Harry Houdini, the world's most famous escape artist, often boasted that he could take any punch to the stomach. Lying on a couch reading his mail before a show, nursing a broken ankle, he welcomed some McGill University students. One of them, J. Gordon Whitehead, asked whether it was true, and before Houdini could brace himself, struck him several times. Houdini went on performing for days in great pain; he died on 31 October, Halloween, of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. Whether the blows caused it is still debated. We stay with the visit before it happens. The words are imagined.