THE SPIRIT FAKERS OF HERMANNSTADT
(Continued from page 6)
He raised his voice to a shrill, terrified scream, and his confederates rushed into the room and were upon me. There were four men instead of the two that were expected. I was quickly trussed and thrown to one corner of the room, where one of the-men sat guard over me with a drawn revolver, to prevent me from undoing my bonds and escaping.
The two servants of the castle had come in alarm at hearing the noise of the combat. They were quickly overcome, and tied into chairs. Then the accomplices, under the direction of Popkens, from whose face the grin had faded, calmly proceeded to tie the hands of the Countess and Rosicka who had shrunk, terrified, to the corner of the room.
I was as much suprised as anyone at the sudden turn events had taken, When I had acceded to the request of the Countess I had expected merely a stormy scene when I denounced the medium from Hermannstadt to prevent him from wresting the secret that would enable him to blackmail the family out of all its possessions. But now I found myself the prisoner of five desperate men, in a. Hungarian castle, and these men bore me a deep and serious grudge for spoiling their game. If they killed me, my friends would never know what had happened tome. Certainly Popkens had reason to hate me.
The two witnesses who had come from Hermannstadt to witness Rosicka's document had, of course, been summoned by Popkens, and not by spirits. He had arranged with them before he left Hermannstadt, and knew the very hour they were expected at Castle D—. His object in perpetrating this hoax on Rosicka was obvious: he wanted her to believe that the spirit message from her mother was authentic, and how better could he accomplish this than by having the spirit of the dead woman announce that the witnesses were coming, and then having their arrival prove the truth of the message? So Popkens cleverly had the apparition say that the witnesses were actually on their way.
The two men had brought with them two others in the guise of servants, in case of emergency. As there was no longer any reason for them to retain this assumed position, they now appeared in their true light as accomplices of Popkens. This I gathered from the conversation, although my knowledge of the Magyar tongue was not sufficient. to enable me to understand all that was said. It became quickly evident that they were intent upon forcing Rosicka to write the blackmailing document at once, by any means within their power.
To my intense indignation, Popkens stepped toward the girl and slapped her face. This was a bad blunder, for it set the stubborn spirit of the girl against any compromise with this gang of blackmailing desperadoes: who had made her the dupe of their pretended mediumistic powers. The woman servant screamed loudly, and one of the men gagged her with the scarf from the back of the chair in which she was bound, although her screams would prove unavailing in any case, since the aged caretaker of the castle grounds was the only person within the range of her voice, and he was deaf.
I relieved my feelings by a stream of rather vigorous English, telling Popkens what I thought of a man who would strike a bound and defenseless woman. He grinned maliciously, and, coming over to the corner where I lay, he deliberately kicked me in the pit of the stomach.
By this time I had freed myself from my bonds, and sprang upon Popkens. The man with the revolver did not dare to fire, for fear of hitting Popkens, but he managed to bring down the butt of his revolver with crushing force upon my head. I was dazed for a minute, and crumpled to the floor. The mem tightly bound me again, and Popkens produced from a black handbag a pair of strong handcuffs, which he locked around my wrists so tightly that they cut into the flesh.
"Mr. Handcuff King," he said to me in English, "we will see what you can do with these pretty bracelets on your wrists. You have publicly challenged anyone in Hungary to shackle you with handcuffs that you cannot pick. These, my dear sir, are not a special make, but I fear you will not get out of them as easily as you slipped out of the German police handcuffs in the jury room at Cologne, Oh yes, I know all about that. Your reputation has preceded you into Hungary."
Then, in Magyar, he ordered one of his accomplices to bring a hammer and a nail, While these were being looked for, the two servants were removed and carried to another room. Popkens, meantime, was carving a lead pencil into long strips. When the hammer was brought, he smashed the locks of the handcuffs by driving the iron nail into them, and then, withdrawing the nail, he drove the pieces of the lead pencil into the lock, plugging it tightly.
Leaving the Countess and her sister tied to the table, the five men dragged me out into the hallway, where Popkens proceeded to rip off my clothes with a sharp knife, until I was stark naked. He then searched my hair for concealed keys and lock-picks.
"I am merely playing fair with myself, Mr. Houdini," said Popkens, with the most malignant grin I have ever beheld. "I am not giving you a chance to open locks with any files or saws or picks that you may have concealed in your clothes. So you will have to excuse me if I remove your garments. I am going to introduce you to the inside of a dungeon, of which even the Countess does not know the existence. I have gone too far now to stick at putting you out of the way. But I am not going to murder you, Mr. Houdini. You will simply die of starvation, and if ever you are found, it will be years after we are gone from here, and only your bones will remain to tell the world that this was Houdini."
I struggled until I was exhausted, but my captors tied my ankles together with coarse wire, blindfolded me, and then carried me through seemingly endless passages, down a winding and damp stairway, to a musty recess at the bottom of a dungeon. Here I was dropped through a hole in the dungeon floor into a muddy cavern, and Popkens jumped down after me. Around my arms, which were already tightly handcuffed behind me, he passed a double pair of fetters that were riveted to the castle wall behind me. Then the bandage was removed from my eyes.
I lay naked on the muddy floor of the blackest, most evil-smelling cavern that it has ever been my lot to see in. years of traveling in foreign countries. It was what is called an "oubliette"—a dark hole where prisoners are thrown and forgotten by the world until their skeletons are found years' later.
I was not the first occupant of that dismal cavern, for Popkens had removed from the fetters a partially clothed skeleton before he clasped the gyves upon my own arms. I looked at this grisly object, lying-in the mud beside me, as Popkens' lantern threw its weak rays around that terrible place, and I shuddered. Bits of mouldy clothing still clung to the bones, and the skull, which
