The Dime Museum Murders (3 page)

Other
performers went for cheap wooden novelties. Harmi, the
Sword-Swallower, offered little wooden sabers, and Benny, the Human
Skye Terrier, did a brisk business in personalized grooming supplies.
I can't remember what my brother was selling that year—it was
either his "Teach Yourself Magic" booklet or "Professor
Houdini's Ten Steps to Perfect Health."

When
all the novelties were bought, Albert herded the audience toward the
last act—Harry Houdini of Apple-ton, Wisconsin, performing as
"The King of Kards and Konjuring." My brother never got a
lot of credit for it, but he was a pretty fair card mechanic in his
day. While he waited for the crowd to shift down to his end of the
room,
he stood at the front edge of the platform plucking card fans from
thin air. He was dressed in a black suit with a string tie and a
straw boater hat, and had his sleeves pushed back to show off his
muscular forearms. As the crowd circled, Harry went into some flashy
hand-to-hand cascades while Albert introduced him.

"Kidnapped
by gypsies at the tender age of six months, the infant Harry was soon
earning his keep by plucking coins and wallets from the pockets of
unwary passers-by. By the age of five, the pint-sized prodigy was
apprenticed to Signor Blitz, the greatest of all the magicians in the
world, and by his twelfth year, the precocious prestidigitator was
the favorite of the sultans and sheiks of far-away lands. He appears
today by kind permission of the czar of Russia, to whom he serves as
court conjurer. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the one, the
only—Harry Houdini!"

It
was a stirring intro, and I could feel a building sense of
anticipation from the small crowd as they awaited this extraordinary
young man's first miracle. Then Harry spoiled it. He talked.

I
was reading my brother's biography the other day. It had many kind
things to say about Harry's "mesmerizing stage presence"
and "compelling natural charisma." Clearly the author had
never been to Huber's Museum. The truth is, Harry didn't have a lot
of natural charisma at that time. He was only beginning to learn to
relax onstage. In a few years' time he became a lot breezier, and
learned to treat the audience as if they were all in on a big secret.
In those early days, he came across like some sort of German physics
professor. He lectured the audience, and directed them on the proper
manner in which to appreciate the genius of Houdini. It might have
played well in Europe, where they still
dressed
up their magic acts as "philosophical experiments," but in
New York, they just wanted entertainment.

"Ladies
and gentlemen," my brother said from the platform, "I am
the Great Houdini, the justly celebrated self-liberator and eclipsing
sensation of Europe. I will now entertain you."

My
sister-in-law Bess stepped from behind a makeshift curtain, carrying
a velvet-trimmed prop table. She was wearing what I always thought of
as her "sugarplum fairy" costume. It was all gauze and
puffs that made her look like a Christmas ornament with legs. Her
legs were her best feature, and even though she wore tights, I never
understood how she got away with that outfit in those days.

"And
now," said Harry, "if it will please the ladies and the
gentlemen, I urge you to direct your attention toward the glass bowl
that I am holding. It is enormous, as you see, and very heavy,
because to the brim it is filled with water."

He
stepped forward, holding the bowl stiffly at arm's length. "Observe
closely, and you will see the little fishes swimming merrily in the
water. Do you see them? They are very jolly little fellows, swimming
back and forth."

Albert
caught my gaze and rolled his eyes.
Faster,
Harry,
I
said under my breath.
There's
a guy in the back who's still awake.

"I
command your attention as I place the bowl onto this lacquered tray
that my lovely wife Bess is holding. Now I display for you a large
black foulard. You see it? There is nothing unusual about this cloth.
Here is one side—here is the other. Now I cover the bowl and
lift it high in the air. At this point, you must prepare yourselves
for a miracle. It is really quite an astonishing shock, so I would
ask that you steel your nerves for the amazement which I now
present."

Just
do the trick, Harry,
I
muttered.
And
for God's sake, don't mention the travelling circus.

"Long
ago, when I was a boy in Appleton, in the fine state of Wisconsin,
the travelling circus came to town. It was a wondrous sight for a
small American boy like myself. Jugglers they had, and clowns, and an
elephant, and many tigers. But of all the wonders I saw that day,
none amazed me so much as the magician who caused a bowl of
goldfish—a bowl much like the very one I hold here—to
vanish as if into thin air."

From
the platform, Bess caught my eye and flinched slightly. She still
held the black lacquered tray, waiting for her cue to leave the
stage. She never lost her frozen smile, but her eyes were haunted.

"On
that day," Harry continued, "I promised myself that I would
grow up to perform that trick just as well as that man in the circus.
And because this is America, I knew that a boy with a dream in his
heart could grow up to become whatever he wished. A doctor, a lawyer,
a politician ... even a magician! And so, ladies and gentlemen,
behold the miracle of the vanishing goldfish! I throw the foulard
heavenward—and voila!—the enormous bowl has vanished!"

Let
me tell you three things about the goldfish trick. One, it's the best
stand-alone vanish in the history of magic. Two, it needs to be done
fast, without a lot of anecdotes about the circus. Three, my
sister-in-law Bess is quite a bit stronger than she looks.

It's
a brilliant trick when it's done right, but you wouldn't have known
it by the six-thirty crowd at Huber's Museum. Their reaction, as
Harry flicked the
cloth
heavenward, left much to be desired. One might have called it a
respectful silence. I suppose there must have been some scattered
applause, and perhaps a bit of it was done by someone other than
myself. Most of the others simply shuffled their feet and coughed
politely.

