Part 7

“Awful,” Peggy admitted, looking up at Gaby from her position on the floor. She was surrounded by scraps of paper, pencils, a classified telephone directory, and several assorted notebooks, guidebooks, and city maps. “I think it would be easier to list all the perfume shops in Paris than all the theaters built in New York since the nineties.”

“Perfume shops! Pouf!” Gaby shrugged. “We don’t ’ave so manee. Most of our perfume is export, to Amérique. But theaters! Oh! You would ’ave the same trouble in Paree as you ’ave ’ere. So, _bonne chance_; mean to ’ave the good luck.” With a wave of her hand she went upstairs.

“A little _bonne chance_ is what I could use right now,” Peggy confessed to Greta, Maggie, and Amy, who were disposed in various chairs with books and magazines.

“Anything I can help you with?” Maggie asked.

“No, thanks, Maggie. I’m through the help stage. Amy and I have spent every afternoon for the last three days just trying to get a list of theaters from the city archives. It’s not that they’re not helpful down there. Everybody has been just as nice as can be, but nothing’s easy to find. In the first place, all the records aren’t kept in one big handy book, or in a list or anything simple. Oh, no! They’re in dozens and dozens of volumes marked by year, and we’re trying to go back about seventy years. Not only that, but the books aren’t separated by kinds of licenses, so that you can’t just get a volume of theater licenses. You have to look at each page to see what’s been licensed. There are groceries and bakeries and amusement parks and drugstores and hardware stores and livery stables and saddlemakers and—”

“Well, at least you’ve gotten into the early years, I see, if you’re on livery stables and saddlemakers,” Greta commented.

“You’d think that it would be easier,” Maggie murmured. “I mean, if you wanted to find out what year the Ziegfeld Theater was licensed, for instance, would you have to go through all that?”

“Oh, no,” Peggy answered. “They have an alphabetical index by name, and you could go right to it. But we don’t know the names of the places we’re looking for, and that’s what makes it so difficult.”

“Even so ... what if the police needed to know, for example, and they had to know really fast? Suppose they wanted the names of all the theaters? Would they have to do what you’re doing?” Maggie asked.

“No,” Peggy answered, “and that’s one of the things that makes this so frustrating. The Police Department has all its own files, and the clerk who’s been helping us says that we could find out what we want to know from them in no time at all.”

“Then why...?” Greta began.

“Police files are for the use of the Police Department for police business,” Peggy interrupted. “We’ve been told that very emphatically.”

“And there aren’t any exceptions,” Amy added, “so poor Peggy and I have had to make our own police files.”

“And what’s worse,” Peggy went on gloomily, “is the hours we’ve had to work at it. The bureau closes at four-thirty sharp, and isn’t open on Saturday, and we’re busy with school all day long. Amy and I don’t finish with our last class until three o’clock, and then we make a mad dash downtown. That gives us about an hour a day to go through the books.”

“How close are you to finishing?” Greta asked.

“That’s the happy part. We finished 1890 today, and that’s as far back as we’re going to go, unless this batch turns up nothing for us. Then, I suppose, we’ll try another ten years before we quit. My guess is that anything built before 1880 wouldn’t be worth looking into anyway. If it were still standing, it would probably be an old rat’s nest.”

Maggie smiled. “Don’t let May Berriman hear you say anything like that. This beautiful old house that we’re living in was built in 1878, and it’s hardly a rat’s nest! And you’ve passed the house that Washington Irving lived in, just a few blocks south of here? It’s still a fine-looking house, and I don’t know how old it is, but Washington Irving died in 1859, so it’s got to be a lot older than that!”

“Oh, Maggie!” Peggy wailed. “You haven’t made me feel the least bit better! I thought I had a logical date to stop looking, and that made things easier somehow. Now you’ve opened up the whole thing again!”

“Oh, don’t start to feel sorry for yourself yet,” Greta put in. “You have a lot of work to do on the theaters you’ve found since 1890 before you start to think further back. And you may find just what you want in that list.”

“I sure hope so,” Peggy agreed, smiling wanly. “But I’ll never find it by lying here and talking. I’d better get back to work.”

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Amy said. “What you’d better do now is go upstairs and take a shower and fix yourself up! Don’t forget it’s Friday night, we’ve got a date tonight, and you have a lot to do before the boys come.”

“But, Amy, it’s still early, isn’t it?” Peggy asked. Then, with a glance at the grandfather clock in the corner, she gasped. “Oh! Six o’clock already and they’re coming at seven! And I haven’t even begun! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Sweeping up all her papers, notebooks, and other gear in a single gesture, she bounced out of the room with Amy right behind her, protesting that she hadn’t realized herself how late it had grown, and that she too had a lot to do to get ready, and....

But before she could finish her sentence, Peggy had dropped her papers, grabbed a towel and bathrobe and raced for the bathroom. With the door held open the merest crack, Peggy peeped through, grinning broadly at Amy, who stood in the hall still apologizing.

“You’re forgiven,” Peggy said impishly, “but your punishment for loafing and not watching the time while I was working is that I get the bathroom first!” Then she quickly shut the door before her friend could push her way through.

