Harry Houdini Mysteries (29 page)

Your Humble Servant,

John H. Watson

For the second time that day I felt the thrill of discovering a tangible link to one of my idols, and even more astonishingly, evidence that Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini had actually met! No sooner had I considered this possibility than an even more incredible one occurred to me: perhaps somewhere in the store lay an unpublished Watson manuscript!

As I recall it, I explained this possibility to my friends in my usual measured, sonorous tones. They insist I shouted like a madman. Either way, we began a frantic, reckless search for the manuscript in the darkest recesses of Grasso’s. All the while I tried not to think of how slim the chances of finding it were. Even if Watson’s manuscript had arrived at Martinka’s, it would almost surely have been forwarded, discarded, or lost forever in the jumble that became Grasso’s. But at that moment we were all too caught up in the search to worry about any of that. We must have looked like the Keystone Kops, diving into stacks of papers, dumping out cartons of documents, and rifling through the files; not missing a trick, as it were. Manuscripts were uncovered and hastily
scanned, only to be revealed as treatises on dove vanishing or coin manipulation. Then, miraculously, after only twenty minutes or so, we found Dr Watson’s manuscript. It had been serving as a shim under the unsteady leg of a goldfish vanish table. Ignominious as this may seem, it probably saved the manuscript from being thrown out.

The bundle was in fairly good condition, apart from the sinkhole where the table leg had rested. The first few pages were on the point of crumbling and the last few were stained with oil or grease, but all of it was legible. I know this because I immediately sat down and read straight through while my friends tried to repair the damage done by our search. If possible, Grasso’s was now even more disordered than when we began cleaning it three days before, and we then abandoned all hope of restoring it to order; but I had an original, unpublished Sherlock Holmes story.

That’s where my troubles really began. If discovering a Watson manuscript seemed unlikely, convincing the world of the discovery bordered on the impossible. I faced an army of disbelievers. To begin with, the sceptics said the writing was not Watson’s; but surely he would not, at the age of seventy-five, have made his own longhand copies. Then there were those who doubted that he would have gone to the trouble of writing the story merely to cheer up Mrs Houdini. I can only answer that that is exactly the sort of man he was. Furthermore, in 1927 Watson had no real need of money and would have been able to pursue whatever writing appealed to him.

Though this case is unique among Holmes adventures, it was not the first time that Watson kept a completed story under wraps for reasons of discretion. His chief concern would have been to avoid embarrassing the august person involved in the episode. Whatever his reasons, Watson succumbed to viral pneumonia within two years of his note to Mrs Houdini. Surely Holmes took no interest in the project, so any hope of the story coming to light died with Watson.

No sooner were these objections answered than new ones were raised. Some people even went so far as to accuse me of having written the story myself, despite my assurances that I am an untalented boor. Then there was that contemptible faction that insists that Sherlock Holmes existed only in the
mind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They are a spurious lot, surely, but they comprise a large faction in the publishing industry and therefore could not be ignored. Finally, after many months of effort, I was able to convince William Morrow and Company, a sympathetic publishing house, that, however dubious the origin of the manuscript might be, it was still a damn good story. I leave it to the reader to make the final judgment. I myself have no doubts, and I assure the reader that the most fantastic assertions and events herein are the most easily verified. The episode related by Bess Houdini in Chapter Three is retold by Milbourne Christopher in his biography,
Houdini: The Untold Story
. The escape introduced by Houdini in the Epilogue became a standard feature in his stage show; and he recreated the amazing stunt described in the nineteenth chapter in the movie
The Grim Game
.

I have made a few awkward but, I hope, illuminating footnotes in those places where Watson’s notorious murkiness asserts itself, but otherwise I will intrude no further on the reader’s patience. Watson is in good form as always, a friend to the reader and the one fixed point in a changing age...

Daniel Stashower

New York City

February 12, 1985

Author’s Foreword

In all my years with Sherlock Holmes I encountered only a handful of men whose wilfulness and ingenuity rivalled that of Holmes himself. One such man was William Gladstone, the late prime minister. Another was a gentleman in Cornwall who fashioned small weapons from dried fruit. But by far the most extraordinary of these was Harry Houdini, the renowned magician and escape artist.

Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini met in April of the year 1910. Holmes, drawing near to his retirement, was then at the peak of his fame. Houdini, twenty years the younger man, had not yet attained the remarkable international recognition that was soon to be his. The first meeting of these two men was by no means cordial, but while they never became intimates, there developed between them a tacit respect born of the recognition that each was the unparalleled master of his craft.

Their encounter and the remarkable events which attended it form one of the most singular cases of my friend’s career. Houdini, always secretive concerning the details of his private life, forbade me to write of the matter within his lifetime. Regrettably, I am no longer bound by that constraint. Houdini is dead well before his time, and by a means which I myself might have foreseen.
^*

I return, then, to the year 1910. I endeavour to fix the year precisely, for I am not insensitive to the complaints of some of my readers regarding my carelessness with dates. This was the year in which George V ascended to the throne; and a time in which, though we did not know it at the time, dark reverberations throughout Europe drew us closer and closer to The Great War.

