The Confabulist (21 page)

“Go ahead, shoot me.”

Bess stood fifteen feet from him with the gun pointed at his chest. Houdini had his hands cuffed in front of him and a blindfold on.

“I don’t want to.” Bess stepped forward and lowered the gun.

“Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”

“No, it won’t. Don’t talk to me like I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Don’t treat me like I’m falling for your act.”

A little light shone through his blindfold, but he couldn’t see much. They were on the stage of the New York Hippodrome, rehearsing for that night’s show. He’d had the house cleared, demanding secrecy, and it was strange to be alone with Bess in this cavernous room that was usually humming with activity. She was right. It was all an act. William Robinson was a great actor playing a great magician. When he had performed as himself, he was wooden. But as Chung Ling Soo he was graceful, funny, magnificent, without ever speaking a word.

“I’ve checked and double-checked everything,” he said to Bess. “You know how the trick works. It’s safe. It’s safer than most of the other things I do.”

“I don’t care.”

“Pull the trigger.”

“No.”

“Please, Bess. I can get one of the assistants to do it, but you’re the only one I trust completely.”

“Do you? That’s great. Lucky me. Here’s the thing, though—I don’t trust you completely.”

Houdini pulled off the blindfold and slammed the handcuffs against his leg, where a piece of lead was sewn into the fabric of his trousers. They clattered to the floor. He took the gun from Bess, pointed it at the footlights, and fired. Bess yelped, flinching, and he dropped the gun onto the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He had resolved to control his temper better, especially around Bess, and once again he’d failed.

“You’re always sorry, and I don’t care.”

Bess turned around and slowly walked off the stage. Houdini picked up the gun and turned it over in his hands. The bullet was still loaded, just as he knew it would be.

In the weeks following his mother’s death he could barely function. He stayed home and didn’t receive visitors. Some days he read in his library, and more and more he found himself drawn to the volumes on spiritualism. He felt his mother’s absence as a clutching yearning. He began to wonder if it was possible he had been wrong. He knew that everything the so-called mediums did could be replicated by an even half-competent magician, but that didn’t necessarily invalidate their claims. Was it possible he could speak to his mother again?

He resolved to make an appointment with a reputed medium named Kenneth Gaston. He dyed his hair grey and put on glasses and a false moustache. It was a disguise he’d used before, and he was certain he wouldn’t be recognized.

Kenneth Gaston held his séances in a well-appointed house in New Jersey. Houdini waited in a drawing room with six other people,
two men and four women. He caught each of them sizing him up when they thought he wasn’t looking. Two of them once attempted to engage him in conversation, but he refused to say much beyond giving them a name, Erik, and saying he had come from New York.

A servant let them into a room with eight chairs set around a table. Thick black velvet curtains hung over the windows and a heavy rug covered the floor. Once they were seated Gaston entered the room from a different doorway. He was overweight, sweating profusely, and held a handkerchief that he used to mop his forehead. He had a pencil-thin moustache and a glowing bald spot on the top of his head that he had tried to disguise with an unfortunate hairstyle.

He waddled to the round table, his maw contorted into a wide smile, and pulled out a chair. It had a pillow that he had to grip to stop it from sliding to the floor.

“Good afternoon, my friends. Let us hope that the spirits are feeling talkative today.” Gaston smelled of smoked fish and cheap perfume.

Houdini stood up.

“Sir! Please take a seat.”

He shook his head. “You’re a goddamned maggot,” he said, and walked out.

It was the cushion. None of the other chairs had one. The others had steered him away from it, because it was Gaston’s chair—the cushion was for his fat ass. And they knew it. So it was a simple confederate scheme. They’d have gone around the room, starting with others who’d have amazing and enlightening experiences, which would make the rube feel comfortable about giving up information that would allow the medium to give a false reading.

He was enraged, and this rage stayed with him for weeks,
alongside his grief. After a while the two felt similar to him, twin encumbrances he could not shake.

He returned to a semblance of his life. He began a tour of Germany and Europe, but that had to be cut short when the war began. On the ship back to America he performed a mock séance for Theodore Roosevelt, who came to Houdini privately the next day.

