Doyle frowned. Bess thought she understood why the man clung to his beliefs with such tenacity, why no one could contradict him, and why he was so eager to convince Harry of his side of things. If he let go of his certainties about life after death, what then? What became of his soul? He was like a buoy tethered in a storm, dancing in black seas; if he were unmoored from his convictions and his beliefs, he would be lost. It was the same way she had felt when she first married Harry, when making her vows meant giving up the life, home, and family she had always thought she could go back to if she wanted. It had left her unmoored as well.
“If you’d only let yourself recognize the powers you possess,” Doyle said, “you could be the most powerful man in the world.” He turned to Bess. “Mrs. Houdini, you must convince him to open himself to the remarkable forces he is keeping at bay.”
Bess smiled but said nothing. George knocked on the door to inform them that dinner was ready.
Harry held up his hand. “Before we go.” He opened his briefcase and removed a small slate, four small cork balls, white ink, and a tablespoon.
Sir Arthur frowned. “What are you up to, Houdini?” Bess looked at Harry as well. She knew he had been preparing something, but he hadn’t told her he was going to bring it out that evening.
Lady Jean leaned forward eagerly. “Yes, Mr. Houdini, what are you playing at? Are we to be the unwitting audience for one of your new tricks?”
Harry handed Doyle the cork balls with a small smile. “You are welcome to cut through one of these to see that they are solid cork.” Sir Arthur, still frowning, took his pocketknife and sliced one of the balls in half. He nodded. “Yes, yes, I see. What of it?”
Harry took the second ball and, using the spoon, dropped it into the inkwell to soak up the ink. He explained what he was doing out loud, for Gladys’s sake. “While I am doing this,” he told Sir Arthur, “I would like you to leave the room and write a question or a sentence on a piece of paper. And don’t show it to me.”
Doyle complied. When he came back in the room, the paper was securely in his pocket. He sat and watched as Harry placed the ink-covered ball on the slate, and Bess, along with the Doyles, watched as the ball began to roll around the surface, on its own, the white ink spelling out a phrase on the black surface. Lady Doyle let out a small cry.
Gradually the words became clear: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, the slate read, in white letters. “Why, that’s what I wrote down,” Sir Arthur murmured, aghast. He was visibly shaken. Bess recognized the quotation from the Old Testament. They were the words written on Belshazzar’s palace wall by a mysterious hand, which predicted imminent doom for his reign.
Doyle grasped Harry’s hands. “Houdini, what powers are you working with?”
Harry shook his head. “I have devoted a lot of time and thought to this illusion. I have been working on it, on and off, for the course of a year. I won’t tell you how it was done, but I can assure you it was pure trickery.”
Doyle’s face was white. “I don’t believe you.”
“I devised it to show you that such things are possible. I beg of you, Sir Arthur, do not jump to the conclusion that certain things you see are necessarily supernatural, or the work of spirits, just because you cannot explain them. You must be careful in the future of endorsing phenomena just because you cannot explain them.”
Doyle smiled. Bess could tell he still did not believe Harry. He thought Harry was obscuring his powers by trying to play them off as tricks. But Bess knew better. She had seen Harry levitate a table, and knew how he did it.
“Come,” Bess said, standing up and smoothing out her dress. “Enough of these games. Let’s go in to dinner.” She did not want to see Doyle’s beliefs shattered in front of her; older than Harry by fifteen years, he seemed very fragile under his flinty exterior. As it was, the American press was lambasting him. During an interview he had said he thought men were given whiskey and cigars when they got to heaven, and the papers were already mocking him. And back in England, he had endorsed a young girl’s photograph of a fairy as authentic, only to learn that the picture had been doctored, and he had been the object of great ridicule as a result of his na?veté.
As they walked into the dining room, Bess grabbed Harry’s arm discreetly. Using the system they had devised during their early stage years, she cautioned him that Lady Doyle had been asking about his mother. She warned him in whispered code—each word, or pairs of words, indicating a different letter—spelling out the word DECEIVE: “Now-tell-pray, answer-tell-look-answer-answer-tell.” Harry looked alarmed, and disturbed.
They dined on chicken and asparagus and kept up polite conversation about Doyle’s lectures. As they finished their dessert of cream cake, Doyle cleared his throat. “Houdini, I must say I was somewhat angered by that article you wrote for The New York Sun. You said that after the hundreds of séances you attended, you have never seen anything that could convince you there is a possibility of communication with the beyond.”