When
I think back on it, I remember something that Will Rogers once said
about my brother. This was years later, of course. Rogers was
watching from backstage while Harry worked on a particularly
difficult handcuff challenge. The thing about it was that Harry had
gone into a little curtained cabinet while he worked on the
handcuffs, so the crowd couldn't actually see him. There wasn't a
thing going on, but the whole audience was happy just to sit there
and wait for my brother to finish. It took him an hour and a half,
and the crowd never took its eyes off the cabinet. When Harry finally
emerged, holding the handcuffs high over his head, they jumped to
their feet. Will Rogers said he couldn't possibly follow an act like
that. He said, "I might just as well have gotten on my little
pony and ridden back to the livery stable as to have ridden out on
that stage." It was a fine compliment, but I can't help thinking
what Rogers might have thought if he'd ever seen Harry at the dime
museum. In those days, Harry couldn't hold the audience even when he
was standing right in front of them. It was so quiet you could
actually hear the floorboards creak.

Albert
was just about to move the crowd off when I caught him by the elbow.
"Let him do the new bit," I said. "The trunk trick."

"Aw,
knock it off, Dash," he said. "We've been over this again
and again."

I
pulled out my most prized possession, a gold Elgin pocket watch. "Let
him try it," I said. "I promise you, each one of these
people will be cheering at the end. If
the
crowd doesn't go wild, I'll give you the watch."

Albert
looked at my face and saw that I was serious. He glanced at his own
watch, a tin conductor's chrono, and looked back at me again. "Sorry,
Dash," he said, not without regret. "You know the rules.
He's already had his three minutes. If I let Harry pad his slot, then
Harmi's going to be after me to make time for that ridiculous 'Dance
of the Seven Sabers.' Everything'll get longer and before you know it
we'll be down to five shows a day."

"Come
on, Albert. Just this—" He held up his hand. "Sorry.
I'm going to the blow-off."

I
turned away and shoved my watch back into my vest pocket. Albert
stepped forward and asked the crowd to gather round for a "very
special added amusement." Every sideshow worth its salt had a
blow-off—an extra act tacked on at the end to lure an extra
nickel from the marks. This was always staged in a special annex—a
small extra tent or a back room of some kind—or, in this case,
an abandoned meat locker. Most of the time the blow-off would be a
creepy, scary sort of illusion, like the old Headless Lady effect. In
that one, you walked into the room and saw the body of a young woman
sitting in a chair. She appeared normal in every respect, but for the
fact that she had no head. There would be a bunch of wires and tubes
filled with gurgling liquid sprouting out of her neck. The talker
would explain her predicament in a low, quavery voice. "Decapitated
in a tragic railway accident, this brave young lady is kept alive by
a miraculous combination of modern medicine and American know-how
..."

The
blow-off was always especially good at Huber's, but Albert had an
uphill climb trying to work up any
enthusiasm
from the crowd. My brother Harry had left them in an unhappy stupor,
and no one seemed terribly eager to cough up an extra nickel for
whatever awaited them in the so-called "Chamber of Chills."

"This
attraction is not for the faint of heart," Albert warned. "This
hideous freak of nature is the only one of its kind in the entire
world, an unholy coupling of man and insect, a poignant hybrid of
beauty and terror. I must caution you, ladies and gentlemen, the mere
sight of what lies just beyond this room has made women faint and
strong men buckle at the knees. Who among you has the courage,
indeed, the fortitude to venture past this fateful portal?"

By
the time Albert finished, nearly all of them had summoned the
necessary fortitude. Albert collected a handful of nickels and
shepherded the crowd through the door into a small, candle-lit room.
There, sitting on a small wooden pedestal, was the most beautiful
Spider-girl I ever saw. She had a furry, dark thorax with a bright
yellow hour-glass shape on the back, meant to suggest the markings of
a black widow. There were eight hairy, segmented legs—two of
which were moving slowly up and down—and it had the head of my
sister-in-law, Bess Houdini, with a bright ribbon in her hair and red
polish on her lips. "Howdy, folks!" she called, waving one
of the furry legs.

"Be
careful, ladies and gentlemen," Albert warned. "Whatever
you do, don't make any loud noises! I know she looks calm and
friendly, but we had a fellow in here last week who—well, let's
just say it wasn't a pretty sight."

Bess
cocked her head and wiggled her thorax as Albert continued. "Folks,
I'm sure you're all wondering how this hideous conjoining came to be.
How did such
an
angelic face come to be transplanted onto that eight-legged horror?
Only seven years ago, Alice Anders was the daughter of a
world-renowned explorer, joining her father on a dangerous journey
along the Amazon River. One night, while the explorers lay asleep in
their tents, a sinister creature stole into the camp, lured by the
sweet smell of young Alice's perfume. When the party awoke in the
morning, they found a spectacle so ghastly that they were driven mad
by the mere sight of it. There before them lay—"

We
never discovered what the explorers saw, because at that moment
Albert was interrupted by a loud crashing noise which, if you really
stopped to think about it, sounded an awful lot like a pair of
cymbals.

"Heaven
help us!" Albert shouted. "The Spider-girl is attacking!
Run for your lives!" At this, Bess pulled her lips back in a
snarl, revealing a pair of gleaming fangs. As she edged forward just
slightly, a thin stream of red liquid dribbled from her bottom lip.
Not a lot of people were there to see that. Most of them had already
run screaming for the exit door, which Albert held open in an
obliging manner.