The Secret Life of Houdini (18 page)

Given what Cook knows about Melville’s disposition and responsibilities, he finds it highly unlikely to think that the inspector would entertain Slater, Pickering, and Houdini at his office and allow a fresh-off-the-boat unknown magician to escape from Scotland Yard handcuffs as an audition for a theater engagement.

The audition was for a job with Melville.

Like Rohan and Wilkie, Melville’s counterparts in America, the Irishman perceived Houdini as a most valuable asset. Obviously, his ability to defeat any lock would come in handy to the Scotland Yard inspector, who often found himself in the position of breaking and entering premises where valuable information might be secreted. Melville saw Houdini as an ideal operative in another arena as well. As early as 1896, Melville had recognized the necessity for gathering information outside of Britain. At first happy to view the police of other nations as some sort of international brotherhood, Melville recognized that his counterparts in France, Russia, and Germany were spying on England during the normal course of their activities. While the idea of finding “suitable men to go abroad to obtain information” would not be part of his official duties until his work with what would eventually be designated MI-5, Melville began to groom operatives while still at Scotland Yard.

Houdini would be the ideal agent to relay information to Melville from abroad. He was nomadic, travel being a regular part of his work. He was also, of course, well-versed in techniques of secrecy and deception. Since his reputation hinged on his ability to escape from confinement and to produce other mystifying magical effects, it was natural for him to carry with him a large assortment of strange items, including lock-picking tools.

Unique to Houdini was his ability to interact with a country’s police officials and do demonstrations inside their jails. No other operative could amass such a wealth of vital information with respect to the security, cells, locks, and prisoner conditions in a country’s jails. As early as 1900, according to Cook, Melville was interested in gathering information in Germany, being prescient enough to see the Germans as Britain’s future adversary. Houdini had the added bonus of being able to speak German fluently.

27th June 1900—Guest of HH at Alhambra

—FROM INSPECTOR MELVILLE’S DIARY

It was an odd sight, the British newshounds carrying ancient, rusted handcuffs and leg irons into the magnificently appointed Alhambra Theater in Leicester Square. With its Moorish facade, opulent private box tier, and dark and mysterious canteen, where many a well-heeled gentleman bought expensive champagne for the ballet girls after their performances, the Alhambra was the premier music hall in England. Dundas Slater, its manager, had summoned the press to a special private preview of his next great attraction, Harry Houdini, the young American Handcuff King. To pique their interest, Slater had encouraged them to bring their own restraints and challenge Houdini, intimating that if they could foil his escape, there might not be an opening night after all.

That was bait enough for
The London Evening Sun
’s representative, the same man who had earlier exposed Slater’s last big sensation, the Georgia Magnet, a Mattie Lee Price–type leverage queen. He came onstage carrying a pair of antique irons and greeted Houdini, who was dressed in his best formal high white collar and tails, his normally unruly curly hair parted neatly in the center. Houdini’s ghost house, which by now was actually a small waist-high enclosure consisting of metal piping and a black fabric that hid Houdini on three sides and could shield him totally by drawing the curtain on the front, had been set up on the stage.

The
Sun
reporter manacled Houdini with the antique slave iron. It was so rusty that it looked like it couldn’t be opened even with a key, but Houdini cheerfully submitted to its bondage and then withdrew to his ghost house. In less than three minutes, he reappeared, the irons dangling in his hand.

“I don’t know how you did it, but you did!” the reporter marveled and cordially shook Houdini’s hand.

After a few more tests, Houdini allowed himself to be handcuffed behind his back and have his feet secured. Then, facing the audience and kneeling, he freed himself in full view of the spectators. He escaped from everything they threw at him, and then he mystified the group with his Metamorphosis trunk and some card effects.

Seated in the audience, Inspector Melville and some of his colleagues from Scotland Yard watched the proceedings with special interest.

The resultant press coverage was enormous. Houdini was universally praised and deemed worthy of his self-anointed titles. Many papers ran large drawings and engravings of him. “It was a remarkably clever exhibition by Mr. Harry Houdini, who describes himself as the World’s Greatest Mystifier and King of Handcuffs,”
The Morning Herald
reported. “Perhaps the highest tribute to Mr. Houdini’s slipperiness is the fact that he has completely mystified the police of America, who have given him many testimonials.” The would-be exposer from
The Evening Sun
even suggested, “if [Houdini] is wise, he will start an academy for the teaching of scientific lock-picking.” Ironically enough, a few short years later, Melville would do exactly that, using Houdini’s techniques as the core curriculum.

The mysterious Chinese conjurer walked onto the stage from the wings and was met there by his diminutive assistant, Suee Seen. She was standing next to a small table that held a large bowl filled with water. In her hands was a long fishing pole that she handed to the magician.

The Alhambra crowd stirred. This fishing effect had never been seen in London before Chung Ling Soo began performing it. They settled back expectantly in their seats to behold a miracle.

Soo pulled a small piece of bait out of his pocket and attached it to the hook that was dangling at the end of a five-foot line. Then he suddenly cast the line out over the heads of the audience, his long ornate Chinese robe flapping from the jerky motion. He paused for a few seconds and then slowly moved the bait from right to left, as if a mysterious school of invisible fish were swimming over the heads of the crowd. The mystery was heightened by focusing the spotlight directly on the dancing bait. Then, suddenly, Soo snapped his wrist, the line buckled, and a small goldfish miraculously appeared. Soo slowly withdrew the pole and unhooked the fish. He delicately dropped it into the waiting water, and it vigorously circled the bowl. He did this twice more, adding two more goldfish to the water. With that, Suee Seen appeared and carried the bowl to the wings, while Chung Ling Soo, the mysterious and Marvelous Chinese Conjuror, clasped his hands together, swirled them up and down, and graciously bowed to the audience.

