The Confabulist (29 page)

“If Houdini isn’t real,” Bess had said, “it’s because you made him that way. You are hiding from yourself inside a fiction.”

“Why do we need a child?”

“Why would we not? It is a part of life, a part of being a human. We can’t have our own, but why should that matter?”

“That’s not the issue.”

“No, it isn’t. The issue is you are unwilling to be anything other than the focus of attention. You must maintain your illusion at all costs, because without it you fade away.”

She was right. How could he be a father to a child, then? How could he teach anyone anything about how the world worked, about how to be a person, about what could be trusted and what could not, if he was nothing more than an artifice?

Rose reached for one of the two remaining boxes. “We have to go,” she said. “It’s late, and we have only a few hours before the train leaves.”

He bent down and picked up the last box of files. It felt heavier than the others, and as he carried it out of the basement its weight increased. When he heaved it into the car his arms ached and a drop of sweat rolled down his brow and off the tip of his nose. He couldn’t remember ever having been so tired.

The day of the congressional hearings Houdini woke up before the sun, having barely slept. He dressed in silence and left the hotel early, careful not to wake Bess. He walked the streets of Washington, deserted except for those few whose work necessitated forsaking their beds. He walked past the White House, where he knew President Coolidge held regular séances. He walked past the homes of members
of Congress, where he knew matters of state were being regularly discussed with false mediums. He had irrefutable proof.

He reached into his pocket and unfolded the letter he’d received from Doyle the day before.

I write to you because we were once friends, though I now admit I may have been mistaken, that you may have been performing one of your ruses on me for our entire association. But your treatment of Margery Crandon and her good husband has left me no choice but to issue this dire warning to you, in the hopes that you will exercise your better judgment. If you do not desist in your slander, there are forces at work who shall see to it that you desist. I have been so told from beyond the veil. The enclosed list should convince you of his veracity. Out of respect for your wife, who I believe to be a good and dear woman who has likely suffered much on your account, I pledge that I will not betray the Spirits’ confidence. But there are others who have access to beyond the veil who may not be so inclined, unless you were to amend your ways. Be warned
.

ACD

The list, which he had already burned, contained the names of every woman he had ever slept with while married to Bess. Names even he had forgotten. They were all there except Evatima Tardo.

He put the letter back in his pocket, watched the sun rise, and then returned to his hotel. Bess had awoken and dressed, and he read the paper as he waited for breakfast to be sent up.

“I’m nervous,” Bess said.

He put the paper down. “There’s no need,” he said. “All we have to do is tell the truth. This law will make it illegal for them to charge money for their séances. Take away the money and you take away the motivation.”

When their food arrived, neither of them ate much. Houdini slipped a piece of toast wrapped in a napkin into the pocket of his coat in case he was hungry later.

The House Judiciary Subcommittee met in one of the larger rooms in the Capitol. He’d expected the room to feel like a courtroom, but it seemed to him more like a large meeting room. There was a table set up on one end where ten or so congressmen sat, and then they called on various people to address them.

His plan was simple. Houdini would show Congress how the cheats operated. He’d reveal how each of them had been duped. The two most strident spiritualists on the subcommittee were McLeod and Hammer. Houdini had files three inches thick on each of them. By the end of the hearings it would be illegal for spiritualists to collect so much as a dime.

Finally, after a morning listening to mediums and policemen, they called on him to speak. He was sworn in, and he wiggled his eyebrows at Bess as he took the oath. She raised a hand to her mouth to cover a smile.

One of his few allies, a congressman named Bloom, addressed the room.

“I would like Mr. Houdini to make a short statement about the bill.”

Hammer leaned back in his chair. “May I inquire who he is and if he is not an astrologer?”

The gallery laughed at this, and Hammer scowled at the room. Even the spiritualists laughed. It was ridiculous that Hammer didn’t know who Houdini was. Houdini was one of the few who didn’t laugh. He knew this was gamesmanship, nothing more.

Bloom looked at Hammer over his glasses. “Mr. Houdini is generally regarded as the world’s preeminent magician.”

