I, Houdini. Lynne Banks Reid

housewrecker (he meant me!) is to be found, caught and put in the bin. Furthermore it is to stay there until a cage can be bought for it.”

      “Fanny’s giving us a proper hamster cage for Christmas,” said Guy. Fanny, I was to learn, was their grandmother.

      I’d been trying to ignore the whole row and get to sleep till that point, but now I pricked up my ears. I didn’t like the word ‘cage’ one bit. Still…It had to be better than that vile bin.

      “CHRISTMAS!” yelled the Father. “That’s three weeks away! The little beast (me again!) will bring the whole house down around our ears if we don’t do something about it before then!”

      “Maybe we could ask Fanny to give it to us now.”

      “Good. Do that. Buy it today. But meanwhile nothing – no playing, no television, no food – until that thing’s been caught and incarcerated in the bin where I can keep an eye on it!”

      Well!

      There wasn’t much option for me after that but to scuttle across the floor and let them catch me. Very self-sacrificing of me, wasn’t it? Still, knowing that a proper home was in the offing, and that in all probability my stay in the bin that day would be my last, I decided to be decent and spare the poor kids the useless agony of hunting for me.

      I was rewarded for my noble action with the most ear-splitting shouts the moment they saw me. If only hamsters could cover their ears!

      “Holy Mackerel! Look at him!”

      “He’s not golden any more – he’s black!”

      I hadn’t stopped to think what I must look like. All my fur was stained with soot and thick with ashes. The water had just made me look more filthy and bedraggled. Of course I should have taken time to clean myself before settling down to sleep. It was another useful lesson for me, and never since have I let a day pass without giving myself a thorough licking and grooming.

      Mark was holding me in his hands and scolding me.

      “You bad, bad hamster!”

      I stared at him defiantly.

      “We can’t call you Goldy any more. You’re not worthy of such a nice name.”

      “I know what we ought to call it,” said the Father grumpily as he went out. “Housebreaker.”

      “No,” said the Mother. “I know! Let’s call him after the great American escapologist – Houdini.”

      And that’s how I got my true name. And when I found out about my namesake, believe me I was proud of it.

       Chapter Four

      Of course the children wanted to know all about Houdini, and so did I, as you may imagine. The Mother put them off for the moment, but that night, when they were ready for bed, she told them about him like a story. Fortunately I had given them the slip again by then and was under Guy’s bed (a nice low one, with a frill-thing right to the floor which he hates but I love) and heard all about my namesake.

      Houdini, in case you don’t know, was an American of Italian parentage who began by doing conjuring tricks and ended up as the most famous escapologist of all time. An escapologist, of course, is someone whose profession is escaping. It’s an act, like an act in a circus or on the stage. His helpers would tie him up tight with ropes, chains and handcuffs, and so on, then they’d put him in a thick sack which they’d fasten at the neck; after that they’d wrap more chains round the sack, padlock them, and then – if you can believe it – they’d often hang him up by the feet a couple of yards off the ground. Then they’d give him the old ‘ready, steady, go’, the drums would roll, and in a matter of a few minutes somehow or other he’d have wriggled free. Don’t ask me how. Nobody ever really knew his secret. Of course he must have had flexible bones, and joints that would bend backwards, and he had a few obvious tricks like swelling himself up while they were tying him so the knots wouldn’t be so tight. Still, there was more to it than that – more than anyone ever found out.

      One of the most extraordinary things he ever did was to go over a waterfall, tied up in a barrel. He even survived that, though he was bruised.

      Naturally it was hard for me to understand all this at the time. I hadn’t then watched all the television, and seen all the pictures that I have now, which meant I really didn’t have a clue about handcuffs, chains, waterfalls, etc. But I realised that this human had been world-famous for the very thing I had already decided to dedicate my life to. I shuddered at the idea of being tied up or dangled in mid-air, and hoped nothing so terrible would ever happen to me; but I determined then and there that no matter what challenges faced me in the future, even those, I would try to overcome them. After all, I had one priceless advantage over the human Houdini. I had rodent teeth. Ropes would be nothing to me. And when it came to flexible bones, and being able to make oneself look bigger and then squirm through places you’d think a snake couldn’t get through…I betted I could hold my own in that respect with the greatest escapologist ever.

      I was able to prove this, and a great deal more, very soon.

      My new home arrived the following day. The boys came charging into the house with cries of “Where’s Houdini? We’ve got his cage.” But I was nowhere to be found, having, as I mentioned, got away the previous evening. I was, in point of fact, exploring a new room – Mark’s – and when I heard them tramping about looking for me I dived into a very small hole I’d noticed earlier, in the floor by the fireplace. I swear a fair-sized mouse might have got stuck in it, but I made myself into the merest thread of my former self and in a moment I found myself huddled in the deep dust between the joists.

      These are long planks standing on edge which you’ll find between the floor of an upstairs room and the ceiling of a downstairs room. Between them are long spaces, roadways to someone my size, and as there were plenty of places where I could climb over the tops of the joists I had what then seemed like a huge playground.

      For a while I rejoiced. They would never catch me now! How could they? There was only the one way in, and not even a child could get his hand through that! Happily and, I fear, smugly, I made a nest in a very warm corner near where I had come in (I like a bit of light). I did wonder at the time just why it was so warm; I didn’t have the experience to realise that that thick, long, hot thing nearby was a hot-water pipe. It was much too hot to touch, but it gave off enough warmth to make me comfortable and sleepy. I curled up and dropped off, not feeling the least bit guilty about the row that was going on about me overhead.

      I woke up feeling distinctly uncomfortable. To begin with the heat had increased to a point where I had dreamt I was being roasted alive. I jumped up hastily and moved to a cooler spot. There was no light coming through the hole now, I noticed, so I decided that it would be perfectly safe to pop up and attend to my other discomfort – hunger.

      I hadn’t managed to eat much the day before, what with one thing and another; that’s the trouble with escaping upstairs, there’s very little food lying about, and I hadn’t yet thought of leaving stores hidden in various strategic places all over the house. I realised I’d probably have to go downstairs to forage. I’d already seen the stairs, while being carried up and down them; they were thickly carpeted and I felt sure I could manage them all right, though getting back up might be a bit of an effort.

      I returned to the spot, below the hole, where I had been sleeping. It was awful just standing there, right next to that pipe – if hamsters could sweat, I’d have been wringing wet. I looked upwards. I could just about see the hole. I stood up on my back legs idiotically convinced that if I stretched to my fullest height I would somehow miraculously find myself climbing out. But alas! The hole was a good twice or three times my height above me.

      When I realised this I didn’t lose my head, at least, not until I had explored every possibility. I climbed on to the top edge of the nearest joist and ran to and fro, but it didn’t pass near enough to