by Fedora Amis
CHAPTER THREE
November 17, 1898
“Miss McBustle, ready with your review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin so early? You must not have stayed for the whole show.” The St. Louis Illuminator’s night manager leaned across the counter to collect her story.
“I have something much better. Front page news.”
“Mr. Hamm warned me not to use your stories without proper verification.” The man clearly belonged with other creatures of the night. His skin was the color of a peeled banana, and his eyes bulged watery blue with pink rims. Jemmy thought an hour of sunlight would turn him the color of rare steak.
Jemmy stood her ground. “I’ve brought four of St. Louis’s leading citizens. They’ll swear to the truth of the strange events at the Crystal Palace Theatre tonight.”
“Said events would be?”
“Quisenberry Sproat died on stage.”
“The man is a boxer. He never laid claim to be an actor insofar as I know.” The manager smirked to punctuate his little joke.
“I’m not speaking in a figurative sense. The man died in fact. This very night, Quisenberry Sproat died on the stage of the Crystal Palace Theatre.”
“Might rate the front page if factual.” The night editor raised his eyebrows in the direction of wealthy warehouse owner Erwin McBustle.
“Quite true. Verified by the coroner in our presence.”
The night editor pored over a test pull of the morning edition’s front page. “Miss Ann O’Nimity—” The night editor smirked again.
Jemmy cringed. Someday I’m going to give Mr. Hamm a piece of my mind. How could he hoodwink me into that awful name? How could I let him get away with making fun of me?
“I can give you two half columns on the top right if you can have them ready to set in”—he looked at the big Regulator clock on the wall—“twenty-six minutes.”
“Done and done.”
“One more thing. Have you a headline?”
“Lashed Actor Dies.” The instant the phrase popped from her mouth, panic struck. She shouldn’t have mentioned the whipping. She’d promised Dr. Wangermeier on pain of being banished from his good graces and his store of information.
I’ve done it again—let my instincts run rampant over common sense and good judgment. When will I learn to think before I open my yap?
Jemmy backpedaled. “Make that ‘Local Boxer Dies on Stage.’ ”
“I’ll use the first one—snappier.”
“But Mr. Hamm says to always use the local angle.”
“What Mr. Hamm says is law during the days. I’m in charge at night.”
“But the coroner personally asked me not to mention the beating.”
“The coroner should know better than to trust discretion in a female.”
“I beg you . . .”
“You now have twenty-three minutes to write the article.”
Jemmy made a mad dash two floors up and began pounding on her new Remington typing machine. Her fingers struck seven mistakes in the first sentence. She clenched her teeth and reached for a pad and pencil instead.
Her mind raced. Should she lay out the story of a sensational death in front of a live theatre audience? Dr. Wangermeier would never forgive her, never give her information for a follow-up.
Should she focus the story on runaway dogs? Blame the night editor for the headline? After all, he had complete control over headlines. Perhaps she could tell Dr. Wangermeier Aunt Delilah had blurted out the news without knowing the coroner had asked for secrecy.
The budding journalist in her knew she shouldn’t dilute the story—or lie to the coroner either. But what else could she do?
When she handed in her story, the night manager perused it and frowned. “Kind of tame after the buildup you gave.”
“Print it. It’s factual, and it will scoop every other paper in town.”
“Excuse me, folks. I’m off to the linotype.”
When Jemmy’s escort and Uncle Erwin McBustle put on their top hats to leave, Aunt Delilah noticed one of the group was missing. “Where did Miss Patterson go?”
Jemmy said, “If she’d come to the third floor press room, I would have known. Iron steps make a terrible racket.”
Aunt Delilah moved toward the exit. “Perhaps she didn’t get past the second floor. We’d have seen her if she were still here on the first floor.”
“Indeed, the second floor is the place to look.” The trio climbed wooden stairs to a room filled with gigantic black machinery. They found Sassy admiring an ink-stained young man in a leather apron. His biceps swelled when he hoisted a roll of paper to his shoulder. She looked suitably impressed as she followed him.
