The Secret Life of Houdini (21 page)

“Your honor, I have no objections to showing the commissioners how I work my trick. But would it be possible for us to do this in a corner of the room to preserve my secrets?”

Revealing his secrets was the last thing that Houdini wanted. Reluctantly, he stood up in the courtroom on February 21 and allowed Lott, a civilian police employee of the Cologne department, to truss his body with a long chain and then fasten it with a lock. Lott then stepped back, but Houdini just stood there motionless.

The judges thought that was a reasonable request, so they followed as Houdini slowly and stiffly made his way into the far corner of the courtroom. Then, surrounding Houdini, they watched as the magician went to work. A few minutes later, the lock was open, and the chain fell to the floor.

Although this reads like a ploy by Houdini to defend himself in a case brought against him by the German authorities, in fact Houdini was the plaintiff in this bizarre case. He was suing the German police and a Cologne newspaper for slander. Back on July 25, 1901 an article had appeared under the title of “The Exposure of Houdini” in the
Rheinische Zeitung
newspaper. According to Houdini’s later accounts, the article maintained that a Cologne patrolman (the lowest rank on the force) named Werner Graff was so upset at Houdini’s ability to escape from Graff ’s lock, which had been “deadened” so that it couldn’t open even with a key, that the policemen alleged that Houdini was a charlatan who misrepresented his talents and “swindled” the German public. In fact, the allegations were much more damaging than that.

According to Graff, Houdini, through another escape artist named Josephi, had heard that Graff had a handmade lock that was said to be impregnable. When Houdini got to Cologne, he wrote Graff and asked if Graff would agree to let him test it. Then Houdini visited the police department and pulled Graff aside for a private conversation. He told Graff that he intended to give a demonstration at the police department, and he wanted Graff to lock him up. Houdini would perform this test nude, and after being bound by his hands and feet, he would be carried into an empty room, where he would affect his escape. What he needed from Graff was a duplicate key, which he would hide in his anus. As a gesture of goodwill, Houdini, according to Graff, offered him twenty marks at first, but claimed that if this stunt was pulled off successfully they “both could make a lot of money.”

Graff maintained that he turned Houdini down. Then, on the last night of Houdini’s engagement in Cologne, he challenged Houdini onstage to escape from his lock and chain. Graff claimed Houdini told him that if he locked him so that he couldn’t escape, his reputation would be ruined, since a circus clown at the Circus Sidoli had already exposed the way his Metamorphosis trunk worked. Graff insisted on the lock test, so Houdini then “fell on his knees and begged” the civilian employee Lott to give him a duplicate chain. Lott furnished a duplicate chain for twenty marks, and Houdini retired to his cabinet where he filed through the chain and removed Graff ’s lock. Then, leaving the sheared original chain in his cabinet, he triumphantly emerged, holding the duplicate chain and original lock. The “innocent public cried ‘Bravo!’” not knowing that they were duped.

Houdini’s story was different. He claimed that he had been turned down by the Cologne Police Department when he wanted to give a performance there and that the conversation with Graff never took place. In fact, it was Graff who challenged Houdini to escape from his lock, but Lott had warned him not to accept the challenge since Graff planned to switch locks and fetter him with a dead lock. The night of the performance, Bess tipped Houdini that Graff had switched the lock. Thinking quickly onstage, Houdini asked Graff to reopen the lock and make the chains a little less tight, but Graff protested that he couldn’t since he had misplaced the key.

“I think I have the right to get free however I can,” Houdini then proclaimed to the audience and withdrew into his cabinet, where he broke the lock. After the show, he sought out Lott and, appreciative for the tip about Graff, told him, “You’re a good guy. May I give you a little something?” Then he tipped him twenty marks.

Graff ’s account raises two interesting questions. Would Houdini be so bold as to offer a bribe to a police official in exchange for confederacy in an escape attempt? According to Tommy Downs, the great coin manipulator whose amazing sleight of hand made it seem like he snatched gold coins out of thin air, Houdini once told him, “You don’t realize how easy you get your salary. You almost catch it out of the air…I have to work early and late, day and night…If I find a lock or a jail I can’t spiritualize, I must fix or arrange a way out.” Downs added, “He had to fight every inch of his way.”

A depiction of Houdini’s trial in Germany.
Nielson Magic Poster Gallery

Houdini had even told friends that since “our Police are not in the best of repute in Europe, especially with our American methods of Graft,” his endorsements from the American police forces never impressed the European police, and eventually he “cut them out.”

Granted Houdini might give a cooperative cop “a little something,” the important question that emerges from this account is why didn’t the German authorities press charges against Houdini in July of 1901 after a German officer went public with a bribe attempt? This is the same government that jailed Mrs. Rothe, the flower medium, for two years for misrepresenting her ability to contact the dead, and prosecuted Dr. Slade, another medium, and a woman who claimed magnetic powers. Certainly attempting to bribe a public official would generate even harsher reprisals.

The idea that Houdini was in some way being looked out for by a sympathetic official in the German government gains credence when we look at the testimony at the slander trial. In a lot of respects, the charges and counter-charges boil down to one word against the other, but part of the case revolved around the attempts of Josephi, the other escape artist, to negotiate a larger bribe for Graff to remain silent after the show concluded. According to sworn testimony by both Graff and Lott, Josephi floated the idea that if Houdini would have offered three hundred or four hundred marks, the whole matter might take a different course. At that point, they claim that Josephi stated that it had cost Houdini at least one thousand marks to bribe the officers of the Berlin police to issue his certificate.