“Tell me, man to man, was what you did last night genuine?”

Houdini was shocked that a man of Roosevelt’s stature, a man of science, a man who had risen to be president of the United States, had been fooled by parlour tricks.

“It was pure hocus-pocus. If there is such a thing as genuine spiritualism, I have never seen it.”

In the summer of 1916 he received a visit from a pair of plainclothes policemen who showed him a card with John Wilkie’s name on it and requested he accompany them. They drove in silence to a restaurant in midtown, where he was taken into a back room. Wilkie was already there, looking older but still more like an unfriendly librarian than a spymaster. Seated beside him was a clean-shaven man, muscular and balding, with a sour look on his face.

“Hello, Ehrich. Have a seat.” Wilkie pushed out the chair opposite him with his foot. “This is John Scale. He’s one of Melville’s.”

Scale didn’t extend his hand, merely nodded at Houdini. He nodded back, and was aware that Scale was studying him.

“I would have thought that our neutrality in the war had ended your association with Melville,” Houdini said.

Wilkie smiled. “Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humour.
Mr. Scale is about to be assigned to St. Petersburg. We’re having a bit of a problem with your friend Rasputin.”

“I’ve never met the man. We’re not friends.”

“That’s good news for you,” Scale said. He had an upper-class accent, which was out of place with his working-class appearance. “What about Viktor Grigoriev?”

“You know we’re acquainted. It was you and Melville who arranged it.”

Wilkie held up a hand. “I’m not interested in squabbling, Mr. Scale. Ehrich, we suspect that Rasputin is working on behalf of German interests. His influence on the czar and czarina is undermining Russia’s involvement in the war. If it keeps up there will be revolution, and without Russia it will be very difficult for us to stay out of the war.”

Houdini said nothing. Grigoriev had clearly failed to expose Rasputin as a fraud. But Houdini could not be held accountable for Russia’s involvement in a world war. That simply was not in his control.

Wilkie continued. “We know that Grigoriev visited you four years ago. He asked you to help him and you refused.”

“I did no such thing. He asked me for information and I gave it to him.”

Scale and Wilkie exchanged a look of surprise. “You mean he didn’t ask you to come to Russia and debunk Rasputin?” Scale spit when he said this, spraying the table. Wilkie pretended not to notice.

“No. Nor would I have accepted.”

“When you were in Russia, did you make the acquaintance of a Prince Felix Yusupov?” Wilkie asked.

“Very briefly.”

“And what did you make of him?”

“I didn’t make much of him. He was a bit of a dandy.”

“Could he pull off a murder?”

“Maybe. I doubt it. Who’s he killed?”

“No one.” He waited. “We have an operation about to be put into place. Should it be successful, I anticipate Grigoriev will again offer you a post advising the czar. This time, refusal is not an option.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No, of course not. I am surprised at your lack of gratitude for all the help I gave you, but perhaps I shouldn’t be. Your ego has become the stuff of legend. Either way, this is the sort of request that one does not turn down, not if you consider yourself a patriot. I will remind you that I am an extremely powerful man. It would not be prudent to make an enemy of me.”

“Sounds like a threat to me,” Houdini said.

Wilkie smiled. “I suppose it is. But we would not be in this position were it not for you.” Both men stood up. “We’ll be in touch, Ehrich. Stay close.”

A few weeks later he opened his morning paper and read of Rasputin’s murder. They’d pinned it on Yusupov and Grand Duke Dimitri, but Houdini felt sure those two hadn’t killed anyone. Grigoriev sent a cable two weeks later. Houdini waited as long as he could before he wired back his acceptance. He would embark immediately for Russia.

Bess did not want to go. He couldn’t blame her. He told her that the czar had requested him, that they would be paid better than ever
in their lives. For a week she barely spoke to him and he desperately wished he could tell her the truth. It was for her own good that he refrained: to keep her innocent was to keep her safe. If the price for that was her anger and disapproval then so be it.

On the morning his ship was scheduled to depart he said goodbye to Dash and drove to the docks with Bess. They loaded their luggage and went aboard an alarmingly small ship. After three hours the ship hadn’t left. Then he saw the crew unloading their baggage. The captain came up to him, a grim look on his face.