Aunt Delilah’s voice cut through the smell of ink and acetone. “Miss Patterson, we are leaving now.”
“Of course, Mrs. McBustle. I was just fascinated by . . .”
“We know, Miss Patterson. You are always fascinated by . . .”
The next morning, Jemmy felt the full weight of Suetonius Hamm’s displeasure. “The night manager must be a lunatic. He gave you one-sixth of my front page. Do you deliver exciting details of a well-known young athlete about town who mysteriously died while performing on stage? Did you find out enough about the man to know he had been arrested for killing a man in the boxing ring? Well, did you?”
“If I may explain—”
“No, you may not explain. What you wrote defies explanation.”
“Please, sir—”
“This city hungers daily for the news we bring them. You furnish not news, but dogs spoiling ladies’ hairdos.” He whacked his own balding head with the offending newspaper.
Hamm turned toward the window and stood rocking from heel to toe, hands clasped behind him.
“Mr. Hamm . . .”
The instant Jemmy found her voice again, he stopped her cold. “Diem perdidi. I have lost a day. Do you know the cost of losing a day in the newspaper business? Of course you don’t.”
He whirled toward her and smacked the paper down on his desk. “The immortal gods continue to conspire against me. I do not know why Hermes should look down from newspaper heaven and heap gifts upon you. Why couldn’t the messenger of the gods cast his magic wand on my real reporters from time to time? But no, the old trickster sees to it that you are the one present when calamity strikes.”
With both fists on his desk, Hamm thrust his face mere inches from Jemmy’s. “You, who are a novice—you, who don’t belong in a reporter’s job because it can be dangerous and ugly—you, who are a female!”
Jemmy edged toward the door of his office.
“Come back here.” He pointed to the spot in front of his desk. “Get a decent follow-up, or I’ll have exactly what I need to prove to Mrs. Willmore that you do not deserve your job at the St. Louis Illuminator.”
“Is there anything else?”
He pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes with thumb and index finger. “Bring me a headache powder and a glass of water.”
Jemmy left the office red-faced. No one had ever spoken so harshly to her in her entire life. One thing made the dressing down a little easier. Her assignment would take her out of the building and away from office gossip.
Jemmy approached the one person who might be able to help her: the sports reporter. “I know you heard what Mr. Hamm wants. Sidewalk vendors probably heard it on Poplar Street. I’d be grateful for anything you can tell me about Quisenberry Sproat.”
Autley Flinchpaugh was a former boxer, and he looked it. One side of his head sported a splayed-out cauliflower ear. His humped nose tilted permanently to the left. The compressed bones of his oversized hands made them next to worthless for writing. He composed stories in his head and dictated them to the staff typist.
Flinchpaugh offered his handkerchief. Jemmy dabbed her eyes.
He said, “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll have the basic facts put in a file for you.”
Armed with information from the sports desk, Jemmy donned hat and coat. Around her neck,
she wrapped the white angora muffler her little sister Merry had knitted as a Christmas gift. Its soft warmth cheered her, but only a little. She slipped downstairs and out into a sunny, crisp day to unearth the lowdown on Quisenberry Sproat.
Two trolley rides and a brisk walk took her to 20th and Salisbury, across the street from Hyde Park. She looked up at the facade of the North St. Louis Gymnastic Club, where Sproat had trained as a boxer. The sign over the main doors read “Turnverein Halle.”
Auburn-haired Jemima McBustle embarked upon the unthinkable. She dared enter the no-woman’s-land of the Northside Turner Hall.
She stayed just long enough to get booted out.
She did manage to survey the gym. The main room stood two stories high with a gallery running around the second floor. The floorboards smelled of linseed oil and liniment.
On the first floor, one wall held racks of parallel wooden rods. A roped ring of raised canvas took place of honor near the far wall. Barbells with weight disks on both ends and leather medicine balls littered one corner.
