Mrs. Houdini (19 page)

“Here's how we fasten the Yankee criminals who come over here and get into trouble,” Superintendent William Melville told Harry at the police headquarters. He wrapped Harry's arms around a pillar in the middle of the station and handcuffed him. “Stage handcuffs, they're one thing, but these are real.” Melville smiled. “Beck said you'd give me a real laugh. I might just leave you here to teach you a lesson.”

Harry smiled back at him, and Melville checked his watch and turned to the door. It was lunchtime.

“Wait,” Harry said. “I'll go with you.”

When Melville turned around, he saw that Harry had freed himself and was leaning against the pillar, the cuffs dangling from his pinkie finger.

“Here's the way Yankees open handcuffs,” he said. Melville looked at him in astonishment, then burst into laughter.

Harry recounted the story to Bess afterward, pacing the room with excitement. “And I convinced him,” he went on, “that I'm the real thing, and he put me in touch with an agent here, who booked me for two weeks at fifty dollars a week. He wants me to do the handcuff trick and the Metamorphosis trick.”

“Us,” Bess corrected. “He wants us to do the tricks.”

Harry nodded. “That's what I meant.” He took her elbows in his hands. “You and me.”

“I think you did it, Harry,” she said. “I think we're gonna be something.”

“This act isn't going to separate us,” Harry said. “It's going to bring us together.”

Bess grinned. “Let's go have some tea. Isn't that what people do when they're in London?”

Harry's two-week engagement at the Hippodrome turned into two months. He had thoroughly entertained Superintendent Melville with both his brazenness and his skill, and even though he would not reveal how his tricks were done, Melville had done him a favor and brought in the papers. A London
Times
reporter was present when Harry broke out of a concrete cell in Scotland Yard in under fifteen minutes, and the paper published the story as an advertisement for his nightly acts. People flooded the theater, bringing with them a dozen handcuffs and restraints, all of which Harry was able to extract himself from. Bess wore her usual white dress and black tights and retrieved the cuffs from the audience members, then brought them to Harry onstage. In the afternoons, while Harry was readying his new tricks to show her, she walked through the London streets, looking in shop windows. She purchased a fancy crimson-covered sketchbook in a department store, and then spent the hours on park benches, drawing. She wanted to remember these days, the small moments you see only when sitting still for a long time—the women in gossamer dresses floating like spirits over the grass, and the lonely carriage drivers who brushed their horses' manes with the tenderness of parents. When she came home, Harry would be fast asleep on the bed. Only half awakening at the sound of the door opening, he would reach out his arms and pull her down with him, and they would nap together until it was time to get up and dress.

A week before they were scheduled to perform in Budapest, Bess convinced Harry to walk with her after lunch. He was too pale, she said. It wasn't healthy. It was cool out, and the sky was glass blue, and she simply had to leave the dark little room in the actors' boardinghouse they had been sharing for weeks. They walked across the park and onto Regent Street, which had some of the most fashionable shopping. The windows were dressed with rope portieres and displayed everything from silver hatpins and porcelain jars of cold cream to glass table lamps.

“The buildings are all so much older than in New York,” Bess said. But Harry didn't answer. He was looking up at them with a furrowed brow, and she knew he was thinking of some kind of new trick. “Harry, no—”

“What about bridge jumping?” he mused. “Do you think I could escape the cuffs underwater?”

Bess looked at him, aghast. “Don't you dare.”

He shrugged. “I'll think it over.”

“Harry, don't. I'm serious.” She tried to change the subject. “Look at that.” She pointed to a beaded black ball gown with an enormously ballooned bottom, dressing a mannequin in a store window. It was lined with white lace at the cuffs, and exposed the shoulders. “It's exquisite.”

Harry looked at her with a twinkle in his eye. “You should try it on.”

“That's ridiculous. We can't afford to buy something like that. It wouldn't be decent to go in there and pretend we can afford it.”

But Harry was already striding ahead of her, into the shop. “We're Americans,” he was saying. “I heard there are so many American heiresses here, looking to marry into titles, that everyone assumes all Americans are rich.”

Inside, they learned that the dress was not available for sale. It had been designed for Queen Victoria, the shop owner explained, but her son had recently become ill, and she had cancelled the purchase.

“I'd like to buy it, then,” Harry said.

The shop owner raised his eyebrows. “One does not sell Her Majesty's relics, sir.”

“How much would it cost if it did not belong to the Queen?”

He thought about it. “Probably fifty pounds. But it's not for sale.”

Bess pulled Harry aside. “You most certainly cannot buy me that dress,” she whispered. “You're getting carried away. We're not royalty, and we don't have the money.”

Harry pressed his hands into hers. “Bess, look at it. It's just my mother's size, don't you think? I'm going to buy it for her.”

Bess stepped backward. “Oh,” she stammered.

“It's too large for you,” he said. “You're such a tiny thing.”

She nodded mutely. Harry pulled away and turned to the shopkeeper.