Soo was concluding his engagement at the Alhambra, and his mysterious act had never failed to enthrall the audience, but tonight they were just as excited to see the debut of this new Yankee, this Handcuff King who was challenging the world to attempt to restrain him. Finally, the wait was over. Houdini, resplendent in his finest attire, strode confidently onto the stage in that marvelous, ornate theater. He stood bathed in the blue-white glow of the spotlight, took a deep breath, and began to address the audience.

“La-dies and gen-tle-men…” Houdini drew out the words like taffy, but before he could even complete his sentence, a stranger had leaped onto the stage.

“This man is a fraud,” the mustachioed intruder bellowed. “He claims to be the King of Handcuffs, but that is a title that is reserved for me, The Great Cirnoc.”

Ten seconds into the most important showing of his life, Houdini’s performance had been hijacked by a competitor. This turn of events seemed to paralyze Houdini, and he was strangely mute as the interloper seized the center of the stage, denouncing him.

“I am the original Handcuff King. This man is an impostor. He claims to come from America and hold proclamations from the police chiefs of the major cities there, yet I declare that his man is not even an American. He has never even been in the United States!” Cirnoc thundered.

At that, a distinguished-looking man sitting in the front row stood up.

“That is not true,” the man said calmly. “I know for a fact that that young man is an American. I also am an American, and I saw him several years ago doing his handcuff act.”

Houdini’s defender was none other than U.S. Senator Chauncey M. Depew, the junior senator from Houdini’s home state of New York. Depew had long been prominent in New York politics and was a mentor to then Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. He also had connections to the world of magic through his nephew Ganson Depew, a practicing magician who later joined the Society of American Magicians.

Depew sat down to great applause. A testimonial from this distinguished guest seemed to bolster Houdini’s confidence.

“Get me the Bean Giant,” he whispered to Bess. “We’ll fix this fellow now.”

Bess supplied him with the cuffs, and Houdini advanced on Cirnoc, dangling the hardware from his fingertips.

“This is one of the finest handcuffs made in the United States,” Houdini said. “I will give you 500 U.S. dollars if you can free yourself from these manacles.”

Cirnoc frowned. “Let me see you get out of them first,” he said.

“Lock me in,” Houdini offered.

Cirnoc snapped the cuffs shut and Houdini retired to his cabinet. Minutes later, he emerged unfettered.

Then Houdini locked the cuffs on his rival. He even gave Cirnoc the key, but the humiliated intruder had to beg for Houdini to release him from his bonds. Houdini did, and a chagrined Cirnoc shook Houdini’s hand and left the stage.

Houdini finished his act with great aplomb. Thanks to his years of experience, his showmanship had been finely honed. He knew exactly how to add the element of danger to magnify the effect and how to prolong the tension and emerge from his cabinet at the peak moment. Houdini’s mastery even fooled his longtime friend Tommy Downs, who was sitting in the audience with William Hilliar, who would later migrate to America and become the founder and editor of the prestigious magic magazine
The Sphinx
.

“Downs and I both thought at one time during the progress of his act that Houdini would get ‘stuck.’ He stayed in the cabinet an inordinately long time, and we both noticed that his charming little wife and helpmate was very nervous. The tension had almost reached the ‘snapping’ point, when suddenly the cabinet burst open and Houdini rushed out—free. I shall never forget the storm of applause that greeted him. That one night was the foundation for his subsequent triumphs in Europe,” Hilliar later wrote.

The critics agreed. They lavished praise both on Houdini’s handcuff work and the Metamorphosis, calling him a “modern Jack Sheppard,” after the legendary English convict who routinely escaped from his cells. More important was another endorsement. “Absolutely a miracle,” gushed Superintendent Melville, London’s most recognizable policeman. Melville’s acknowledgment of Houdini’s skills prompted the magician to jettison his newly printed advertising brochure and order a new one trumpeting the endorsement on the front cover. Quid pro quo. Houdini’s stay at the Alhambra kept getting extended. He was the talk of the town and a visit to Houdini backstage at the Alhambra became de rigueur for London’s most prominent people.

James William Elliot, Houdini’s longtime enemy, and Tommy Downs, Houdini’s longtime friend (l to r).
Conjuring Arts Research Center

One of these was Alfred William Charles Harmsworth. Harmsworth was a self-made millionaire who started his publishing empire in 1888 at the age of twenty-three by copying the format of
Tit-Bits
, a wildly successful monthly magazine that answered readers’ questions. The success of Harmsworth’s
Answers to Correspondents
enabled him to launch new children’s and women’s magazines. By 1894 he had branched out to newspapers, buying up the nearly bankrupt
Evening News
. Giving it a makeover and adding eye-catching headlines revived sales dramatically. Two years later, he founded
The Daily Mail
, the first newspaper in Britain that catered to an audience that wanted shorter, punchier, and more lifestyle-oriented articles. It was an immediate success and when—during the height of the Boer War with South Africa in 1899—Harmsworth identified the paper with “the power, the supremacy, and the greatness of the British Empire,” patriotic readers sent the circulation skyrocketing to more than a million copies a day.