Escaping Dreamland

by Charlie Lovett

  “Can I ask you something impolite?” she said quietly.

  “Certainly,” said Gene.

  “How can you afford this? You’re unemployed and living in rented rooms in Greenwich Village. How can you afford to take a girl, even if she’s a boy, to the theater and Delmonico’s and for a ride in an electric taxicab?”

  “I’m frugal most of the time,” said Gene. “Mr. Tesla paid me well and I had other sources of income before that. I’ve saved my money, and for the last several years anytime I came someplace like this, Mr. White footed the bill. Besides, it’s not like we’re going to do this every night. I just wanted to be sure you could be a man.”

  Magda’s heart sank at the nonchalance of this last remark. She could tell from his tone that there would be no goodnight kiss. And there wasn’t. But, as Magda lay in bed in the early hours of the next morning, unable to sleep, her heart paid no attention to her head. She had gone to the theatre and dined at Delmonico’s with Eugene Pinkney. Never had a girl been so swept off her feet. Forget the gentleman’s suit hanging in her wardrobe. Forget the bottle of Macassar oil and the artificial facial hair on the table by her bed. Forget the fact that she hadn’t been able to breathe properly all night. Gene had taken her out for a night on the town. True, she had been Mr. Marcus Stone of Philadelphia, but maybe the next time Gene went to the theater, he would have Magdalena Hertzenberger on his arm.

  XIX

  New York City, Chelsea, 2010

  When he discovered that Angela Robbins, whose name was neither Susan nor Sarah but who did curate the collection that contained the Stratemeyer papers, was at a conference in Chicago and wouldn’t be back until Wednesday morning, Robert had returned home and started researching pulp magazines. He soon discovered that something called the Gotham Pulp Collectors Club met at the Muhlenberg branch of the New York Public Library on West Twenty-Third on the third Saturday of every month. A quick call to the Muhlenberg put him in touch with one of the members of the club, Tony Esposito, whom the librarian called “king of the pulps.”

  “He’s got a stupendous collection—something like ten thousand magazines. Plus, he’s a human database. He can tell you practically every story in every magazine.”

  Tony Esposito ran an IT business out of his apartment in a modern building overlooking the High Line, a section of disused elevated train track that had been converted into a linear park. He worked at home, and would be happy for Robert to stop in any time, he said. “I’m always ready to take a break from work to talk about pulps,” he said.

  Tony Esposito greeted Robert at the door wearing a Star Wars T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts. His dark hair was mussed, and Robert got the distinct impression he had been in bed as recently as five minutes earlier. In the living room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows on one side, stood a fifteen-foot-high wall of built-in sleek white bookcases with locking glass doors and a rolling ladder. The room was furnished with a desk, chairs, and a table of polished chrome and pale maple along with several leather armchairs. Rebecca would have loved it. Robert felt the pang of her absence as he stepped into a room she could have designed.

  Every shelf in the towering bookcases brimmed with pulp magazines in glassine bags. In the center of the wall stood a custom-built glass display case with its own lighting.

  “These are the real gems,” said Tony. “Amazing Stories number one, Weird Tales number one, The Shadow number one, and Astounding Science Fiction number one. Originally that was forty cents worth of stories; now they’re worth about twenty-five grand. Not exactly comic book prices, but still.”

  Robert stared at the cover of the first issue of Amazing Stories from April 1926. A Saturn-like planet hung in the background of an image of ice-skating men dressed in furs. Above them, atop mountains of snow and ice, perched two sailing ships, from which men were rappelling down. In bold orange type the cover advertised stories by H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe.

  “How many pulps do you have?” said Robert, stepping back to take in the expanse of the wall.

  “About twelve thousand. I’m getting new ones in all the time. I just keep the good stuff here at home—five thousand or so. The rest are in a storage unit.”

  “Rumor has it you know every story in every magazine.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Tony. “But I read as many as I have time for, and I have a pretty good memory.”

