Harry Houdini Mysteries Read Online Free PDF

him.
    “I was too effective,” said Harry. “Too brilliant. It is a familiar problem.”
    “It wasn’t so much brilliance as careful planning,” I said. “Harry and I knew all along that we’d need to soak up some of the local color if we were going to pull this thing off. We spent a couple of afternoons mooching about in the town, listening in on gossip, reading old newspapers at the library. As it happened, there had been a rather gruesome killing some months earlier—a bar fight gone bad—and the locals were eager to talk about it.”
    “Don’t forget the cemetery,” said Harry. “That was my idea.”
    “Yes, we went to the cemetery and copied down the names from the tombstones that appeared to be the most recent.”
    “What’d you need those for?” Biggs asked.
    “I’m surprised that a brass-plated bloodhound such as yourself has to ask,” I said. “We were priming the pump. We had prepared a few props and gimmicks, but we wanted to becertain that our patter was up to scratch.”
    “We needn’t have worried,” said Harry. “My startling natural charisma carried the day.”
    “Even so, I was eager to make sure we were properly prepared. We knew the house would be full that night. Our Celebrated Psycrometic Clairvoyant handbills had been posted far and wide. It was a big theater—quite possibly the largest crowd we’ve ever played.”
    “Surely not!” cried Harry. “Have you forgotten our appearance at the Belasco?”
    “No, Harry, I haven’t forgotten the Belasco. However, since we were serving as assistants to Harry Kellar at the time, I’m not sure we can claim credit for filling the seats—although you were wonderfully engaging as Brakko the Strongman.” I turned back to Biggs. “As I was saying, it was probably the largest crowd who had ever assembled for the specific purpose of seeing the Houdinis. We started the demonstration with a rough approximation of the Davenport act. We invited a committee of audience members to come up and tie Harry to a chair. They made a good job of it, with his hands double-knotted at the back. Then we brought in a cabinet of cloth screens—the same one we used in the Trunk Substitution Mystery—and drew the curtains in front of Harry’s chair. I stepped away from the curtain and asked the members of the committee if they were certain that they had tied him securely. The words were barely out of my mouth when the weird happenings commenced.”
    “They were rather good,” Harry recalled, smiling.
    “Weird happenings?” Biggs asked.
    “First the audience heard a loud klaxon horn from within Harry’s cabinet. Then the horn itself was flung into the air. Next there was the strumming of a mandolin. After a moment, we could see the mandolin itself hovering above the enclosure.”
    “Harry had escaped,” Biggs said matter-of-factly. “Quite simple.”
    “It might have seemed so at first,” I allowed. “But each time there was a strange manifestation, I would fling open the curtains to show Harry still securely tied to the chair, his head lolling on his chest, as though in the thrall of unseen forces. But as soon as I drew the curtain again, we would hear another sound or see another strange apparition. After a time, the whole cabinet started to shake and pitch as though possessed by a restless spirit. Finally the screen fell forward in a heap, and there was Harry, free of the ropes, taking his bows.”
    “I couldn’t resist,” Harry admitted. “I couldn’t allow them to think that those feeble sailor-hitch knots could hold me. I told the audience that I had been untied by spirit hands.”
    “I admit it sounds like a very clever act,” Biggs said, “but I don’t see much of a difference from the Davenport act.”
    “Ah!” Harry cried. “That would have been true if we had let it rest there, but I was not content to be a mere imitator!”
    “That’s where things got a bit out of hand,” I said. “We decided to give them a spirit