, but there were special circumstances last night. That’s what I’ve come to speak with you about. I believe you can help me, Dash.”

  “How so? I must say, you’re being very cryptic, Biggs.”

  “Do you think so? I’m so pleased. I’m hoping that an air of mystery will make me more appealing to the fair sex. Why don’t you invite me inside, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Biggs refused to answer any more questions as I led him through the main doors and up the stairs. I couldn’t imagine what interest Augusta Clairmont, the famous society hostess, could possibly have in my friend, nor could I conceive of why Biggs might require assistance from me.

  I did, however, recall the circumstances of the death of Jasper Clairmont some three months earlier. The news had dominated the headlines for nearly a week and remained a subject of speculation and salacious gossip. Clairmont, a shipping magnate who wielded enormous power in the city’s financial circles, had shot himself through the head while locked away in his private study. Almost at once, rumors began to surface of ruinous business failures, illicit liaisons, grave illnesses, and various other dark portents, each of which was put forward in its turn as a possible explanation for the tragedy.

  “I still don’t understand what connection there can be between you and the Clairmont family,” I said as we neared the top of the stairs. “You weren’t even assigned to Mr. Clairmont’s death, as I recall.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” he answered, his breath growing short with the effort of climbing so many steps. “Why must your mother live on such a damnably high floor?”

  “Why is it that you always insist on calling for me here, anyway? You know I live at Mrs. Arthur’s boarding house now.”

  “I’m aware of that, Dash.”

  “Well, then?”

  “Is Mrs. Arthur the finest cook in all of New York?”

  “No, but—”

  “No, she most certainly is not. Your mother holds that distinction, and the last time I called upon her she gave me the most extraordinary lemon cake I’ve ever tasted. I still dream of it.”

  “I believe it’s a raisin bundt today, but you know perfectly well that my mother will never be content with a slice of cake at this hour. She’ll insist on giving you dinner.”

  Biggs made a show of seeming surprised. “Dinner, you say? How could I have been so thoughtless as to appear on your doorstep at the dinner hour? What an unpardonable breach of courtesy! You must think me a terrible—”

  “That’ll do, Biggs,” I said, pausing at the kitchen door. “Hardly your most convincing performance, in any case.”

  “No,” he agreed, as I led him into the kitchen. “I really must remember to leave the theatrics to you.”

  We found my mother hovering at the stove, as always, and the rich aromas of simmering meats and cooling breads filled the room. She paused just long enough to pinch Biggs’s cheeks and comment on how thin he was looking before commanding him to take a chair at the kitchen table. After a moment or two of clattering through the silver drawer, she set an extra place and ladled out two steaming bowls of cabbage soup. This done, she turned back to the preparation of a Chicken Debrecen.

  “Come now, Biggs,” I said as he bent low over his bowl, “you’re lapping up that soup as if you haven’t eaten in a week. Surely Mrs. Clairmont puts on a respectable table?”

  “Very respectable,” Biggs agreed. “Although dinner was not the main feature of the evening.”

  “No?”

  He looked up from his soup bowl. “Not at all. That’s what I came to tell you. You see, Dash, I’ve seen a ghost.” He lowered his head and went back to eating his soup.

  I lifted my eyebrows. “Have you, indeed?”

  “Several of them, in fact. Mrs. Clairmont might as well be running a hotel for departed souls. The place was fairly swimming with apparitions.”

  “A séance,” I said quietly. “Augusta Clairmont invited you to a séance. You’ve been table-tipping with the upper classes.”

  He nodded. “The poor woman has resolved to make contact with her late husband. She can’t accept the fact that he did himself to death. It seems she wants to hear it from his own lips, if you please.”

  I glanced at my mother. “It’s difficult to lose a husband, Biggs,” I said. “If Augusta Clairmont chooses to sit in a dark room and console herself by reading auguries in a saucer of tea leaves, who am I to criticize?”

  “This was no ordinary séance, Dash. I know a bit about that type of jiggery-pokery. A group of people gather in the parlor after supper and decide that it would be a jolly lark to try to communicate with the spirit world. So they lay their hands on the table and wait for the spirits to arrive. After a while the table begins to sway and finally gets up sufficient motion to tap with one leg. Then a question is asked—“Is that you, Uncle Chester?”—and an answer is given by the tedious process of reciting the alphabet and waiting for the table leg to tap at a certain letter. It can take an eternity to get a simple yes or no. I had a lady friend once who went in for that type of thing. She dragged me along on more than one occasion. It seemed to me that we were collectively pushing the table without really realizing it. In our eagerness to have something happen, we were causing the table leg to come down at the right moment.” He looked up as my mother filled his soup bowl again. “Thank you, Mrs. Weiss. Delicious, as always. Anyway, Dash, I hope you don’t think that I’m completely benighted where this type of thing is concerned. I know a bill of goods when I see one.”

  “I take it there was no table-tipping at Mrs. Clairmont’s.”

  “No. She’d never tip her own table, in any event. She’s a very wealthy woman. She’d hire someone to do it for her. Listen, Dash, I know it sounds like a lot of hokum, but there were some remarkable things that happened last night. Truly remarkable.”

  “And there will be a rational explanation for each of them, Biggs.”

  “I would have thought so,” he said. “I spent the whole day digging for answers. You know I can be a real brass-plated bloodhound when I have to be, but this has me stumped.” He pulled out a leather-bound notebook. “You’ve heard of Lucius Craig?”

  I shook my head.

  “Apparently he has Mrs. Clairmon
t wrapped around his finger.”

  “He was the medium?”

  “The what?”

  “The medium, Biggs. The spirit guide—the one who makes contact with the supernatural realm. You’ll need to learn the lingo if you intend to keep up.”

  “That’s why I’ve come, Dash. You and the ape man have done a bit of medicine show fakery, haven’t you?”

  “Biggs, you really must stop calling him that.”

  “Oh, I shall. Just as soon as he evolves into something vaguely human. I imagine your brother would have given the estimable Charles Darwin a few uneasy moments. Natural selection seems to have looked the other way when it came upon Harry Houdini.”

  “Biggs. Really.” I glanced again at my mother. Thankfully, she was too absorbed in her cooking to pay any heed.

  “Sorry, Dash,” said Biggs. “I forget myself sometimes.”

  It was a familiar rant. Harry and Biggs had nurtured an intense dislike of one another since childhood, and neither showed any sign of growing out of it. Biggs had often found himself on the receiving end of Harry’s bullying nature, and unlike me, he had never grown comfortable responding in kind. As we grew older, however, Biggs learned to use words every bit as forcefully as his fists, and this was an arena that left my brother at a decided disadvantage.

  “So,” Biggs continued, dabbing at his lips with a napkin, “have the two of you worked the spirit angle or not?”

  “There was a brief period when we were travelling with an outfit called Dr. Hill’s California Concert Company. We were doing tent shows through Kansas and Oklahoma, and everybody wanted to see a spook show because the Davenport Brothers had passed through and caused a sensation.”

  “The Davenport Brothers? Something to do with a ‘spirit cabinet,’ right?”

  I nodded. “The cabinet was a great big bureau with swinging doors on the front. It was set on a raised platform at center stage. Inside there was a long wooden bench. The brothers, tied hand and foot, were placed inside the cabinet, facing each other. There was a number of tambourines and trumpets and such placed on the floor at their feet. At a signal from the brothers, their assistants lowered the stage lights and swung the doors closed. All at once the audience heard strange noises—jangling tambourines, strumming guitars, that sort of thing. Disembodied hands poked out through openings in the cabinet and musical instruments could be seen floating in mid-air.”