  “Have you ever heard of the Tremendous Trio?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “I’m trying to track down the pulp that this story came from,” said Robert, pulling out the pages of The Last Adventure of the Tremendous Trio. “I think it was published around 1911.”

  “Any idea of the publisher?”

  “Probably a company called Pickering Brothers.”

  “Pickering. That sounds familiar,” said Tony crossing to the desk on which stood a keyboard and computer screen. He tapped away for a minute.

  “I wonder if it could be this. Tales of Excitement for Boys and Girls, volume one, number one, published by Pickering Brothers, New York, April 1912. I’ve got a copy in my storage unit. I don’t have the contents listed in my database, but it’s the only thing I have by that publisher and the date seems to fit.”

  “That has to be it!” said Robert. At last he had found something useful. “What about volume one, number two or number three? Do you have those?” Could the remaining chapters of the Tremendous Trio’s last adventures be sitting in a storage unit right here in Manhattan?

  “Nope,” said Tony. “Looks like they only published one issue.”

  “Are you sure?” said Robert with a tinge of desperation in his voice. “Maybe you just don’t have it in your collection. You said you were getting new things in all the time.”

  “If there is a second issue, it’s not in any of the major collections, either private or public. I’ve got them all in my database.”

  Robert sighed with exasperation. It didn’t seem right that Dexter Cornwall and Buck Larson and Neptune B. Smythe could tease the world with those opening paragraphs and then never write the book.

  “If you give me your address, I’ll have my assistant dig that issue out of the storage unit and messenger it to you. Might not be able to get it until tomorrow morning, though.”

  “That would be great,” said Robert.

  “All I ask is that you handle it carefully. These pulps are pretty fragile.”

  “Of course,” said Robert.

  Outside, the day had grown warm and the sidewalks were nearly dry. On a whim, Robert decided to take the twenty-minute walk to Washington Square Park. He entered the square from the north, passing under the triumphal arch erected there in 1892. He walked a few yards into the park, then turned and looked up.

  He hadn’t stood in front of the Washington Square Arch since he and his father had sought it out. It was one of many places he had subconsciously avoided his entire adult life. Now he remembered his father’s puzzled expression as they gazed upward at the marble structure gleaming in the light of a summer’s day.

  “It’s pretty,” Robbie had said.

  “But why?” said his father.

  “Why is it pretty?”

  “No, why are we here?”

  “Because,” said Robbie, “Alice Gold’s second book begins here.”

  “Yes,” said his father, finally dropping his eyes from the arch and looking at his son. “But why? Why does Alice’s second book begin here? She lives on Fifth Avenue up near Seventy-Second Street; her governess is always scolding her for wandering even a block or two from home. Why does she suddenly show up under the Washington Square Arch in the first chapter of book two? Nothing happens here. She just looks at the arch and goes home.”

  “She saves that little girl from getting run over by the streetcar,” said Robbie.

  “Yes, but she’s practically h
ome when that happens. Why did she have to start here?” Robbie’s father shook his head. “It’s like the author . . .”

  “Buck Larson,” said Robbie enthusiastically.

  “Right, as if Buck Larson, I don’t know, had some connection with this arch and wanted to put it into the book, even if it didn’t make sense.”

  “Anyway, it’s pretty,” said Robbie.

  It was pretty, thought Robert. He had missed that for all the years he had been avoiding it. As he set off toward the subway, he wondered what else he had missed.

  XX

  Central Park,

  At a Time When Promenading Was Everything

  That Saturday afternoon, Magda, Gene, and Tom sat on a bench in Central Park watching the ladies and gentlemen promenade up and down the Mall. Magda had tried to sit next to Gene, but he and Tom seemed to be conspiring against her and she found herself on one end of the bench with Tom in the middle and Gene on the far end. The men both seemed pleased with this arrangement, and Magda resigned herself to a pleasant afternoon with friends rather than a continuation of her imagined romance with Gene. They had set Monday as the day for “Marcus Stone” to meet with Mr. Lipscomb. Magda had explained to her employer that she would not be able to come in until after lunch on that day, so that she could meet the ship on which her sister was returning from a trip to Europe.

