The Secret Life of Houdini (20 page)

“Well, having challenged the City of Berlin to produce anything it could in the way of handcuffs, I had to let the man put the thumbcuff on me. Also, I had to escape if I could. It was one of the most painful experiences of my career. The spikes penetrated to the bone, and the bleeding flesh hung in strips from my thumbs when at last I dropped the thumbcuff to the stage. Never has one of my tricks been greeted by more tumultuous applause than came to me for this demonstration, which actually was not a trick at all. And when I left the theatre, I found myself surrounded by a cheering crowd that raised me to its shoulders, and then unhitched the horses from my cab to draw me in triumph through the streets of the city.”

While Houdini was thrilled at the acclaim and the adoration of the audiences, he wasn’t letting his success go to his head. “I am really recognized as the biggest Trickster over here,” he wrote his friend Dr. Waitt, telling him that he planned to stay in Germany “at least 6 more months, and at an excellent salary no not an excellent salary but an ‘
exhorbiant
’ [sic] or newspaper salary.” At the same time, he wrote both Waitt and his old employer Edward “Marco” Dooley, thanking them for their encouragement on the way up. “Your letter expresses more gratitude to me than I deserve for what little favor I may have done for you,” Dooley wrote back, “Yet, it pleased me very much to have you express the feeling, for it is
so rare
nowadays to find anyone who appreciates kindness, and it shows, what I knew all along, that you have a good heart and it is in the right place.”

It was one of the most brutal yet devious murders that the Berlin police had ever seen. Olschansky, a Frenchman, had prepared by renting out a small room on a street that was virtually devoid of other lodgers. He then wired himself one hundred marks (about $25), which were delivered by a class of German postmen called “Geld-brief,” because their entire job was to deliver money that had been sent through the mail. Consequently, they often carried large sums of cash.

Olschansky’s room was on the top floor. When the postman arrived that Monday morning, he found nothing unusual. The tenant was seated, enjoying his morning lunch, typically consumed at ten
A.M.
, of bottled beer and sandwiches. The Frenchman politely offered the postman a beer, but tellingly gave him no glass. Compelled to drink straight from the bottle, the postman took a swig. Olschansky took a swing. He used a heavy board and drove the bottle halfway down the German’s throat. Too stunned to put up any resistance, the postman was finished off by some fifteen blows to the head.

Olschansky’s first mistake was in paying for the beer, which he had obtained on credit. When the Frenchman came to him to settle up the debt, the merchant noticed the dried bloodstains on the Frenchman’s shirt cuff. His second mistake was in using the shiny gold twenty-mark piece that had just been delivered to him. When he was finally tracked down and arrested, the German police found two lock-picks among Olschansky’s effects, which was how Houdini wound up in Olschansky’s cell at the police presidium the next morning.

Olschansky didn’t say much to Houdini. He was clever enough to know that before his trial for murder, it wouldn’t redound to his credit to admit that he had been using the picks to break into locked churches to raid their collection boxes. After his execution, Houdini did manage to obtain the picks from the police and found that one of the picks enabled him to open any church door in Germany that wasn’t secured with a padlock. The other key was a kind of master key for safes that utilized Bramah locks.

For a vaudeville performer, Houdini seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time and have unprecedented access at the Berlin police station. Even though his accounts suggest that his presence there was a mere coincidence, it is clear that Houdini was being utilized by the upper strata of the German police. During the same period when he interrogated Olschansky in his cell, a clever burglar went on trial. Not only did Houdini attend the trial but also, “after I had given my police performance, I was brought to him, as he had a notorious reputation as a lock picker.” Houdini went on to have many interviews with him “…and finally he gave me the lock picker and told me how he concealed it. I handed it to the police, who allowed me to keep it.” Houdini didn’t reveal what information or techniques he traded to the authorities for their generous gifts and access to convicted criminals.