Houdini reached into his pocket, produced an envelope, and tossed it onto the table in front of him. “Congressmen, I have here ten thousand dollars, and I will happily forfeit it to any medium present who can produce an effect I cannot replicate.”

The gallery erupted. Every medium in the place was screaming at him. He stood motionless, surveying the crowd dispassionately. Bloom and Hammer were shouting at each other, though he couldn’t make out their words over the din.

McLeod waved his hands for silence, and the room gradually regained some semblance of order. McLeod waited for a few seconds before speaking.

“Mr. Houdini, you are here to answer the questions of this committee, not engage in publicity challenges. I will remind you this is the United States Congress, not some vaudeville house.”

Houdini smiled, undeterred, and returned the money to his pocket.

“Have you any religious views?” Hammer asked, barely able to contain his anger.

“Yes, sir. I am the son of a rabbi. For hundreds of years my forebears were rabbis.”

Hammer sneered. “I am surprised that a man of such faith so easily attacks another man’s religion.”

“Spiritualism is not a religion. It only operates under the cloak of religion. Its real purpose is less noble than any religion, and that is what I quarrel with.”

“But your work is sleight of hand? You do not yourself claim any divine power?” Hammer spoke not to Houdini but to the assembled room.

“No. I call what I do mystification.”

“Do you claim you have psychic power?”

“No one has. We are all born alike. I am an ordinary mortal. Like you.”

McLeod laughed, but it was clear that he found nothing funny about what Houdini had said.

“I think you’ve admitted you are a fraud!”

“What I do is not real.”

“But people believe it is.”

“Some do. But I tell them it is trickery.”

Hammer leaned in and spoke to an aide. Houdini tried to read his lips but couldn’t. The aide nodded to Hammer and left his side, making his way to the gallery. McLeod kept on.

“Do they not pay an admission fee?”

“Yes.”

“Then it is a fact that you do practically the same thing as those you denounce, only you call it trickery.”

The spiritualists in the gallery bayed with delight. Houdini had to shout to be heard. “I do not call it religion, and I do not charge them for telling their fortunes. I entertain people.”

The gallery again erupted into howls.

He looked behind him to where Rose Mackenberg was sitting. She had a box containing the transcripts of séances attended by both
Hammer and McLeod. Hammer had asked a medium about a crucial vote, and had voted as the medium had suggested, as well as admitted to having accepted significant bribes. McLeod had repeatedly sought advice on the crafting of law and had revealed sensitive information that could compromise national security. In a few moments Houdini would present these files to the committee.

But something was wrong. Rose was gone. She had been there when he’d gone up, but had since vanished. He had nothing.

Grigoriev should have been in the audience as well, but Houdini didn’t know what his disguise was, and there was no way he’d be able to pick him out of the chaos. He sank back in his chair. He’d been thwarted.

The committee asked him a few more questions, but the proceedings were going nowhere. In the end they voted against the creation of a law banning charging money for the telling of fortunes.

Houdini and Bess fought their way through the throngs of reporters and spiritualists to the street. Rose was nowhere to be found. Houdini dropped Bess back at the hotel and went to the meeting place he’d arranged in advance with Rose and Grigoriev—should anything go wrong, they were to meet on a bench in a park overlooking the Potomac. He waited until well after midnight, his hand on his derringer the whole time. But neither of them showed.

The next morning he took the train with Bess to New York. When he got home there was a small clump of hair inside the newspaper on the front step. He smiled and went inside, put on a hat and changed his coat, kissed Bess, and went straight out the back door.

It took him longer than usual to get to Grigoriev’s barber shop. He took a circuitous route, in case anyone was following him. At one point he was sure someone was, but he ducked into a restaurant
where he knew the owner and went out the rear exit. Satisfied that no one was shadowing him, he headed to the barber shop.

Grigoriev was sweeping a floor that was already clean. Houdini climbed into the chair.

“You don’t need a haircut.”

“Then I’m not paying you.”

“A small trim wouldn’t hurt.”