  “Miss Stone,” Mr. Lipscomb had said. “Am I to have no secretary in the office every time you have a sister returning from Europe?”

  “I assure you, Mr. Lipscomb,” she had said, “I only have the one sister and she does not intend to travel abroad frequently. Your only appointment in the morning is with a Mr. Marcus Stone of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has a manuscript to show you.”

  “Your brother?”

  “No relation,” Magda had said. She had decided to keep her improvised alias. If she had the good luck to convince Mr. Lipscomb to publish her book, it would be an easy matter to deposit a check made out to Marcus Stone into the account of Mary Stone. And as Magda herself would be making out the check, she could make the one name look quite like the other.

  “I see from the photograph Gene took that you make a handsome gentleman,” said Tom. “Though I can’t say I’m surprised. It would be hard to make you anything other than handsome.”

  The summer heat had broken slightly and a cool breeze wafted through the park. Magda carried a parasol, but the trees of the Mall provided enough shade for her to leave it folded by her side.

  “It was just lucky that Magda came up with a name as quickly as she did at Delmonico’s. I did a good job dressing her, but I completely forgot to name her.”

  “Marcus Stone. Not bad,” said Tom. “But I’m not sure I like it as a pen name.”

  “Oh, I won’t sign the adventures of Dan Dawson with that name. My book will be written by Dexter Cornwall.”

  “So, Magda Hertzenberger, alias Mary Stone, alias Marcus Stone, will sign her book Dexter Cornwall. With all those layers of secrecy, I’m surprised there’s not a series of books written about you,” said Tom.

  “Dexter Cornwall,” said Gene. “I like that. I’m Buck Larson, pleased to meet you.” He reached across Tom and held a hand out to Magda who shook it firmly as if she really were Dexter Cornwall in a business meeting.

  “Dexter Cornwall, Buck Larson, and Neptune B. Smythe,” said Tom. “Soon to be the gods and goddess of children’s books.”

  “Mr. De Peyster,” said a young woman promenading by. She wore a magnificent purple summer frock of hand-embroidered batiste and lace, with a matching parasol and hat, from which protruded two peacock feathers. She dipped her chin ever so slightly toward Tom as she passed. She walked on the arm of a man dressed equally finely, but who stared forward, oblivious to the fact that his companion had spotted an acquaintance.

  “Miss Vanderbilt,” said Tom.

  “Who was that?” said Magda, after the woman had passed.

  “Just a friend of the family,” said Tom.

  “Miss Vanderbilt? A friend of the family? And this after Gene takes me to a Broadway theater and dinner at Delmonico’s. Am I the only one of the three of us who isn’t chummy with every millionaire in New York City?”

  “I wouldn’t say I know every one,” said Tom, “but I know quite a few. That particular Miss Vanderbilt who just greeted me is the younger sister of another Miss Vanderbilt who lived down the street from me when I was growing up. My mother would have liked us to end up married, but I had other ideas. As did Amelia Vanderbilt’s mother.”

  “So you grew up on . . . ?” said Magda.

  “I grew up on Fifth Avenue, not far from here, in a house smaller than a Vanderbilt or Rockefeller mansion, but bigger than any family needs. By the time I was twelve, I had grown tired of starched collars and tailored suits, and I discovered Horatio Alger. So, I dressed in rags and started sneaking out at night looking for the world of Ragged Dick. Once every couple of weeks, I would put on a tattered outfit and wander around the Bowery or someplace else a long way from Fifth Avenue.”

  “That must have been eye-opening,” said Gene, who had spent plenty of time on the Bowery.

  “It was,” said Tom. “I met bootblacks and newsboys, learned how to throw dice and recognize—you’ll have to pardon me, Magda, but—how to recognize women of easy virtue. Some nights were terrifying. I saw a man knife another man in the street in a fight over a bar debt. He just left him there, bleeding to death, and there was nothing I could do to help. But I loved talking with the boys on the streets, learning about their lives and the clever ways they managed to survive.

