The Confabulist (14 page)

Kelley motioned to one of the stagehands. Houdini took the cushion and bowed to the audience before returning to his cabinet. As he closed the curtain his vision faltered, and again he felt his head swim. There wasn’t much time.

Grigoriev had been right. Where before there was only one lock on the door on the wagon, there were now several, each of them modern and complicated. Not necessarily unpickable but more of a challenge than he’d agreed to.

Inside the prison he was taken to a room with a bare table. Zubatov was waiting there with a man who appeared to be some sort of doctor and an assembly of guards. Grigoriev was there as well, which surprised Houdini, but he decided not to let on that he knew him.

“We had an agreement that there would be no additional locks used,” he said to Zubatov.

“I wouldn’t think that a few extra locks would pose any impediment
to a man of your skill. Am I to assume that you wish to back out?”

“No,” Houdini said, “it makes no difference to me.”

“And I assume you are still willing to consent to being searched?”

“Yes, of course.”

He removed his jacket and shirt. Two guards held his wrists and the doctor, a spectacled man with a sharp face and narrow eyes, ran his hands through his hair, then into his ears, and then over his neck. His mouth was forced open and the doctor’s fingers, ripe with the taste of stale tobacco, explored so far down his throat that he gagged.

The examination continued downward, and then his hands were forcibly held out in front of him. The doctor peered at them intently, turning them at every conceivable angle, checking the webbed skin between his fingers, then moving up his arms, pressing his thumbs hard into the flesh of his armpits.

The guards let go of his wrists but did not move away from him. Houdini removed his shoes and socks, then unbuckled his trousers and stepped out of them. The doctor performed an equally thorough search on his feet, beginning with the soles and working up his legs.

The guards at his side seized his wrists and the doctor pulled his briefs down.

“I assure you this is unnecessary,” Houdini said.

Zubatov remained immobile. “Standard procedure,” he said.

Whether this was standard procedure or not Houdini couldn’t say, but the ensuing search was both methodical and coarse. He had anticipated it, and the fact that they would immediately notice he was circumcised, a revelation that could prove far more dangerous than being locked in a wagon. To disguise this he’d constructed a
fake penis of sorts—the tip was a prosthetic, convincing to the eye, but it would probably not hold up to a detailed examination. Fortunately the doctor did not seem interested in the tip of his penis.

His wrists were released and he pulled up his briefs. It was cold but he repressed the urge to shiver.

“I assume you’re satisfied that I am in possession of nothing but my wits?”

They returned to the courtyard. As they approached the wagon Houdini looked again at the additional locks, shaking his head and whistling. An officer came up behind him with a set of British handcuffs.

“Really?” Houdini said. “You’re changing the game, Chief Zubatov.” He extended his wrists and allowed the cuffs to be fastened. He then clambered into the wagon. The door was shut behind him and the locks engaged. A series of chains was wound around the door and additional locks fastened to these chains.

Zubatov’s face appeared in the window. “One more thing, Mr. Houdini. The lock for the door is a peculiar one. To prevent escape, and to discourage attempts to free the imprisoned, there is no key to the lock here at Butyrskaya. The only key is in the possession of the prison warder in Siberia. It will take about three weeks for you to get there.”

He heard laughter from the guards, and then the scuffling of their footsteps as they retreated inside the main prison building. He waited until he was satisfied they were gone and then got to work.

Three quick slams and the handcuffs popped open. The locks on the wagon door were irrelevant—he had no intention of dealing with them. He felt he could probably pick them, but there was an easier way out. Despite their attempts to search him, he had managed to
get his tools inside. He reached down to his right hand and pulled off one of his fingers.

He smiled. It was amazing how similar all searches of his person were. Some were rougher than others, some looked harder than others, but once an area had been searched it was assumed irrevocably clean. Searches never made allowances for the possibility of change.

