“I begged Monseigneur Affre’s permission to keep the autograph in question, which he very graciously gave me.”
Poor Archbishop Affre; he was killed at the barricades in the Revolution of 1848. Though he confessed that he was no prophet, yet his prediction was fulfilled to the letter. Houdin became the foremost conjurer of his age, of any age in fact, and has left to posterity more than a name:—his fascinating memoirs, and several works in which the psychology of deception is treated in a masterly manner. The slip of paper given to him by the Archbishop he preserved as a religious relic. “I kept it,” he said, “in a secret corner of my pocket-book which I always carried about my person. During my travels in Algeria I had the misfortune to lose both this pocket-book and the precious object it contained.”
After the séance recorded above, the Count de l’Escalopier urged Houdin continually to abandon the watchmaking and mechanical-toy trade and go on the stage as a prestidigitateur. Finally Houdin confessed his inability to do so, owing to lack of means, whereupon the kind-hearted nobleman exclaimed: “Mon cher ami, I have at home, at this very moment, ten thousand francs or so, which I really don’t know what to do with. Do me the favor to borrow them for an indefinite period: you will be doing me an actual service.”
But Houdin would not accept the offer, for he was loth to risk a friend’s money in a theatrical speculation. The Count in a state of pique left the shop and did not return for many days. Then he rushed excitedly into the workroom, sank upon a chair, and exclaimed:
“My dear neighbor, since you are determined not to accept a favor from me, I have now come to beg one of you. This is the status of the case. For the last year my desk has been robbed from time to time of very considerable sums of money. In vain have I endeavored to ascertain the thief. I have sent away my servants, one after another. I have had the place watched, changed the locks, and placed secret fastenings on the doors, but none of these safeguards and precautions have foiled the cunning of the miscreant. This very morning a couple of thousand {129} franc-notes disappeared. Think of the frightful position the entire family is placed in. Can you not come to my assistance?”
“Count,” replied Houdin, “I fail to see how I can help you in the present instance. My magic power, unfortunately, extends only to my finger tips.”
“That is true,” said the Count, “but you have a mighty aid in mechanics.”
“Mechanics,” exclaimed the magician. “Stop a bit! I remember when I was a boy at school that I invented a primitive piece of apparatus to apprehend a rascal who was in the habit of stealing my boyish possessions. I will improve upon that idea. Come to see me in a few days.”
Houdin put on his thinking-cap and shut himself up in his workshop.
From his inner consciousness he evolved a singularly ingenious contrivance, designed not only to discover a thief, but to brand him indelibly for his crime. In brief let me describe it. It was an apparatus to be fastened to the inside of a desk. When the desk was unlocked, and the lid raised ever so little, a pistol was discharged; at the same time a claw-like arrangement, attached to a light rod and impelled by a spring, came sharply down on the back of the hand which held the key. This claw was a tatooing instrument. It consisted of “a number of very short but sharp points, so arranged as to form the word Robber. These points were brought through a pad impregnated with nitrate of silver, a portion of which was forced by the blow into the punctures, and made the scars indelible for life.”