Houdini was invited to examine the cell arrangement and was shown first to Murderers' Row, which is in the south wing and comprises seventeen cells, containing Walter H. Hamilton, sentenced to be hanged last November, but now living through stayed proceedings; Richard Chase, sentenced to twelve years for manslaughter; Thomas S. Whitney, John Mercer, Edward Ferguson, Jeremiah Donovan, and Henry Gaskins--these having been indicted for murder, their alleged crimes being still fresh in the public mind; also James A. Backus, the alleged money-order raiser, and Clarence Howlett, sentenced for housebreaking. [Illustration: Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1881, by C. M. BELL in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. GUITEAU, the assassin of President Garfield. Houdini escaped from the murderer's cell in which this assassin was secured.] Houdini was chiefly interested in cell No. 2, the one occupied by Guiteau, and presumably the safest of the lot, although it was from the outside of this cell that "Avenger" Jones shot into it in his effort to kill the assassin. It now holds Hamilton, who is alleged to have smothered his wife to death and then sat all night beside the body of his victim, indulging in a drunken orgy. The officials say that he is one of the most orderly prisoners ever out there. Howard Schneider, who murdered his wife and her brother, and Shæfer, the murderer hanged a short time ago, also occupied this cell. PONDEROUS BARRED DOORS. All these cells are brick structures with their doors sunk into the walls fully three feet from the face of the outer corridor wall. When the heavily barred door is closed, an armlike bar runs out to the corridor wall and then angles to the right and slips over a steel catch which sets a spring that fastens the lock. The latter is only opened by a key, and there are no less than five tumblers in the lock. One key opens all the doors in the corridor. With Houdini there, it was very natural that everybody should express the ardent desire to have him then and there go into a cell and see if he could release himself, and Houdini, with his accustomed courtesy, yielded a ready acquiescence. He insisted, however, that he preferred to try cell No. 2, for the reason that it is the hardest one there to get out of alive, as he expressed it, and because of the notorious murderers who have spent their last moments on earth within its whitewashed walls.