“Where’s Rose?”

“Safe.”

“What happened?”

Grigoriev had been watching from the opposite side of the gallery when a man came up to Rose and grabbed her by the arm, his other hand inside his coat holding what Grigoriev knew was a gun. Rose had looked around for help and, finding none, had gone outside with him. They were about to get into a car when Grigoriev caught up with them. He was able to knock the man over and get away with Rose, but had judged it too dangerous to remain in Washington.

“The files?”

“They have them.”

“Who has them?”

“Wilkie. The guy was one of his men.”

It didn’t make sense for Wilkie to steal his files. Whatever Houdini knew, Wilkie knew too.

“I think it’s time to admit we’ve lost,” Grigoriev said.

“What? You’re out of your mind.”

“I don’t think you understand what’s happened. You’ve become caught up in a game, in an idea of right and wrong. But this is no longer about crooks and liars. This is about power. They have it all, and we have none. We’ve been lucky up to this point. Do you think
they would have just let Rose go? If she had gone in that car we never would have seen her again.”

Houdini was about to argue but stopped. Like the final pin in a lock it all came together. Wilkie had all but told him, but he hadn’t listened.

Wilkie wasn’t protecting these men of power. He was controlling them. Most if not all of the mediums who held sittings for the elite set were former magicians. Vaudeville had taken a nosedive, and those hit hardest were the performers on the low end of the scale. But Wilkie knew the value of magicians. He’d known it when he’d approached Houdini all those years ago. When Houdini had turned out to be less than compliant, he’d simply found other magicians. He’d turned them into mediums and was using them to control the reins of power.

He knew about the women because he’d been watching Houdini all along. Evatima Tardo hadn’t been on the list because she happened before Wilkie.

“We’re in real danger,” Grigoriev said. “You, me, Rose, the whole organization.”

“We knew this would be dangerous.”

“We did. Did Bess?”

Bess. If Grigoriev was right, she was a target.

Grigoriev put his hand on Houdini’s shoulder. “They intend to kill you. Doyle actually thinks that once you’re on the other side, you’ll thank him for showing you the error of your ways.”

Houdini snorted. “Doesn’t he know that ghosts haunt you, not thank you?”

“The man has lost all sense, but that’s beside the point. Wilkie controls this game. Or worse, there are men who control Wilkie that
we don’t even know about. You forget, I think, that I have significant experience in the machinations of powerful men. It is about to cost you your life. It’s about to cost you Bess’s life. It’s time to end it. You know what we have to do.”

Houdini sank farther into the chair. Grigoriev was right. He had no other choice. He could not allow them to hurt Bess. He’d already done that enough himself. “Okay,” he said. “Shut it down. Shut down the whole operation.”

Grigoriev shook his head. “That’s not enough. They’re still going to come for you.”

Houdini nodded. “I know.”

The car was loaded. The boxes containing the files of all high-ranking members of the American, British, and Canadian governments who were under the sway of Wilkie’s mediums were inside. Houdini sat in the passenger seat while Rose closed the doors and got behind the wheel. The car roared to life and she put it in gear.

He handed her the address. The files would be secure there for now. They’d meet Bess and the rest of his crew at the train station in a few hours, go north on one final tour, and after that all of this would be done.

“Ready, boss?” Rose asked. She let off on the clutch and began to pull away.

“Wait. Stop,” he said.

Rose brought the car to a halt. Houdini looked out the window. He remembered the theatre in Garnett, Kansas, the look on Harold Osbourne’s face as he stormed toward him, on Bess’s face when the doctor told them she couldn’t have children, the way she had cried
when he said he wouldn’t go along with any plan of adoption. He saw his father’s skin, thin as paper, the slippers he’d bought for his mother and placed in her casket. All the escapes, the crowds cheering and carrying him on their shoulders. He remembered the day he bought this house, of telling his mother and Bess that this house was theirs, that from here on everything would be a dream. Had he lied to them? No, he’d just been wrong. He hadn’t understood himself. He hadn’t understood anything at all.