“I'd like to purchase this for my mother,” he explained. “She grew up very poor, and I'd like her to have a dress made for a queen. I'll pay you fifty pounds for it.”

The shopkeeper shook his head. “I told you, the dress is not for sale.”

Harry pulled a bill out of his wallet and waved it at the man. “You're telling me I am standing here as a paying customer and you are refusing to take my money?”

“I am sorry, sir.”

Bess put her hand on Harry's arm. “Darling—”

Harry began to shout. “Well why the hell did you put it in your window then?”

The man remained calm. “You Americans are all the same. You come here and think you deserve the world because you have money. But we Britons have something better than money. We have tradition.”

“You're a damn fool.”

Bess stepped in front of Harry. “Excuse me,” she said, assuming as gentle and feminine an air as she could muster, “but I have a proposal for you. What if we promise that this dress will never be worn in Great Britain? We're only passing through. And this would mean the world to my mother-in-law. This way you can earn money on this dress, and you don't have to feel you are betraying your queen.”

The shopkeeper's face softened. “It's a matter of respect, you see,” he grumbled.

“Of course it is,” Bess said. “I would do the same in your shoes.”

He considered it. “All right,” he agreed. “Provided the dress is never worn here.”

They left the store with the dress packaged in pink tissue and tied inside an enormous white box. Harry was pleased but still fuming.

“You'll catch more flies with honey,” Bess told him. “You need to work on your temper. You're going to be a public figure.”

This brightened his mood. “I am, aren't I?” He smiled. “But that's what I have you for. To be nice for me.”

When they got back to the boardinghouse she closed her eyes on the bed to rest and, when she woke, realized it was already the middle of the night. Harry was asleep beside her. He looked so vulnerable in his sleep. She got out of bed for a drink of water, and on the table next to the bed she noticed a box sticking out from underneath the clothes Harry had piled on the surface. Inside was a tiny gold ladybug charm, nestled in velvet.

“Harry.” She nudged him awake. “Where did you get this?”

Harry smiled sleepily. “It's for you,” he said and closed his eyes again. “He said it's a symbol of love.”

“Who said?”

“The jeweler.”

She examined the charm. It was intricately made. “When did you do this? I've been with you all day!”

“After my first performance,” he murmured. “I wanted the first paycheck to go to you.”

Harry wrote to Mrs. Weiss immediately, urging her to meet them in Budapest, where her old home was, and where many of her family members still lived. He had a surprise, he told her, although he would not tell her anything more than that.

Arriving in Budapest was not without its difficulties. As had happened passing through Germany, the police trailed Bess and Harry at all hours of the day and night; they had heard about his feats in Scotland Yard and were convinced he was some kind of undercover agent, spying for Britain. He spent much of the day walking about the cities, thinking about his magic, leaving her to do her stitching, or sketching, or small errands. She knew his work thrived on loneliness. But when he was required to attend any kind of dinner or formal function, he clung to Bess. She pinned up her hair and sat by his side the entire evening, prodding him to speak when she thought he might need to impress someone.

His performance in Hamburg had been a smashing hit, and thirty marks had been charged for admission. This was more than Harry had ever commanded for his act. In America only the poor and the middle class had come to see him perform, but in Hamburg, for the first time, wealthy patrons filled the seats. Men and women wearing furs and polished shoes and carrying crystal spectacles filed into the theater, the room buzzing with anticipation. Martin Beck had been right—the doors were opening for him after all. Bess, concerned that her stage attire was too tawdry for their new audiences, purchased a long dress made of purple taffeta, as they had ceased doing many of the tricks that involved her being bent and locked away, and Harry had taken on the active physical work instead. Her position now was mainly to add an air of femininity to the stage. Harry explained to her that Europeans were much less accepting of women onstage, but Bess understood he was being kind. The audiences responded to him, not to her, and both of them knew it.

Mrs. Weiss traveled across the Atlantic alone, leaving Gladys with Dash, who was selling insurance in Harrison, New Jersey, now and performing small acts of magic at parties on the weekends. She met them at the port in Hamburg, fragile and feverish from the long ocean journey, and they traveled together by train to Budapest, in a second-class coach. Harry had spent most of their savings on the dress, and he was disappointed, Bess knew, to have to take his mother across Europe in such deplorable conditions. He did not tell her what he had in store for her, only kept repeating, to Mrs. Weiss's dismay, that her trip would be unlike anything she had ever experienced. Bess spent much of the train ride with her embroidery on her lap, trying not to interrupt the conversation that flowed back and forth in German between mother and son.

Mrs. Weiss occupied a position in Harry's heart that no one, not even she as his wife, could supplant. She could not help but think of her own mother, and the lack of tenderness they had shared, and how Mrs. Rahner had kept her word and refused to speak to her since her marriage to Harry. The fact was that Harry had both her and Mrs. Weiss, but she had only Harry, and unless she found herself with child soon, this would likely always be so.