What Houdini did not escape from

Houdini. His daring always kept his audience on a knife-edge of sadistic relish: ‘Maybe this time he won’t escape.’ Until the day he let one of his admirers punch him in the stomach to test his muscle control. Just over a week later he was dead of acute appendicitis: it had been too late to operate after the show which, despite the diagnosis, he had insisted had to go on.