CHAPTER TWENTY
IF MAGIC WAS Houdini’s train, it had derailed.
He and Bess holed up in their cabin in Vermont for the next three months, weathering a blizzard of bad press. There were no shows for the magician to do because of the fiasco in Hollywood. Fairbanks had painted Houdini as old and incompetent, and the large theaters that once welcomed the magician now found excuses not to book him.
The blackballing ultimately worked out in the magician’s favor. Smaller, less picky venues were still glad to host the world-renowned entertainer, and they required little advance notice for their shows. Often ads in local newspapers would appear only the day before a show, if at all. Sometimes the performances were simply word of mouth.
In this way, Houdini and Bess traveled the Northeast, performing in small towns at vaudeville halls they would have scoffed at a year ago. They always stayed under false names, and never disclosed their hotel to anyone, not even the theater owner or stage manger.
During those days, Houdini’s act wasn’t needlessly risky. He revived some of his classic escapes, and even returned to some of the intricate sleight-of-hand tricks he had been forced to abandon in the larger venues. His illusions were as complex as ever, but they lacked the flamboyance he once felt pressured to give an audience. The magic he performed was for himself, not for the insatiable expectations of others.
Houdini heard whispers that he had lost his touch, that he was afraid to perform anything dangerous after his failed stunt in Hollywood. He let the comments pass over his head like harmless wisps of clouds. During the Hangman’s Death, he had very nearly died, and by no fault of his own. Bess would have found out the next day when she picked up the morning newspaper. What an awful way to discover your husband’s death.
What is worth dying for? Bess, and only Bess.
He no longer felt the need to push himself to the brink for the amusement of others. Whatever legacy he left in magic, Houdini wanted his greatest legacy to be his devotion to his wife. If magic was the means, Bess was the meaning. As a precaution for her safety, Houdini insisted that Bess wear the Ring of the Fisherman whenever she wasn’t on stage assisting him. She scoffed the first few times but eventually gave in.
Despite their public shows, they weren’t careless; Houdini became as detail-oriented over security as he was about his performance. He left long lists of written demands for the stage manager the day before a show—doors to be locked, windows to be secured, doormen to be posted at all entrances. Every evening when he entered his dressing room, he checked to make sure a fresh white carnation had been placed on his vanity. Once, in Punxsutawney, when it had not, he grabbed Bess and led her out.
“No show,” Houdini told the stage manager as they stomped through the foyer.
“We have to!” the frazzled man said. “We have guests arriving in thirty minutes!”
“You made promises…” Houdini said.
He walked to a side door that led to an alley. He pushed it, and it opened, unlocked. Furthermore, there was no doorman there to guard it.
“…That you didn’t keep.”
“Some minor oversights,” the manager stammered. “We meant to do them.”
“An honest ‘no’ is safer than a dubious ‘yes.’”
The magician and his wife exited the theater.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“The carnation,” Houdini said. “It’s the last to-do item on my checklist. If it isn’t there, then I can’t count on any other item being completed.”
The Houdinis left that town and never returned.
After months in hiding, and the subsequent months on the road, furtively hopping from town to town, Houdini began to feel that life could start getting back to normal. It had been more than a year since his trip to Hollywood, and large venues were now extending invitations to perform after public memory had faded. For the first time since his visit to California, he allowed himself to hope that perhaps Atlas really had been killed.
Charlie Chaplin had done as he had promised, and had convinced Pickford and Fairbanks to help in the search for a Burden who might be able to destroy the Eye. Last Houdini heard, Chaplin was in Texas scouting out a young engineer who had an unusually keen sense of how machines and other processes worked.
Of Pickford and Fairbanks, Houdini heard nothing.
During long periods of travel, Houdini took the opportunity to put his expertise down on paper. His book, Houdini on Magic, would reveal all of his illusions, would explain every sleight-of-hand movement and detail every escape. Houdini decided that his secrets would not go to the grave with him in the manner of so many magicians before him. If his illusions revealed raised up a generation of magicians more talented than he, all the better. He would live his life with an open hand, not a closed fist.
One late October evening in Montreal, Canada, the tap of his typewriter was interrupted by a soft rap at the door. Houdini and his wife were staying down the street from the Imperial Theatre on Bleury Street, in a posh hotel with glittery chandeliers and floor mosaics so intricate the tiles looked as if they had been laid in by elves with forceps.
The hotel commissionaire announced himself, and Houdini answered the door. The man’s cheeks were ruddy from being out in the biting autumn wind. He held a cream-colored envelope in his hand.
“This came for you by air mail,” he said. “It must be urgent.”
“Thank you.”
Houdini took the letter and tipped the young man generously. The magician had all of his mail delivered to a post office box, then had the commissionaire stop by each evening to pick it up.
The piece of mail was made out to him, with no return address. He opened it up and read:
Mr. Houdini,
I’ve been trying to contact you, but you are as elusive as one might expect of an escape artist. I must speak to you about rather urgent matters. It concerns something I have. Something very valuable.
Please extend your show one extra day. I am on my way and will find you at the theater.
Beauty
It was the first time he had heard anything from Mary Pickford since he left Hollywood. He had not expected the two to ever cross paths again.
What could she want of me?
He pocketed the note and made a call to the theater. Because of Halloween the next night, there was nothing on the schedule; the owner said he’d be delighted to have Houdini perform one more evening. Houdini thanked him and hung up.
Bess appeared from the bathroom dressed for the celebratory dinner they always had on their last night in a city. She wore a long black skirt and a high-necked white blouse that was intricately embroidered with tiny pearl beads. She looked stunning.
“Mrs. Houdini, I’ve extended the show by one night.”
She eyed him curiously.
“That’s against the precautions you established for yourself.”
“I know,” he said. They never stayed more than three days in any location. “We have a special request.”
She considered this, nodded, then took his arm.
“Let’s have a little bit of wine tonight,” she said. “Before we return to the States.”
Bess drank as infrequently as Houdini, which meant only one thing.
She’s uneasy with this. As she should be.
If only Houdini could see the possibilities more than an hour or so into the future. He’d know whether this was a necessary exception, or a foolish risk.
“Very well,” Houdini said. “A final drink.”
Tonight, or forever?