“Problems with the ship?” Houdini asked, trying to hide his glee.

The captain shook his head. “No. Trip’s cancelled.”

“Cancelled?”

“The czar’s abdicated. I just got the word. We’re not going anywhere.”

As Houdini and Bess drove back to Harlem, New York seemed to him about the greatest place on earth. He may not have believed in luck, but fortune had favoured him that day. A month later America declared war on Germany.

Houdini followed Bess backstage through the winding halls of the Hippodrome. When he got to their dressing room, the door was closed. He paused for a moment. Perhaps doing a bullet catch was a bad idea. Part of him wanted to do it as a tribute to his friend Robinson, and part of him was hoping to draw out his murderer. But Kellar might be right. Bess might be right.

He threw his hat into the room and waited. Nothing happened. When he entered, Bess wasn’t there. Seated in the corner, looking so
dishevelled that it took Houdini a moment to recognize him, was Grigoriev. He hadn’t seen him in more than four years. His hair was long and dirty, and his beard had not been trimmed.

“Hello, old friend.” He tossed Houdini his hat.

“Where’s Bess?”

“I advised her to take a taxi home. She is fine.”

Houdini closed the door and sat, keeping the gun on his lap.

“You won’t need that, not with me at any rate.”

“It’s a prop.”

“Well, you might want to consider getting a real one.” Grigoriev lit a cigarette. “Do you remember when we first met? In a dressing room not very different from this one at the Yar.”

Houdini didn’t answer. It seemed to him that it was a rhetorical question.

“They’re all gone now. All that’s gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“The czar, the czarina, their children, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, most of the rest of the Romanov family, they’re all dead. Shot, thrown down a mine shaft, they’re all dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And we’re next.”

“What do you mean?” His fingers tightened around the gun, even if it was incapable of firing a live round.

“I’ve come with a warning. They’re cleaning up after the Rasputin affair. Everyone who knew about it is in danger. Your friend Robinson knew about it. He might have even had a hand in planning it. That’s why he was killed. There are others who’ve been eliminated as well. We’re not safe.”

“Wilkie’s having people killed?”

Grigoriev shook his head. “Not Wilkie. Melville. It was his man Scale and another named Raynor who shot Rasputin. Yusupov met them while at Oxford. But Melville didn’t have approval from his superiors. If they find out it was him, he’s sunk.”

Houdini thought about this. If Melville had indeed assassinated the czar’s adviser without clearance from his masters, there would be a heavy price to pay.

“You were involved?”

“Of course. I’d have preferred to have done it without violence, but I had no choice. We should have acted earlier. It was too late to make any difference.”

“What will you do now?”

“I don’t know. I am in exile. I have lost everything.”

Houdini crossed the room and opened a trunk that belonged to Bess. It had a false bottom, inside of which was a bottle of gin. She didn’t know he knew about it. He poured Grigoriev a glass and gave it to him.

“Why have you come here?”

Grigoriev drank the gin in one gulp and coughed. “Because the last time I asked you for help, you gave it. I felt obliged to warn you about Melville.”

“Surely he can’t touch us here without Wilkie’s permission.”

“He can. It wouldn’t surprise me if Wilkie’s on the same list we are.”

Houdini leaned back in his chair. He needed to get Bess out of danger. He couldn’t cancel that night’s show. It would arouse too much suspicion and ruin him with the Hippodrome as well. But this was his last scheduled engagement for a week. He had time to get out of town.

“What will you do?” Grigoriev asked him.

“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”

A few hours later, when he took to the stage, he was nervous. If Melville could get to Robinson, then he could get to him too. And if Melville was using magicians’ acts as an instrument of death, there was no magician on earth whose act contained as much danger as Houdini’s.

The first part of the program went without incident. After he was finished with the close-up magic, he did the Milk Can and then a straitjacket escape. The elephant vanish was last on the bill. Before that was the Water Torture Cell. If tampered with it could easily be fatal. To tamper with it, however, a man would have to know how it was done, and fewer than a half-dozen people alive knew the secret.