Two young men lunged at each other with épées near the front windows. She could see only three men.
“No ladies allowed.” An older man in short pantaloons over wool tights stopped hitting a sandbag hanging from a cross-beam. His paunch resembled an apron full of potatoes dangling below his belt.
“I write for the Illuminator. I’d like to speak to someone who knew Quisenberry Sproat.”
“I’ll see you to the door.” He tossed aside his leather gloves with the fingers cut off.
“Was Mr. Sproat here yesterday?”
“I’ll answer no questions asked by the likes of you.” He took her arm roughly and rushed her out the door.
Jemmy had never been so ill-treated by civilized males. In the space of three hours, two men had bullied her. The first bellowed her into tears. The second laid hands upon her and threw her out into the cold, cold street. She stood on the sidewalk in front of Turner Hall trying to find her dignity. She swallowed hard to force down the lump of frustration in her throat.
From the side of the building, one of the fencers strode towards her as he pulled on a coat. “Miss, I’d like to apologize for Medley. He was Sproat’s manager. Perhaps that will excuse his ill treatment of you.”
“I wish I had known he was so close to Mr. Sproat. I must have seemed unfeeling and selfish.”
“I don’t think Medley has much use for ladies.”
“It was very kind of you to explain Mr. Medley’s rudeness.”
“I have another reason as well—something you might find interesting.”
“Was Mr. Sproat at Turner Hall yesterday?”
“Couldn’t say. I wasn’t.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Not much. I just joined the Hall two days ago. Didn’t ever see Sproat in person.”
“Then why did you stop your sword fight to talk to me?”
“To bring you these.” He fanned picture cards of a well-muscled, handsome young man. Jemmy stared at them. Yes, they were Quisenberry Sproat—naked. Well, some had his private parts covered with fig leaves like the miniature statue of David she’d seen in Mrs. Nanny’s sporting house. But some of the photographs showed the man altogether in the altogether. “One dollar each.”
Jemmy blinked and peered at the cards even more closely. She marveled at Sproat’s bulging muscles—so unlike the saggy lumps of flesh they’d been in death.
“Do you expect a whole dollar apiece?” She took the cards in hand to examine them in greater detail. She’d never seen a man naked as a peeled cucumber. Jemmy lived in a house of women. “Cards of sportsmen cost a penny. Some are free inside tobacco packets.”
“Not cards like these—of such a fine specimen of manhood and so recently deceased.”
Jemmy dug in her reticule and came up with a quarter. “This is all I have.”
He took back the totally nude pictures but offered her to choose among four others. In one, Sproat semi-reclined on a couch with one hand balanced on an insolent knee. He wore the sandals and helmet of a Roman gladiator with sword hilt strategically placed below his belly button.
The second displayed a rippling-muscled back view with Sproat as Atlas holding an oversized globe above his head. The third showed him in caveman stance, holding a great club and wearing a leopard-skin loincloth. The last showed him wearing Mercury’s winged hat and sandals—and naked but for a fig leaf.
She lingered over the gladiator pose but chose Sproat as caveman. It was less daring, and easier to explain if the need arose. The swordsman sauntered back to Turner Hall.
Jemmy sat on the steps poring over the image. At the sound of boots tapping wooden sidewalk boards, she tucked the card in her reticule.
“What are you looking at that is so fascinating you won’t come in from the cold?” Sports reporter Autley Flinchpaugh tipped his hat.
“I’m surprised to see you here.”
“I came to help. It occurred to me that you would not receive a warm welcome at the Turner Hall. Tell me what you want to know. I’ll ask them for you and remember their answers.”
“It’s not so simple.”
“Why not?”
“What they say tells less than what they do. I have to see how they act—decide whether they’re telling the truth—whether they’re hiding something.”
“Don’t you think I can do that?”
“You wouldn’t know what to ask next.”
