Mrs. Houdini(51)

“This is the cell that held Charles Guiteau after he assassinated President Garfield,” the warden explained. He gestured toward a heavily reinforced square room with brick walls and a thick combination lock securing the iron door. “The door has been dug three feet into the earth to fortify it.”

“But—it’s occupied!” Bess said. Shaking in the corner of the cell was a large black man with his knees drawn to his chest. He looked terrified.

“Mr. Houdini will be safe, won’t he?” Harry’s press agent, Whitman Osgood, asked the warden. Per the agreement, Harry would be left alone, except for the prisoners, to attempt his escape. Harry laughed. “Whit, I’m the one who asked to do this trick.”

“In an empty cell,” his agent argued.

“We never specified that.”

“Harry, it was assumed.”

Every prisoner housed in this wing was surely a murderer, but Bess felt a wave of compassion for the man in the cell. Everyone was staring at him. “It’s all right,” she told him. “It’s just Harry Houdini. You’ve heard of him, haven’t you?”

“Houdini!” a man called from down the row. “Let us out!”

“We’ll have to search you, of course,” the warden told Harry. “If you choose to go forward, that is?”

“I would expect no less,” Harry replied. He began taking off his shoes and socks. “And yes, I’m going to go on as planned.”

The warden cleared his throat and looked at Harry’s press agent. “Mr. Osgood. I believe it would be prudent for Mrs. Houdini to retreat to the office at this time?”

Bess burst out laughing. “Trust me, Mr. Harris. I’ve seen my husband naked many times before.”

Harry smiled, embarrassed. “Of course you have, dear, but it’s probably best to wait for me there. Or should they handcuff you and lead you off?”

“It’s all right, I’ll go willingly,” she said. She felt the color rush to her cheeks. She was proud of Harry, certainly, but since their trip to Europe it had become clear that he would have more success performing on his own, for exactly such a reason. Many of his escapes required him to expose himself completely to assert the authenticity of the trick. A fully dressed lady beside him, concealing whatever tools a dress might hide, would only discredit her husband.

Bess was escorted to the office and took a seat by the window, where she sipped her tea and listened to the skeptical chatter of the prison guards.

“Do you really think he’ll pull it off today?” one of them asked her.

“Of course.”

The guard shook his head. He was a heavyset man with a thick head of hair. “I’ve been working here for fifteen years. It’s impossible. I’m telling you—”

“But he did escape from Scotland Yard,” one of them interrupted.

“Those good-for-nothin’ Brits.” The heavy guard shook his head. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

“Guiteau was hanged here, wasn’t he?” Bess asked. “Do things like that ever make you think the place is haunted?”

“I’ve seen all kinds of strange things here,” the guard said. “Things you wouldn’t believe.”

“You’d be surprised how much I would believe.”

The warden and the reporters came into the office. Warden Harris checked his watch. “He’s on the clock now. We’ll see how he does.”

The reporters pulled their chairs around Bess. “Do you know how he does his escapes?” one of them asked her.

Bess always avoided this question; she knew everything, of course, but she liked to keep some mystery around Harry’s acts.

“She’s not gonna tell us that,” the heavy guard said. “Then no one would quit asking her how it’s done.”

The reporter changed angles. “What would you do if Harry fails to escape today?”

Bess smiled. “Do? Why, I would do what I always do around this time of the afternoon. I would go back to the hotel and wash for dinner.”

They were not amused. “But wouldn’t you be upset?”

Bess took a long sip of tea before responding. “My husband, you see, has escaped from far more terrible places than this. I imagine he could even find his way into and out of your homes at night without your ever knowing.”

The men sat back, startled. Before they could muster any response, there was a knock on the door. The warden opened it to find Harry, standing in the corridor with his clothes back on. Bess looked at her watch. It had been exactly twenty-one minutes.

“I let all of your prisoners out,” Harry said, wiping his brow. The guards jumped to their feet. “But then I locked them all in again.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” the warden demanded. The group rushed outside to find the eight other prisoners in the cellblock, including the black man from Guiteau’s cell, locked in entirely different cells than they’d been in before.

Bess lingered in the back of the group with Harry. “You mustn’t do things like that, Harry,” she whispered. “People don’t understand your humor.”



Afterward they took the first train to New York, where Harry had scheduled a series of rehearsals that weekend for an upcoming act. The idleness of waiting for him was difficult. That evening Bess wandered around Macy’s department store, looking for something to occupy her time. The building had opened only a few years before, and the floors and walls still glistened. When she had first become wealthy enough for shopping to be a pastime, the department store had enthralled her. It advertised itself as “a place where almost anything may be bought,” and she was a woman who could buy almost anything. And people had begun to recognize her; the store clerks whispered when she approached, and stepped up to help her before she had even approached the counters. They called her famous.