The Secret Life of Houdini (11 page)

“My wife!” Schiller stammered, “My darling, you’re here!” He rushed over to her, sobbing, grabbed her, and began kissing her. Slater and an assistant had to pull him away, and he watched in pain as his wife’s form slowly dematerialized, and the room was pitch black again.

The next day Schiller called Slater, wondering if a conjugal visit could be arranged, for the appropriate fee, of course. Slater seemed reluctant, afraid to violate the sanctity of the separation between the spheres, but when the already generous offer was doubled, he agreed. So now Schiller had returned to spend one more hour of bliss with his dead wife.

Of course, the tryst would not be with his wife. Waiting for him in a large room that had been decorated like a bridal chamber was a local prostitute who had been expertly made up to look like Schiller’s wife, a photograph of whom had been obtained by one of the detectives that Slater had hired to dig up information about his clients. Another woman, with a bit more virtue, had been similarly made up to impersonate his wife on that second visit and “materialized” in the velvet room through the manipulations of two black-clad assistants who were invisible in the dark. And that miracle cauldron full of the spirit-infused preparation that had cured his sight? That was common gutter mud. In fact, Professor Slater wasn’t even Professor Slater. He was Zanzic, an itinerant magician.

Who Zanzic was is another question. His real name might have been Harry Robenstein, although some people knew him as Brenner, others as Henry Tourpie, and he also used the name Henry Andre. He was said to be from New Orleans, the product of a Jewish father and a Creole fortune-telling mother. Others swore that he was a French-Canadian. But everyone agreed that Zanzic enjoyed fine wine, beautiful women, and the green-felt gaming tables to excess. Drawn to Chicago by the lure of a fast buck, he devised an elaborate spiritual scam. But his greatest coup was in convincing his old pal Billy Robinson, one of the most brilliant magic mechanists, to design a Spiritualist parlor that would put the common garden-variety phony mediums to shame.

Bankrolled to the tune of $5,000 by Jack Curry, Zanzic’s New Orleans manager, Robinson began by installing a trapdoor under the table in the main séance room that opened to a state-of-the-art workshop below, where Robinson and Sam Bailey, a Boston-based magician, could open sealed letters, read their contents, and replace the seals without detection. In this way, Zanzic could satisfactorily reply to any secret message or question. The materialization room operated on the old black art principle. The double-lined black velvet curtains would allow the black-clad assistant to manipulate gauzy fabric coated with phosphorescent paint (which was obtainable in any magic supply store) and create ghosts.

Robinson also had the brilliant idea to use trained carrier pigeons that would be introduced into the darkened séance room with a specific message tied around their neck. When the lights came up, the pigeons were trained to circle the room and then land on the shoulder of the chosen sitter, conveying to him a message that nine out of ten times would answer the client’s question satisfactorily. And those chills that descended down the backs of the marks were often produced by solid rubber hands that were affixed to a fishing rod and placed on ice for six hours at a time. In the dark, it was the spirits doing the touching.

The scam had been wildly successful, but Zanzic and Robinson had taken it a little too far with Mr. Schiller. The old man had been told that he could spend only an hour with his wife, because after that time she would dematerialize and if he was near her when that happened, his health could be at risk. But Schiller hadn’t been in the “bridal chamber” for fifteen minutes when they heard a bloodcurdling scream.

“Mrs. Schiller” ran out, clutching a sheet over her nude body.

Zanzic, magician and fake Spiritualist.
Conjuring Arts Research Center

“He croaked,” the prostitute said. “He’s dead.”

And he was. Apparently Schiller had worse health problems than his eyes, and the excitement of consummating relations with his dead wife had taxed his heart. With the assistance of the prostitute, they dressed poor Schiller, and then Zanzic and Robinson carried him outside and leaned the body against the building, hoping that it would be discovered the next morning and chalked up as a passer-by who had had a heart attack. What they didn’t reckon on was Schiller’s driver, who was sitting outside in the car. He notified the police, and Chicago’s finest came right over and interrogated Zanzic and Robinson. It’s not known how much of that exorbitant fee changed hands, but the two magicians were told to get out of town promptly, which is what they did.

Zanzic would return to the stage, where he would shoot his finger off, gouge his eye out, and then trail off into obscurity. Robinson returned to New York and gained the respect of the magic world as assistant to Alexander Herrmann and then Harry Kellar, two of the greatest magicians of all time. Then, virtually overnight, he changed his name and his appearance, left the country, and broke many of his connections. Years later, his only brother wouldn’t even be able to find him.

Billy Robinson, brilliant magic mechanist.
From the collection of Todd Karr

Harry may have been dubious, but he certainly could admire the wonderful theatrical performances that were being created in the name of Spiritualism. After Harry married Bess and gained a new partner, there was no reason why the young couple couldn’t add a mind reading routine to their repertoire—except for the fact that Bess came from a highly superstitious family that believed in ghosts and the supernatural. When her sister Stella’s fiancé died right before their wedding, both sisters were convinced that a witch had cast an evil eye upon him.

Harry realized that he had to disabuse Bess of these notions. One night early in their marriage, the solution came to him. They were home and Harry innocuously remarked that Bess had never told him her late father’s first name. He then asked her to write the name on a piece of paper, crumple it in her hand, and burn it over the stove without showing it to him. Bess complied.