When they checked his hands, they found four fingers and a thumb on each one. They could look forever and all they’d see was an ordinary set of hands. After they’d searched his hands, however, they’d allowed him free use of them to remove his shoes and trousers, and he’d taken advantage of this to slip his hand into his waistband where a false finger was waiting. It was, as far as misdirection goes, a fairly easy manoeuvre. Once the finger was in place, all he had to do was contort his hand slightly and control the angle it was viewed at and no one would be the wiser. And they never searched his hands twice.

He’d identified the wagon’s weakness the day before. A quick look at the underside showed the floor was made of one-inch-thick wood planks, braced in two places. The floor was lined with zinc sheeting, not one solid piece but several strips overlapping each other. The zinc was presumably intended to aid in cleaning out the remarkable filth that would accumulate during the trip to Siberia, during which, if Zubatov was correct, the prisoner would at no time leave the wagon. But the zinc floor was the key to his escape.

In a situation like this escaping from the wagon wasn’t enough. He must also be able to conceal how he got out. From inside the false finger Houdini retrieved a small metal cutter, similar to a can opener, a Gigli saw, and a small hand drill. With the metal cutter he began to slice through the zinc, cutting a square just large enough for him
to fit through, the cuts in a spot where the zinc sheets overlapped. He peeled back the first layer of zinc and then, leaving an inch of overlap, cut through the second layer.

Once he’d bent back the zinc and exposed the floorboards, he put down the cutter and picked up the Gigli saw, which was essentially a garrotte with teeth. He drilled a hole in one of the corners of his hatch, then another about ten inches away. It took some skill to thread the saw down one hole and up the next, but he was practised and patient. The wood was relatively soft. He focused on the rhythm of pulling the Gigli back and forth, and soon enough he’d cut two lines about a foot and a half long. He then cut away the short sides of the hatch. When he was done he had created a trapdoor in the wagon about eighteen inches wide and ten inches long with two inches of zinc sheeting extending beyond the wood.

In drilling the holes and sawing, he’d been careful to make sure his cuts were at an angle, so the boards wouldn’t fall straight down. From there it was a simple matter of pulling up the hatch, bending the zinc so the location of his cuts would be virtually invisible, and squeezing through the hole in the floor. Once outside he reached up and moved the hatch back into place, shaking the straw he’d piled on top so that it would fall naturally across the floor of the wagon. He used the metal cutter to dig a small hole, buried the false finger and his tools, concealed the hole, and scrambled out from underneath the wagon.

Now that he was free he considered undoing the locks—they were not complex locks by any standard—but decided against it. He had escaped, and while the courtyard was empty at present there was no guarantee it would stay that way. It would be a disaster if someone were to stumble upon him picking the locks outside the wagon. Now
that he was free, even if his method was detected, Zubatov wouldn’t be willing to reveal it; it would seem to everyone that he was making it up.

Houdini smiled as he thought of the reaction waiting for him inside. Zubatov had seemed so smug. They would never let him publicize what he’d just done, but word would leak out nevertheless. He’d make sure of that.

The air inside the cabinet was hot and hard to breathe. His vision wobbled and his hands felt dull. From his pocket he retrieved his tools, and in less than thirty seconds he’d unscrewed the fastening mechanism on the cuffs and freed his hands. He then took his knife and cut away four inches of the stitching on the cushion. Inside was a small vial containing a phosphorescent liquid, a needle and thread, and the real
Mirror
cuffs. One shake of the vial and the cabinet was illuminated. He took the fake cuffs, placed them inside the cushion, and began to sew the seam back up. This should have taken him less than five minutes, but he was having trouble seeing straight, and he still felt as though he might pass out. After about ten minutes he succeeded in repairing the cushion.

He didn’t know what was going on outside. The escape was taking far longer than it should have. He’d been in the cabinet for almost an hour, he thought, and there was a fine line between tension and boredom. His escapes offered very little for the audience to witness—it was mostly done out of their sight—and he relied on their tension to sustain the show. This was a lot to sustain, even given the frenzy they were in.

But he wasn’t ready to leave the cabinet. There was more going on
than he could process in his drugged state, and he didn’t know who he could trust.

