Mrs. Houdini(65)

Later, as they were lying in bed, she rested her head on Harry’s chest. “You impressed him, you know.”

Harry kissed the top of her head. “And did I impress you, Mrs. Houdini?”

“I have to admit, I’m not sure how you did this one.”

Harry sat up on his elbow. “Truly?”

“Truly. Will you tell me?”

He grinned. “You couldn’t figure it out because most of it was due to blind chance. The book I handed him to write on had been prepared ahead of time with a hidden carbon sheet inside the front cover. As I replaced the book on the shelf, I snuck a peek at the question, and it was one I had prepared for; when I found out Mr. Roosevelt was going to be on the ship, my man at the London Telegraph telegraphed me a copy of the article he was publishing about the South America trip.”

“That’s incredibly coincidental. What would you have done if he had asked a question you had not prepared for?”

Harry shrugged. “Answered it the best I could, I suppose. Perhaps the spirits really were looking out for me.”

“Don’t say that. Not if you don’t believe it.” Bess closed her eyes, taken over by sleep. “Do you believe you’ll see me after we die?” she murmured.

Harry ran his fingers through her hair. “Mrs. Houdini, if I die first, I believe you’ll see me while you still live. In fact, I promise it.”



On their first night in Copenhagen, the sky was overcast, the moon weak through a thick layer of fog. Harry performed at the Cirkus Beketow, the city’s premier venue. Young Prince Aage and Prince Axel of the Danish royal family were in attendance, sitting starry-eyed in a box close to stage left. Harry had been rehearsing his Danish and told the audience he was going to attempt to do the entire act in the language.

The Danish people felt an affinity with Harry because of his European origins; he was even more of a sensation in Europe than he was in New York. Moreover, the press had gotten wind of his performance for Roosevelt, and their hotel room floor was papered with messages from press agents requesting interviews, which had been slid under the door by the hotel staff. They had arrived on the continent intact, Harry’s seasickness having been much milder than during their last voyage, but he had not been able to shake a feeling of foreboding following Bess’s hallucination during their departure. When Bess told him she was going to walk down the Str?get to shop for a dress to wear to his reception, Harry clung to her and begged her not to leave. “I have a feeling something terrible is going to happen to you if you go,” he said. They spent the afternoon lying on the bed instead, reading the American papers.

Under the bright lights of the Cirkus Beketow, Harry performed his transference trick splendidly, disappearing on one side of the makeshift wall and reappearing on the other. After the performance the princes welcomed them at a reception in the circus foyer. No expense had been spared; tables were laid with cream cloths and plates of poached cod, roast pork, and candied fruit. Through the massive windows, Bess saw that the fog had lifted and the stars were white as pearls. She watched with a glass of champagne in hand as Harry stood on the lobby’s velvet carpet in a circle of reporters, stiltedly trying to communicate in the little Danish he knew, until he defaulted to German. He was quivering with excitement, still immersed in the thrill of the performance. She watched as Jim Vickery pushed his way through the crowd and discreetly handed him a telegram. Harry asked the men for their pardon and looked down at the paper.

Bess watched as Harry fell to the floor. She tried to push her way toward him, but the crowd had surged forward, everyone trying to help. She could hear him through the barrier of men, crying out, “Mama, Mama!” but she could not reach him, she could not reach him.





Chapter 12


HARLEM


June 1929


Bess had led Harry by the hand to the door of the circus building and into the taxicab, as if he were a blind man. At the hotel he had sat on the bed, still, as Bess packed their luggage. The telegram, from Dash, who had come to New York from Boston while Harry was gone, had said the situation was dire and urged him to come home and forgo the rest of his performances. In Denmark, at the time, it was a crime to break a contract for any reason—even for family emergencies—and as a result Jim Collins was arrested for a period of days while Harry and Bess were on a train to Berlin.

In New York, they had found Mrs. Weiss lying peacefully in her bed, her form white and unmoving. Dash was there, and Gladys, and John Sargent, and Alfred, but no one had spoken a word. Harry had knelt by her side and taken his mother’s hand. “It’s cold,” he had said, as if he still could not believe she was not merely sleeping. No one had dared touch him then, not even Bess.

“Mother always said, ‘Gibt’s nicht, nur Mann und Frau,’” Gladys had murmured softly. “Nothing matters but man and wife. And now she is with the one who loved her most.”

At this, Harry had burst into tears. “I loved her most!” he’d shouted. “I loved her most!” Bess had known what he was feeling—that he had failed his mother. He had promised always to take care of her, but he wasn’t there at the end, when she needed him most. It had been his duty. The pain from his kidney, which he had dismissed as negligible before, began, suddenly, to cripple him, and he had clutched his side.

This was what Bess had felt when Harry died—a horrid, debilitating pain. And, standing in the library after Charles left, she felt a similar phantom pain sear her insides. She had to believe Charles was a cheat, but still, she could not shake a nagging feeling that perhaps she had been wrong. There was something about him that reminded her of Harry—that same wounded expression, the furrowed eyebrows . . .