John H. Watson, MD

2 November 1926

One

T
HE
C
RIME
O
F
T
HE
C
ENTURY

T
he crime of the century?” asked Sherlock Holmes, stirring at the firecoals with a metal poker. “Are you quite certain, Lestrade? After all, the century is young yet, is it not?” He turned to the inspector, whose face was still flushed with the drama of his pronouncement. “Perhaps, my friend, it would be more prudent to call it the crime of the decade, or possibly the most serious crime yet this year, but one really ought to resist such hyperbole.”

“I must caution you not to make light of the situation, Mr Holmes,” said Inspector Lestrade, standing at the bow window. “I did not travel all the way across town merely for your amusement. The case of which I speak has implications which even you cannot begin to grasp. In fact, I am somewhat overstepping my authority in consulting with you at all, but as I just happened to run across Watson here—”

“Indeed.” Holmes replaced the poker in the fire-irons stand and turned to face us. He was wearing a sombre grey frock-coat which emphasised his great height and rigid bearing. Holmes was, as I have often recorded, a bit over six feet tall, thin almost to the point of cadaverousness, and possessed of sharp features and an aquiline nose which gave him the appearance of a hawk. Standing there with his back to the fire and his elbows resting on the mantelpiece, it was difficult to say whether he had struck a posture of
ease or advertence. “I think it would be best, Lestrade, if you told your story from the beginning. You say that you suspect this young American of a great crime, is this so?”

“It is.”

“And what did you say this fellow’s name was?”

“Houdini.”

“Yes, Houdini. Watson, will you have a look in the index?”

I selected one of the bulging commonplace books from its shelf and began paging through the entires. “H-o-u, is it? Here is the Duke of Holderness, and here — ah yes! Houdini, Harry. Born on March 24, 1874, in Budapest. This is curious, though... there is also record of his having been born on April 26 of that same year, in Appleton, Wisconsin.”

“Curious indeed!”

“He is an American magician, best known for his remarkable escapes. It is said that he has never failed to free himself from any form of restraint. He is particularly fond of challenging police officials to bind him in official constraints, from which he then releases himself.”

I heard a suppressed chuckle near the fireplace.

“Houdini also has an interest in the new flying machines, and has actually made several short flights himself.”

Lestrade scoffed. “That’s just the sort of thing I’m talking about! What kind of person is it who tampers with unnatural machinery!”

“On the contrary, Lestrade, I’d say our Mr Houdini shows a keen interest in the advance of science, as well as a highly adventurous spirit. He sounds like a most surprising individual. Is there anything else, Watson?”

“Nothing,” I said, replacing the heavy volume.

“I presume then that you have something to add to Watson’s description, Lestrade?”

“I do indeed, Mr Holmes,” said the inspector, reaching into his breast pocket for a small notebook. “Let’s see... where to begin... ah, right!” Lestrade jabbed a forefinger into the notebook. “On the day before yesterday, this fellow turns up at the Yard and demands to be locked up in one of our cells! Well, I’ve been on the force near thirty years now and this is the first time anyone ever volunteered to be locked up. So we looked him over pretty carefully, and he says, ‘I want to be locked up so
I can escape!’ We all got a good laugh out of that, I can tell you. But this young fellow wouldn’t give up! He insisted that he’d done the same thing in Germany and France, and he brought out the newspaper clippings to prove it!” Lestrade slapped his notebook against his open palm.

“Well, Mr Holmes, it’s one thing to break out of those tin boxes they have over there, but our British gaols are the finest in the world. If this little American thought he was just going to walk in and walk out, quick as you please, we were only too happy to oblige him. So we took him into the ground floor cell block and put him in a free cage. Frankly, I thought he’d back away when he saw the lock on the door, but he didn’t, so we locked him up tight. I promised to come back for him in a few hours, when he’d had enough.”

Holmes looked over at the inspector. “And then?”

Lestrade clasped his hands behind his back and looked out of the window. “Thirty minutes later we received a telephone call in the C.I.D. office. It was Houdini. He said he’d made it back to his hotel alright and he just wanted us to know he’d left a surprise in the cell block. Naturally we didn’t believe it, but when we got in there we saw that not only had he broken out, but he’d also switched around every prisoner in the entire wing! Seventeen prisoners and not one of them was in his right cell! We had quite a job just — Mr Holmes! I fail to see what is so amusing in all this!”

“Quite so, Lestrade,” said Holmes with a short cough, “forgive me. But still, I don’t see that your problem is as grave as you suppose. I’m sure it’s simply a question of improving the design of your goal. Perhaps Mr Houdini could be persuaded to cooperate—”