All magicians had to be on guard for jealous rivals. But there was something different about this. This was not the normal way that a magician would go about destroying a rival, and it was too sophisticated for a regular Joe. The common man used far blunter instruments than poison.

The man who’d inspected the water. Houdini still couldn’t place him, but he had no doubt that he knew him. He had to be the one. It would be easy for him to have spiked the water. Magician or not, it would be a simple sleight of hand.

He had to decide what to do. He couldn’t stay in the cabinet forever, but there was someone onstage intent on malice. Either way he was in trouble.

In reaction to Houdini’s escape, Zubatov had barely said a word, just stood in the corner and chewed his lip. Grigoriev gave no indication whether he was pleased. Houdini was escorted out of the prison without fanfare and told it would be unwise if he were to in any way advertise what had happened. Zubatov’s grand spectacle of the American escapist being carted off to Siberia had been so unsuccessful that it might be wise for Houdini to leave Russia.

By the time his show started at the Yar restaurant that night, it was clear that even the Okhrana couldn’t keep a secret. When Houdini stepped onstage, he knew that the story had spread. His presence was met with a mixture of whispering and applause, and he could see Bess growing more and more agitated as she became aware of the crowd’s fevered interest. Houdini searched the room for
Okhrana agents but couldn’t detect any, which was in itself suspicious. There had always been at least a few, stern men whose modest dress stood out amid the opulence.

Afterward Houdini retreated to his dressing room with Bess. They were both unnerved.

“I want to go back to America, or at least England,” Bess said.

“We can’t,” he said. “Not now.”

“What are you trying to prove?” she asked. “Why is it you need to conquer the world? We have a good life. Or we could, if you would let yourself enjoy it.”

“I enjoy our life.”

She shook her head and began to fold a pile of discarded clothes, even though there were people who would do this for them. “Moments, maybe. But you’re never truly content. You’re always thinking about what’s next, what awaits you. It’s as though the present doesn’t exist for you. Only the past and the future. Why can’t you ever stay still?”

He tried to answer her. There was a restlessness he could not contain—that his ever-expanding act could not contain, that other women could not contain—but he didn’t know how to describe it to her any more than he knew how to explain Wilkie’s and Melville’s holds on him. Facts and feelings were jumbled as they stood there, staring at each other.

When the knock at the door sounded, his first impulse was relief—he had once again escaped. One more look at Bess, though, and he knew it had robbed him of a chance to explain himself to her, or at least to try to assure her that things were going to get better, that he would not always be this way.

The knock repeated. He recognized it as Grigoriev’s and opened the door. As before, Grigoriev entered the room without saying a word. He handed an envelope to Houdini and bowed to Bess.

“Mrs. Houdini. Such a pleasure to meet you,” he said.

Houdini watched Bess blush as Grigoriev kissed her hand. He didn’t seem at all Russian, or at least he didn’t seem like the Russians Houdini had met thus far.

Grigoriev turned to Houdini. “That was quite a display you gave Zubatov today.”

“I only did what could be expected of me as an escapist.”

Grigoriev laughed. “Of course you did. There’s no need to be worried. Zubatov would love to have you disappear permanently, but he is no longer in a position to achieve that.”

“Is that why there weren’t any Okhrana agents in the audience tonight?” Bess asked.

“Oh no,” Grigoriev said, shaking his head. “There were at least ten that I counted. But they were of a superior grade. No, the crème de la crème of Okhrana were here tonight. They probably still are.”

“I don’t understand,” Houdini said.

“The Okhrana have many jobs. One of them, the most important, is protecting the royal family.”

“What does the royal family have to do with this?”

“If you look in your hands, Mr. Houdini, you will see that I have come bearing an invitation to perform for Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and Grand Duchess Elizabeth at Kleinmichel Palace tomorrow evening. There is as well an excellent chance that the czar will be in attendance, in addition to several other members of the royal family.”

Houdini tried to appear nonchalant. He had performed for royalty before. But this was a triumph for him. He imagined it would be of some interest to Wilkie and Melville as well.