HOUDINI ON TRIAL

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We recently had the good fortune to see an original of this famous poster, depicting Houdini's fraud trial before the German high court in February 1902. It reminded us of a scene we had to cut from HOUDINI UNBOUND, our novel - which is now in the top ten on one of Amazon's "Hot New Releases" lists! We think Houdiniphiles will enjoy it, especially when they inspect the mustaches in the picture and compare them to the mustache of Kaiser Wilhelm!

Just as he was finishing his practice routine, Bess came out of the bedroom.

"Good morning, my champion jailbreaker," she said.  "Take a look at this."

        Harry reached out and touched Bess's delicate hand, stroking her fingers lightly as she passed him a guidebook.

       Bess had her hair in braids, German style, the same way she had nine years earlier, when she and Harry first met on the boardwalk at Coney Island.  Married three weeks later, the Houdinis had starved together happily as carnival freaks, sharing freight cars with Laloo the Bird Girl and the trained seals of the Welsh Brothers Cavalcade.  Harry looked fondly at Bess’ large blue eyes, her thick, lustrous hair and lithe, slender form, which had gotten even more shapely from years of acrobatics.

        "Thank you, my large wife," he joked, in his favorite mix of sarcasm and tenderness.  His silver-blue eyes focused briefly on the opened page of the book Bess had passed him, a colorful account of the current Russian Belle Epoque:  "To the strains of Offenbach and Tchaikovsky, Grand Princes drink champagne out of the slippers of feather-bedecked cocottes.  The wealthy waltz from costume balls to receptions, from spas to chateaux, from yachts to gilded carriages, frequently stopping off at Paris or the Riviera on the way…." 

Harry impatiently snapped the book shut, reached into his soft leather shoulder bag and, with a spreading smile, carefully unrolled the parchment tied in red ribbon.

        "I wouldn't trade this scroll for all the gilded carriages on the Riviera," he declared proudly, in his slightly abrasive baritone.  At that moment, there was a knock on the door.  Harry opened it and Franz Kukol walked in. 

         "Ah, Kukol, good morning." They shook hands and Harry guided him to the writing desk.  "I was just showing this to Bess." 

          "Again," Kukol said, as he and Bess once more leaned over and reread the dagger-shaped script.  It proclaimed Harry Houdini had been "slanderously libeled" by the German Imperial Police, proffered a "public apology" and ordered the police to pay him a hefty fine, "in the name of the Kaiser." 

"Signed and sealed by Wee Willy Wilhelm himself," Harry crowed, pointing for the twentieth time to the golden signet-seal in the lower right corner with "Wilhelm II" written across it in flowing black ink.  

          "I love all the great publicity you've been getting from this," Bess said.  "Just before we left Berlin I heard some Germans speaking, and instead of saying, 'Ach, so!' one of them said, 'Ha – Houdini!'  Your name has passed into the language!" 

           "I thank the Kaiser!  His people need me because in their country everything is forbidden."

           "And now every policeman in Europe wants you dead," Kukol observed drily, fingering his brushy brown moustache. 

          Harry laughed.  "Everyone wants me dead, Franz.  That's why they love the escapes.  They come to see me die." 

          "I'm going to put that phrase into your publicity," Kukol said.

         A look of alarm darkened Bess's eyes.  "You still haven't told us how you opened that horrible safe," she said.

        "The safe?”  He had taken pleasure in drawing out this inevitable denouement.  “If I told you, you wouldn't believe me."   

        "Harry, that safe was unquestionably the toughest you have ever encountered," Kukol drawled.  "Precision-machined steel.  The finest German construction -- impregnable.  And you went in there completely impromptu.  You didn't even have a lock pick.  I know because I had the whole set myself."

      Harry looked with affection at the only man on earth he literally trusted with his life.  The multi-talented, well-educated Kukol had become his vital behind-the-scenes operative since the beginning of this sensational European tour.  Kukol had brilliantly stage-managed the innovation that was making Harry such a wild success:  chained with hundreds of pounds of steel, he hurled himself into raging rivers – and survived.

        "Yes, Franz, you're right.  When I first saw that huge iron chest – I admit it, I was afraid.  How could I possibly open a strongbox I had never tested?  I had never tackled any kind of German safe at all."

        "So why did you accept the challenge?"  Bess asked anxiously.  Her heart had sunk the moment he had done so, before eight judges of the German Supreme Court, each sporting an exact copy of the Kaiser's moustache.

"I had to accept the challenge, darling.  I had no choice; the Chief Justice was exasperated.  He said, 'If Houdini fails to open the safe in my office, the prosecution has a case for fraud.'  The prosecutor had tried to discredit me by saying I couldn't open safes.  He put me in a very bad light.  He called me a charlatan.  That is a crime in Germany.  As a man of honor, it was also an insult I could not overlook.”  

He felt once again his anger at being maligned just because he had successfully baffled so many high government officials, with all their degrees and doctorates and fancy titles.  

“So … the Chief Justice led me into his office.  Against the wall stood that huge strongbox.  He ordered:  'You will summon the court as soon as you are ready,' and walked out.

"At first, I just stared at that big steel monster and sighed.  I seriously considered giving up then and there.  But finally, I crossed the room. Feeling vicious, I gave the safe’s door handle a yank. And silently … it swung open!"

-->      Bess and Kukol both gasped, then laughed in disbelief.  A wide smile broke out on Harry's face. "That's why this parchment is so satisfying," he said, chuckling. He took one last look, then carefully re-rolled the Kaiser's apology and put it away.