50. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE CHRISTENS HOUDINI “BATMAN”

MISSION NIGHTINGALE

Harry Houdini Report On Mission Nightingale

I take great pleasure in introducing my new invention: The Time Torture Cell. I’ve been confined to a time 32 years before my birth. Herein, chiefly, lies the imposition. My reputation is at stake. My standing as the most famous self-liberator and debunker of the supernatural depends upon my ability to free myself from this cauldron of peril.

I am ready to forfeit the sum of one thousand dollars to anyone who can prove with any certainty that it is possible to be confined more than three decades before one is even conceived and then escape from it. I will achieve this trick and it will rightly go down in the annals of history as the greatest ever performed.

I’ve been set the task of persuading Miss Nightingale to abandon the idea of clamping vehicles by displaying my talent for freeing myself from any fetters. But, I shall refrain from so doing. For to comply with such a request will be akin to falling into an inescapable trap. A trap that would ruin my reputation and render me contemptible.

For, should I, Houdini, The Great Man of Fetters, successfully persuade Florence Nightingale to quit any ideas of ensnaring vehicles in her traps, then I run the risk, as our great lives overlap, that she will belittle me as I become famous at the turn of the new century.

I won her over by appearing upside down in her room. I have frequently adopted this position for my daring escapes so felt comfortable in this greatest of all challenges to assume this pose.

I have never before encountered a woman of such noble class and breeding. Admittedly, being confined to padlocked trunks and water filled tanks somewhat inhibits this possibility. She communicated with a voice so much posher than any royal I had ever entertained. I refused, when politely requested, to provide her with my name but she swiftly, while sporting a mischievous grin, christened me ‘Batman’ due to my hanging upside down.

Batman furnished Florence Nightingale with a lengthy sermon on crime. Her candle was a quarter further pilfered when I concluded.

I wish to put the public on its guard and safeguard them against the practices of the criminal classes by exposing their various tricks and explaining the adroit methods by which they seek to defraud. She was impressed by my determination to do right for the masses and my experience having conversed with the chiefs of police and most famous detectives in all the great cities of the world.

Florence Nightingale was so impressed by my candor and enthusiasm to improve the prospects of everyone in society that she then proposed we form a crime and psychic fighting partnership.

ALL CONNECTION WITH THE HOUDINI HOLOGRAM WAS TERMINATED AT THIS POINT

It becoming apparent that Houdini had succeeded in his aim to escape from ruining his reputation 32 years before he was born. For he knew there was a strong possibility that a new crime busting duo would be unleashed upon the world known as Batman and Nightingale a full 96 years ahead of Batman and Robin’s debut in DC Comics.

We couldn’t allow this to happen, not just because of the risk it posed to the yet to be born Harry Houdini’s career and reputation, but because it would also prove the death knell for Batman and Robin’s which would then be considered unoriginal. Upon us tethering links Houdini abandoned all contact with Florence Nightingale. His escape having been achieved.