“Please, excuse me then.” He tipped his hat again and started up the steps.
“So, you intend to steal my story.”
“A story you can’t get is not your story. But my beat is sports—not sudden death. If a prominent boxer died of a wishbone stuck in his throat, I would write an obit for the Illuminator and the wire services. Sproat was a nationally known pugilist.”
Jemmy fixed him with a stony glare. “So that’s what you call poaching my story. An obituary.”
Flinchpaugh sighed. “To prove I’m on the up-and-up, I’ll help you get your story. After work, I’ll take you to the tavern where these fellows drink on Friday nights.”
“I’m supposed to attend Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Last night I saw only the first two scenes.”
“I’ve never known a critic who couldn’t pan a play after the first ten minutes.”
“You’re looking at an honest reviewer. I always stay right through curtain calls.”
“My offer is only for this evening. I have to be at a boxing match tomorrow night. Will the theatre review wait another day or two?”
“I suppose so. Mr. Hamm can’t despise me more than he already does.”
“Care to make a small wager on that?”
“After the morning I’ve had, you can’t cheer me with jokes.”
“Then let me cheer you with a round or two of good German lager. The more men drink, the more they’ll tell you what you want to know, especially if I’m there. They trust me.”
A date with homely Autley did not appeal, but a story to redeem herself did. “Thank you. I’ll meet you a little after six at the trolley stop on Washington.”
“Far enough from the Illuminator so the staff won’t see? Good thinking. And here’s something else to prove I’m rooting for you—the address of Sproat’s mother, if you’ll get me something heartwarming about his childhood.”
“Deal.” Jemmy took the paper.
“Until this evening then. If you’ll excuse me, Miss McBustle. I have an obituary to prepare.” Flinchpaugh tipped his hat one last time and strode up the steps into Turner Hall.
Deep in thought, Jemmy began walking.
“Please, ma’am, would you like to buy a pencil?”
Startled, Jemmy took two quick steps backward.
“Sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean to fright you.”
Jemmy looked into the wide, brown eyes of a frail Negro child of ten or eleven. She wore no hat or earmuffs, just a threadbare coat and blue mittens with one thumb sticking out. “Why, you
’re the girl with pigtails tied with blue checked gingham—the girl who sells hot pretzels in front of the newspaper where I work.”
“That’s a good place for selling, but now I have to stay near home—got to tend my mama. She’s poorly.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I hope she feels better soon.”
“Ol’ man winter make her cough—and he just gettin’ started.”
“I see you’ve changed from pretzels to pencils.”
“Pretzels is better, but I got no way to keep ’em hot. Pencils don’t need heat—and they supposed to be hard.”
Jemmy reached into her reticule but found no money—just a card of a semi-nude boxer. She sighed. “I wish I could buy all of your pencils, but I don’t have even one penny.”
The girl bowed her head and turned away, but not before Jemmy saw a single tear slide down her cheek.
“Wait a minute. You ought to be more warmly dressed for work outside in the clutches of Old Man Winter. Here.” Jemmy took the angora muffler from around her neck and wrapped it around the little girl’s.
“I cain’t take your throat warmer. Mama don’t allow no charity.”
“Surely you don’t think I’m giving this scarf to you. No, no, it’s just a loan. Your mama couldn’t object to a little loan, now could she? I fully expect you to return the scarf to me promptly on the first day of May, 1899. Mind you, it better be properly mended and laundered, too.”
The girl’s pigtails bounced as she dipped a neat curtsy and said, “Thankee kindly, ma’am.” She smiled as she wrapped the muffler around her ears. “I’ll have it for you all done up nice the first day in May.”
Jemmy watched the girl smiling as she walked toward a lady in the park. The girl’s story made her think about her own mother. What if Mother Belinda McBustle felt poorly? Even with three sisters, would Jemmy be able to run Bricktop? Would the borders leave? Would Jemmy have any hope of becoming a stunt reporter?
