Harry Houdini Mysteries Read Online Free PDF Page B

message service.”
    “Pardon?” asked Biggs.
    “It’s what they call it when the medium brings forth messages from the other side—for specific individuals in the audience.”
    “Messages?” asked Biggs. “From the dead, you mean?”
    “Or so they claimed,” said Bess, taking up the thread. “On the face of it, the entire thing seemed outrageous. If I had not seen it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed how effective such a display could be. Imagine if you went along to the theater one night, and the gentleman on stage called out your name across the footlights and delivered a few words that he claimed to be a private message from a dead relative of yours. Your grandfather, for example.”
    “I would say that he was a charlatan,” Biggs declared. “Such things are not possible.”
    “So you might think,” Bess continued, “but what if the message contained some private, deeply personal piece of intelligence—something that no stranger could possibly haveknown? A pet name, for instance, or a memory of some birthday or anniversary?”
    Biggs hesitated, stirring the crumbs of his bundt cake with his fork. “I still wouldn’t believe it,” he said.
    “Nor would I,” said Bess, “but a fair number of people in Topeka were persuaded otherwise.”
    Biggs set down the fork. “You told them that you were communicating with their families?”
    “Not in so many words,” I said. “We brought the lights low, and Harry walked forward and stood alone at the edge of the stage. He looked out over the audience and told them that he could see spirit forms hovering in their midst. His voice quavered as he said this, and his hands were seen to tremble.”
    “I was mesmerizing,” said Harry.
    “It was one of his more remarkable displays,” I agreed. “He spoke in a quiet, reverent voice and kept his eyes closed and his body rigid, as though the exertion of this contact with the other side was threatening to overwhelm him. Then he started to call out names. ‘Mr. Alexander Botham. I sense the presence of your wife. She is here with us tonight. She is happy on the other side. She wishes you well. Mrs. Mabel North, your daughter Helen is being well looked after by her spirit family. Your mother is with her, and your Aunt Catherine.’”
    An expression of distaste passed over Biggs’s face. “That’s cruel, Houdini. Giving people false hope that way. You got those names off tombstones.”
    Harry nodded and his eyes grew unfocused. “It was unforgivable,” he said quietly.
    “Believe me, Biggs,” I said, “we’ve both had occasion to think better of what we did that night. At the same time there was something quite moving about it. I found I couldn’t take my eyes off the faces in the crowd. There was something extraordinary in the way they kept glancing at one another, half afraid, yet half hoping that Harry might call upon them. If we had stopped it there, I might actually have persuaded myself that we had giventhem a strange form of consolation. But we took it too far.”
    “How do you mean?” Biggs asked.
    I glanced at Harry. He looked away. “After half an hour or so, Harry suddenly drew back, and his eyes went wide with alarm, as though he had sensed a new and dangerous presence in the theater. He walked to the lights and peered out over the heads of the crowd, focusing on something that only he could see. ‘Who is this?’ he said. ‘It is a man, but who is he? He is badly injured, I can see. He walks in a halting manner. He does not speak, yet I can sense that his soul is restless and troubled. He draws closer. What do I see? Why—why—it is horrible! His throat is cut! The blood flows freely from the wound, and he—’ “
    “The dead man,” said Biggs. “The one who’d been killed in the bar fight.”
    “Exactly,” I said. “And it caused an uproar. By the time Harry called out the man’s name, women were screaming from the balcony. Men were on their feet with their fists raised,