“Now give me the ashes,” Houdini requested.

He pulled his sleeve up and rubbed the ashes on his bare forearm, and, as if by magic, her father’s name, Gebhardt, mysteriously was emblazoned on his skin in bloodred letters. What Houdini didn’t tell her was that he had learned that effect within the pages of
The Revelations of a Spirit Medium
.

“I was paralyzed with fear,” Bess remembered. “Then, slowly, a full realization of the significance of this diabolical thing dawned on me. In my early folklore, the devil, disguised as a handsome young man, lured girls to destruction. It was clear to me that I had married the devil. Stealthily, my eyes on Houdini, I backed toward the door, and then turned suddenly and ran, screaming frantically, from…the house.”

Houdini caught up to her and pulled her into his arms.

“Silly kid, it was only a trick,” he said, laughing.

Bess kept screaming and started biting and kicking Houdini. She finally calmed down, they returned to their room, and he showed her how the simple effect was done.

“By such demonstrations he gradually drove away my superstitions,” Bess wrote. “Among other things he taught me the secret of mind-reading and all the arts of legerdemain, including how to go into trances and tell fortunes. My inside view of the mechanism of such phenomena did more than anything else to exorcise the ghosts and hobgoblins that had peopled my world.”

Before six months had elapsed, Houdini was integrating these new skills into the act. On January 1, 1895, they were touring the Wonderland circuit as “Professor and
Mlle.
Houdini, the Occult Expositors,” and critics were raving that their act “borders on the supernatural.” By June of 1896, Houdini had even incorporated Bess’s mind reading effects into his jailhouse publicity stunts. While at the station, he would have the police chief think of a card. A messenger was then sent back to the hotel where “Mme. Marco” waited with the question “What card was thought of?” Bess would send back the answer, which invariably was the correct card.

Despite Bess’s swoon to avoid naming the murderer that November night in Garnett, Kansas, Harry and Bess were such a hit that their Spiritualist séances became a regular part of Dr. Hill’s show, usually performed on Sunday nights. Some nights Bess played the medium, others Harry enacted the communication with the spirits. The spirits were conveniently obliging, telling them the most intimate details of the personal lives of the astonished audience members who jammed the hall. When the spirits failed them, there was always the visit to the local cemetery with the sexton and old Uncle Rufus, the town gossip. Houdini would carry a notebook, and they’d go from grave to grave talking family history and family scandal. At the end of the day, the two locals would be tipped properly for their cooperation. What gossip Houdini didn’t get at the graveyard, he could usually pick up around the boardinghouse dining table.

Houdini instinctively realized the power that was generated by these small, intimate biographical details. Audiences tolerated the song-and-dance numbers and the other routines, but they were starved to hear what Houdini and his spirits had to say about their lives. The reason that the séance act resonated so well was because it was presented as if it was real, down to Bess’s swooning. Although he would later remove the Spiritualist context, Houdini would take this energy that was generated by the audience implicitly believing in the reality of what they were experiencing and skillfully use it for the rest of his career.

Sometimes the information that Professor Harry Houdini imparted was too much for the audience to bear. During the first week with Dr. Hill, on a cemetery reconnaissance mission, Houdini had found the fresh grave of six-year-old Joe Osbourne. At the next séance in Garnett, which broke the record for admissions at the opera house, Bess was in a trance when she suddenly said she had a message from “little Joe” for his parents. Someone rushed out and brought back a white-faced Mr. and Mrs. Harry Osbourne.

“Joe says he’s in a happy place. And he says, ‘Don’t cry, Momma. There’ll be another one soon to take my place,’” Bess relayed.

The fact was Mrs. Osbourne
was
pregnant, a shrewd guess by Houdini since they were a young, grief-stricken couple. After the séance, an irate Harry Osbourne came backstage to give Houdini a thrashing.

“How could we know of your family circumstances if the medium was not clairvoyant?” Houdini asked him. Then he had Bess rattle off a number of other family secrets that had Osbourne mystified as he left the opera house. This incident made an indelible mark on Houdini. Twenty-six years later, Hallie Nichols, who had been in the opera house that night, went to see Houdini give a lecture on Spiritualism in Kansas City. Receiving a note that she had been in his audience in Garnett years earlier, Houdini asked her to come backstage after the show. She dined with Bess and Harry, and Houdini asked her if she was still in contact with the Osbournes. She said she was and gave Houdini their new California address. He eventually sent the Osbournes a long letter of abject apology for trifling with their emotions.

By the end of Dr. Hill’s engagement in Garnett, two local businessmen actually came to Houdini’s dressing room and offered him $25 if he would promise not to give any more séances in town. Perhaps they feared the skeletons in their closets might be rattled next.

It was the same at every stop for the rest of the tour. In Galena, before another packed audience at the local opera hall on January 9, 1898, Harry played the role of the medium. Prior to the show, a local tipster had told Houdini that a black man named Benny Carter had been murdered recently, and two of his associates, who were suspects in the killing, were actually in attendance. Later, during the séance, Houdini seized on the information.

“I’m getting a message now. I see coming before me, uh, it’s a man. A black man,” Houdini said, then paused dramatically, pawing at the air in front of him.