  “I had plenty of money—it was easy enough to filch a dollar or two from my father without his knowing—so I could stand my friends to a steak and a mug of coffee or treat them to a vaudeville show at Tony Pastor’s. I told them my name was Tommy Poster, and they used to call me Tony Pastor in jest. For years I would slip out of the house and spend time with Tiny Tim, a newsboy who hawked his wares at Twenty-Third and Sixth. Not far from your place, Magda. He liked to drink coffee late at night before the papers hit the streets and he was always happy to see me, knowing I would buy him a few cups. Or I’d listen to the stories of Johnny Nolan, a bootblack who took his name from Horatio Alger. This Johnny loved vaudeville, and I took him to Tony Pastor’s or the Liberty more times than I can count.

  “I did my best to steer clear of gangs like the Eastmans, but sometimes I found myself in a scuffle. Usually I’d have a friend nearby to help me out. I gave a lot of boys money to buy shoes or overcoats in the winter, and they never forgot a favor like that when I was in trouble.

  “Mostly I just talked to boys—sat on piles of straw at the ends of alleys and traded stories until they fell asleep and I wandered back home, feeling guilty about the gulf that yawned between us. And then I started writing about them. Not anything I would show anyone else, just accounts of their lives. I wrote down the stories they told me and hid the papers under my mattress. I eventually burned them in the fireplace, afraid the housekeeper would find them and take them to my father. I wish I still had them.”

  Tom stopped for a moment, and Magda thought she saw his eyes glisten, but perhaps it was just the summer sun filtering down through the leaves.

  “My parents didn’t find out about my nocturnal excursions until one day in 1899. By then I was seventeen. My father wanted me to go to Princeton within a year or two, so I was in his study reading one of his books of Herodotus, or Plato, or one of that crowd, when a friend of his came storming in. I’d never paid that much attention to my father’s associates or the men with whom he socialized. I had become more and more interested in the other end of society’s spectrum. But I knew this man, and if I hadn’t, I would have guessed his identity as soon as he started talking. It was William Randolph Hearst, and he was in a fury because the newsboys of New York had gone on strike against his paper the New York Evening Journal as
well as Joseph Pulitzer’s the New York World. I had been trying to think of a way to come clean to my father about my secret explorations of the city before he sent me off to college—which I dreaded, having no interest in study, no interest in becoming a banker, and no interest in giving up my friends on the street. Mr. Hearst’s tirade against the newsboys suddenly presented me with a golden opportunity—I could tell my father about my nights in lower Manhattan, and at the same time present a reasonable alternative to college.

  “I told Mr. Hearst that I knew some of those newsboys. I had even met Kid Blink, the self-proclaimed leader of the strikers. I said I had no intention of playing informer, but as he had his hands full trying to resolve the strike, perhaps he would like a reporter on the ground with a firsthand knowledge of the world of those newsboys and even some close personal friends among their ranks. If he hired me, I could write honest stories about the strike and when it ended, I could use my contacts to write anything else Mr. Hearst might want about the world of New York’s streets late at night.

  “Well, my father was aghast, I could tell, but he wasn’t about to dress me down in front of William Randolph Hearst. Mr. Hearst, on the other hand, was fascinated. He began asking me questions, as my father sat there steaming. No, I hadn’t been out on the street since the strike had started a couple of days ago. Yes, I knew plenty of newsboys and yes, a lot of them survived solely on the money they made selling his papers. Yes, I had experience writing, but no, I could not show him samples of my work. Yes, I read his paper every day—this was a bit of an exaggeration—and was familiar with the style of writing he demanded from his reporters. And finally, yes, I would be willing to go to work for him on a trial basis, to write stories about the strike and perhaps profiles of some of the newsboys, which he may or may not publish, in order to show him my abilities. If, once he settled the strike—though as I recall he used the word broke—he decided my work was worthy, he would take me on full time.