Message #12884

[Bianca]

THE RIDDLE OF HOUDINI                                                                       continued



I suppose that at the time Houdini was, from an insurance point of view,
so far as bodily health goes, the best life of his age in America.  He was in
constant training, and he used neither alcohol nor tobacco.

Yet, all over the land, warnings of danger arose.  He alluded in public to the
matter again and again.  In my own home circle I had the message some
months before his death, "Houdini is doomed, doomed, doomed!"

So seriously I took this warning, that I would have written to him, had I the
least hope that my words could have any effect.  I knew, however, by pre-
vious experience, that he always published my letters, even the most priva-
te of them, and that it would only give him a fresh pretext for ridiculing that
which I regard as a sacred cause.

But, as the months passed and fresh warnings came from independent sources,
both I and, as I believe, the Crandons, became seriously alarmed for his safety.

He was, on one side of his character, so fine a fellow, that even those who were
attacked by him in this monstrous way, were unwilling that real harm should be-
fall him.

But he continued to rave, and the shadow continued to thicken.  I have an Ame-
rican friend who writes in the press under the name of Samri Frikell.  He is really
Fulton Oursler, the distinguished novelist, whose STEPCHILD OF THE MOON is, in
my judgement, one of the best of recent romances.