In his 1906 book,
The Right Way to Do Wrong
, Houdini described serving as a liaison between the IACP in the United States and the top German police brass. While in Germany, Houdini had a copy with him of
Our Rival the Rascal
, a book written by his friend Chief Inspector William B. Watts of the Boston police force. The book contained many interesting photographs and case histories of leading criminals. Chief Watts was a member of the IACP and a crusader for international police cooperation in dealing with threats to world order from both anarchists and habitual criminals. “This book is the greatest book on the subject that I have ever seen,” Houdini enthused. “I happened to have a copy with me in Berlin, when the royal police, hearing that I had the book in the country, asked me as a favor to allow them to make extracts and photograph some of the famous criminals in the book. This I allowed them to do, and in return they handed me several photos of well-known criminals to send to Chief Inspector, Wm. B. Watts.”

On June 1, 1901, Watts sent Houdini a letter, thanking him for his letter “and other communications.” He reminded Houdini that when the magician left the United States, “I believed you would make a success of your trip,” and sent his kindest regards to his “better half.” To the titles of Handcuff King, Jailbreaker, and Master of Manacles, we now must add Courier for International Police Cooperation.

Houdini’s schedule seemed to be exacting a heavy toll on him. By December of 1900, despite protests from his German promoters who wanted to hold him over, he returned to England to fulfill his Alhambra contracts. After spending two months there, he returned to Germany. By the end of March, he wrote Dr. Waitt, “My nerves are all run down, and I am not well as the
perpetual
worry and excitement is beginning to tell on me.” By June word of Houdini’s stress had reached other friends back in the States. “I heard that you don’t laugh anymore. Neither do I…What seems to be the matter with us?” Gus Roterberg wrote.

Regardless of his run-down nerves, Houdini kept up his grueling schedule. Since his return to Germany, he had toured Leipzig, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, and Hamburg. On May 6, he started a three-week engagement in Essen Ruhr. Houdini was such a hit that the front doors and a side wall of the venerable Colosseum were removed to add extra seats. Despite selling standing room and even putting chairs on the stage, hundreds of people were turned away.

Essen Ruhr was important in another respect. It was the home of Krupp Works, Germany’s largest munitions manufacturers, a company that turned Essen from a sleepy village to a thriving city of more than 100,000, most of them dependent on the large munitions company. Krupp was known for secrecy and very few American iron and steel industry visitors had been allowed to tour the foundry, but under the guise of assessing a challenge from the Krupp workers, Houdini was able to visit and inspect the munitions factory. In fact, the Colosseum eventually hosted a Krupp night, where Krupp workers bought out the entire theater to see Houdini come up against the finest in German technology. Initially the Krupp representatives had proposed that Houdini enter a huge cannon, the mouth of which they would heat and close with a giant press. He declined that challenge but consented to try to escape from handcuffs designed by the Krupp master machinists. It took them twenty minutes to lock the cuffs on Houdini. In thirty minutes he was free, but he paid a price.

“The cuff used was a kind of an arrangement that screwed to fit the hand,” Houdini wrote Dr. Waitt. “And the Krupp man screwed it down until it touched the bone, and imigane [sic] the pain it caused me. The Krupp man has maimed my right hand so that I am unable to work, and it will be a week or so before I can have a cuff locked on me…I was in that dam (excuse the dam but I said worse than that)…I was in that cuff half of an hour and it seemed like an eternity.”

Houdini had some other unusual experiences in Essen Ruhr. He met with a man named Goldschmidt, who had invented a “terrible compound” named thermite that could be utilized to burn a hole through a safe without destroying its contents. Goldschmidt’s compound was a mixture of aluminum filings and iron oxide, which, when ignited, burned at the amazing temperature of three thousand degrees Celsius. Houdini noted that he was in Berlin when Goldschmidt performed his first test on a safe. He didn’t explain why a stage escape artist would be at such a demonstration.

