Houdini's Niece by Wayne Dobson and Alan Wong

"Houdini, perhaps the most famous magic name in history.Houdini and his wife Bess did not have children of their own. However, Houdini was close to his niece; for some reason she never had her birth name registered as a baby, so Houdini later named her in this rather strange way.Amongst Houdini's many interests was Numerology, so he called upon that to determine her name. He had a book of 100 popular girls' names of that time. He took his grandmothers birth year - added together the two digits - then simply subtracted the total from his original number. The number he was left with, he looked on that page in the book of names and took that name for his niece."The audience is asked to guess his grandmother's birth year and do the same numerology ritual to get to a random number. The book of names is given to the spectator to look up the name on that page of the chosen number."Houdini gave this pendant to his niece as a gift: does the name MARIE mean anything to you? It must have meant a