This revelation caused a sensation in the courtroom. Graff went on to disclose that after the newspaper article had appeared, Cologne Police Commissioner Riefer had interrogated Graff, Lott, and Josephi. The transcripts of this investigation had been sent to Berlin, because “in these statements the bribery of Berlin officers had been mentioned.” Graff ’s lawyer then asked that the files be retrieved from Berlin and that the police commissioner testify. The next day Commissioner Riefer merely testified that he “had the impression that Josephi wanted to say that such certifications in general can be obtained in fraudulent ways.”

There was no further mention of the bribing of Berlin police officials and no attempt at all to raise the issue of Houdini’s commission of a crime. In fact, the trial devolved into another venue for Houdini to exhibit his skills. And he had certainly prepared for this all-important stage. “I knew in order to win my lawsuit I would have to open any lock that was placed before me,” Houdini wrote in his own
Conjurer’s Monthly
magazine. “The best practice I could obtain was to procure a position as a repair locksmith in some small shop.” Houdini then apprenticed at the shop of his friend Mueller, a Berlin locksmith. “I would pass 6 to 10 hours daily, picking locks, and soon with the assistance of the four marked picks, I could open any lock.” He came to court prepared too. One of the Cologne papers covering this sensational trial indicated that Houdini “had brought an entire suitcase filled with cuffs and locks and made all sorts of experiments to prove his skill.”

During the proceedings, Houdini seemed to have a lot more latitude than he would have in an American court. “I…proved that I was a regular lawyer,” he boasted in a letter to his friend Jim Bard. “I mixed the witness all up, and made them admit that they were told to lie…Should I win, it will be the greatest advertising that I have ever had.” He also admitted that Bess wasn’t holding up too well, “this worry has helped to give her a nervous spell.”

On March 1, 1902 Houdini wrote Bard again to crow about the verdict. “I win my case hands down…[Graff] swore to a whole pack of lies, and when the other witness [Lott] came in, why I made him look like a dummy, and he gave the whole plot away.” After some self-righteous indignation over his honor, Houdini admitted how he came out on top. “What really saved my cas[e], was that I showed the judge how I opened my cuffs, and that was really the best thing that I could have done.”

The court found Graff guilty of slandering Houdini and ordered him to pay two hundred marks (about $40 at that time). The newspaper was fined fifty marks. Houdini himself was fined three marks for publicly insulting the officer when he cried, “This officer is a common liar” from the stage, when Graff denied he was testing Houdini with a dead lock. Graff persisted in appealing the verdict and after another drawn-out trial with twenty-five Cologne police officials testifying and Houdini bringing in witnesses from London and Vilna, Houdini once again demonstrated his ability to defeat a lock that Graff provided. This time Graff ’s burden increased considerably—he was forced to pay all court costs, including travel expenses and reimbursing Houdini for missed dates. Houdini’s sweetest revenge came when the court ordered a public apology from the kaiser be issued to Houdini and printed in all the leading Cologne newspapers, the costs of which were borne by the patrolman. The apology would become a centerpiece in Houdini’s pitch book in the years to come.

Secret Service agents Griffin and Ahearn had been on the case for weeks now, but finally they were about to hit the jackpot. Their surveillance of a Philadelphia anarchist ring had been ongoing, as per Chief Wilkie’s orders, and had led them to their present location—at the bottom of a coal chute, eavesdropping on the revolutionaries, who, much to the agents’ dismay, were just now talking about assassinating President McKinley. They strained to hear the details of the conversation through the bin, but just as the plotters were about to announce who had been chosen to do the actual killing, a massive load of coal was dumped on them from above, and the assassin’s name was drowned out in the rumble.

During the summer of 1901, Secret Service Chief John Wilkie intensified his agency’s surveillance of anarchists in the United States, after receiving disturbing reports of the growing presence of anarchist propagandists in major cities. His funds were limited and his staff was small, but after hearing his Philadelphia agents’ chilling report, he immediately doubled the unofficial detail that was protecting the president, illegally diverting the money from his counterfeiting budget.

Wilkie was devastated when, after issuing warnings to President McKinley’s personal secretary, the president was shot and killed by an anarchist on September 6. The new president, Theodore Roosevelt, railed: “Anarchy is a crime against the whole human race; and all mankind should band against the anarchists.” Chief Wilkie had a new mandate.

On April 3, 1902, Houdini, drained from his grueling court case and almost two years of constant touring, boarded the
Deutschland
steamer on his way home for a visit. There would be no rest for the weary, however. Once in New York, Houdini began a ten-day whirlwind visit that could only be described as manic. “I was so busy that I really did not have time to sleep,” Houdini wrote his friend W. D. LeRoy. “I was home 10 days and slept one night, the rest of the time I was out, and slept in my motor car, while my brothers drove me about.”

Houdini told LeRoy that he attended to a lot of business out of town too. According to his letter, he took a train to Washington, D.C., where he claimed to meet his manager, Martin Beck. The two then rode for thirty hours in a Pullman, going to Pittsburgh and back to Washington, “never sleeping except when nature called a halt. I tell you I lived 4 months in those 10 days.” There’s no reason to doubt Houdini’s indefatigable energy in this period but there is some reason to question whether he was being candid with LeRoy. Houdini had terminated Beck as his manager in July of 1901. While they remained friendly and Houdini would seek out Beck’s advice, it’s odd to think that they had enough important things to discuss to warrant a thirty-hour sleepless marathon session on a private Pullman car, only to have Beck repeat the same career advice—stay in Europe until they get tired of him—that Beck had previously counseled in their correspondence.

A long-suppressed manuscript by Walter Bowen, a former private secretary to a chief of the Secret Service and its official historian, sheds light on an alternative scenario. Originally titled
The U.S. Secret Service: A Chronicle
, Bowen’s book was substantially reworked by Harry Neal, a former assistant chief, and eventually published in a drastically edited form in 1960 as
The U.S. Secret Service.