The palm garden salon was the most luxurious room in all of Budapest. It was adorned with graceful fountains, verdant palms, wonderful complex tapestries, and, of course, gilded rococo chairs and lounges. It was a setting fit for a queen. And tonight, there was one in attendance. The queen’s dress had been custom-made in a small London shop. It was originally made for Queen Victoria, but she had died on January 22, 1901, and so it hung forlornly in the shop window. Until Houdini saw it. He marched into the shop and offered to buy it. At first, the owner was shocked that someone had the impudence to buy the queen’s dress. When Houdini told him that the gown was for his mother, and that he planned to bring her to Europe from America and throw a gala reception for her in her old hometown, the shopkeeper relented. After what must have been severe alterations, he sold the gown to Houdini for fifty pounds with the proviso that it never be worn in the United Kingdom.

Houdini and Bess with his mother. Note Mama Weiss’s pendant.
Library of Congress

And there was Cecilia Weiss, resplendent in her finery, thrilled by her son’s fanciful story of her dress’s royal origin, greeting nearly everyone who had ever known either Rabbi Weiss or her back in Budapest. Houdini took the greatest pleasure in seeing his mother’s uncle Heller, the snob of the family, who had boycotted Cecilia’s wedding to Mayer Samuel in protest. This would show him what the union of those two could produce. “How my heart warmed to see the various friends and relatives kneel and pay homage to my mother, every inch a queen, as she sat enthroned in her heavily carved and gilded chair,” Houdini would write with glee. That night Houdini and his mother stayed up all night, recounting every detail of the party. The next day, he “escorted the Fairy Queen Mother” to her ship and her voyage home.

Houdini stayed. And why not? He was a resounding success. His mother had arrived in Germany at the end of May, just in time to see her son presented with a solid silver bowl inlaid with more than six hundred marks in silver coins in recognition of his astounding box office success. A month later, he decided to fire Martin Beck, his U.S. manager; after all, Houdini had been handling his affairs on his own since he had come to Europe. Now he took on the additional burden of acting as agent for his old friends, the acrobat Jim Bard and Alexander Weyer, the strong man. Houdini wrote Bard several times a week, giving him advice, reporting on progress getting him bookings, and generally bolstering his friend’s spirits. “Dont you worry that any one can knock you now,” he wrote Bard on September 15, 1901. “As you have Houdini boosting you, and today ther[e] is no better known act in Europe. I have ennimies [sic] by the score…but so far I am not afraid of them.”

Immediately after his mother’s departure, Houdini toured as the feature act of the Corty-Althoff Circus. They played Dortmund, Osnabrück, and Cologne. After taking a much needed rest in August, Houdini played Prague in September before returning to Germany to perform in Hanover. It was there that he was challenged by Count von Schwerin, the chief of police. Houdini managed to escape from police manacles at the station, but then the count had his men lace Houdini into a straitjacket. It was used to secure violent prisoners, so it had been constructed from heavy canvas reinforced with thick leather. It took Houdini one hour and twenty-nine minutes to get free, and the ordeal left him bruised and battered, with his clothes in tatters. “The pain, torture, agony, and misery of that struggle will live forever in my mind,” he wrote in his diary. It must have made a big impression, for Count von Schwerin’s name found its way into Melville’s diary too.

Regardless of the pain, Houdini’s act was an unmitigated success in every country he visited. Part of his appeal was that he tried to perform in the audience’s native tongues, a tactic that he learned from Robert-Houdin’s account of the Italian conjurer Bosco’s endearing use of broken French. “I get through with my talk in my act better than I ever thought that I would, and it must be funny, as they laugh, as if I were doing a monologue act,” Houdini wrote Dr. Waitt. But he was also cognizant of the deeper, underlying appeal of his performance. “It does seem strange that the people over here, especially Germany, France, Saxony, and Bohemia fear the Police so much, in fact the Police are all Mighty,” he wrote Waitt a month later. “I am the first man that has ever dared them, that is my success.” His bravado was a bluff. He had just finished drawing up his first will.