A huge crowd was gathered at the corner of Queen & Bay, thousands of people braving the autumn chill on an October night in 1918. Their attention was trained on a slender figure standing on the steps of Old City Hall. He was lit up by three spotlights, a small man in a white undershirt, his hair slicked back, his body wrapped in leather restraints. He was an escape artist known as the Mysterious Mr. Raffles — and he was about to be hoisted two hundred feet into the air above downtown Toronto, dangling from the clock tower as he struggled to free himself from his bonds. And he was doing it all in the name of winning the First World War.