“I don’t care!” Amy called through the door. “I can always use the other one upstairs!”

“You can,” Peggy answered with a laugh, “if you can figure a way to get Irene the Beautiful Model out. She always goes in at six o’clock, and it would take an atomic bomb to get her out before seven! You’ll just have to wait for me!”

Any further conversation was made impossible by the noise of the water running, and Amy resigned herself with a philosophical sigh, telling herself that it was probably better for Peggy to go first anyway, because she always finished quickly, as if that made a difference, which, of course, it did not.

The timing, however, must have made sense in some mysterious way, because both girls were ready at precisely the same moment. It was at the exact instant that the grandfather clock began to chime softly that Amy and Peggy both stepped from their rooms into the hall and said, in chorus, “You look lovely! How do I look?”

Laughing at themselves, each girl whirled around and showed herself to the other. Peggy’s turn made a wide sweep of her black taffeta dress with its black satin cummerbund smartly making the most of her trim figure. For this special occasion, her first real date in New York, she had put her hair up and skillfully used a little eye make-up. Her long, slender neck was accentuated by a single string of pearls, which were echoed by her tiny pearl earrings.

Amy had chosen to set off her pale, blond beauty with a brocaded dress of dark, lustrous green that seemed to add a green glint to her brown eyes. She wore a delicate, flat gold necklace, small gold earrings and a slim, antique gold bracelet set with semiprecious stones.

As Peggy fastened a hook and eye for Amy (it was located in that one spot that just cannot be reached), the last notes of the clock sounded, followed immediately by the sound of the doorbell.

“That’s Randy and Mal now!” Peggy said. “We’re all so prompt that it’s hardly possible!” She ran down the stairs to answer the door, Amy at her heels, and a few minutes later, the four were strolling down the street arm in arm.

“You sure look beautiful tonight—both of you,” Randy said. “I’m glad that I decided to wear a tie!”

“If you hadn’t, I’d have sent you right home to get one,” Peggy said firmly. “And besides, you did say that we should dress up for dinner and dancing. That is, if you’ll put up with me. I’ve never danced with a professional dancer before.”

“Oh, I’m not a dancer, really,” Randy said. “I’m a hoofer. You know, tap and soft-shoe and a couple of gestures and turns that make the customers think I studied ballet. Mostly I dance just enough to carry off the singing, so that the act will have a little movement. I hate singers who just stand there and croon.”

“Where did you study singing?” Peggy asked.

“Oh, I’m not really a singer,” Randy said with a grin. “I just sing enough so the customers won’t notice that I’m not dancing well!”

“I’d love to see you work and make up my own mind,” Peggy said. “When can I get a chance?”

With an expression halfway between a smile and a frown, Randy answered, “I hope that you never get a chance. I’m not working now, and with any luck, I won’t have to do night-club work again. I’ve always wanted to write for the theater, and I believe in the play we’re doing now, so I’ve turned down all engagements until we get it produced. It may be the break I need. I’ve been able to put away enough to live on for a while, so I don’t need the night clubs. If the play flops, though, I can always go back to them, much as I don’t want to.”

“In that case, I hope I never get a chance to see your act, too,” Peggy said.

“A sensible wish!” Mal put in. “I’ve seen it, and I tell you, as a singer and dancer, Red Brewster—as he bills himself—is a darn good playwright. I won’t say it’s the worst night-club act in New York, but—”

“I know,” Randy interrupted cheerfully, “but it is.”

“But he makes a living at it,” Amy protested, taking the lighthearted insults a little too seriously.

“Just proves an old contention of mine,” Mal answered airily, “that the public has a lot more money than taste!”

By this time, they had reached Fourteenth Street, a wide, busy thoroughfare bright with neon lights and gaudy store windows crammed full of bargain merchandise. It hardly looked the sort of neighborhood to come to dressed as they were, and for a moment Peggy had a feeling that Randy hadn’t been joking about coming without a tie. “Where are we going?” she asked cautiously, not wanting to offend the boys.

Randy laughed. “I wondered whether or not you knew about Fourteenth Street. Since you’re so deep in the history of the theater, I thought that we’d take you right into some. This run-down street was once the heart of the fashionable theater district!” He waved a hand to indicate the tawdry movie houses, the corner hot-dog stands, the poolrooms, the pizza places.

“This?” Peggy said.

“This,” Randy answered solemnly. “And the funny thing is that this is far from being a bad neighborhood. Especially when you compare it with some of the places you’ll be visiting in the next few days!”

“You see that movie house?” Mal said, pointing to a place plastered with signs for a double horror monster show. “That was once the most famous musical theater in the city. And the Irving Theater over there was a great dramatic showcase.”

“But why are we here tonight?” Amy asked in bewilderment.

“To show you that, in the ashes of the past, a good bit of the past still flourishes with no sign of decay,” Mal intoned dramatically.

“He means,” Randy interpreted, “that we’re here to eat dinner at Luchow’s, one of the best restaurants in the city. It’s German, not Chinese, and you pronounce it with a German _ch_ that sounds like a cough, if you can. If you can’t, you settle on ‘Loo-shau’s,’ which most people do. It’s been here since the theater district was here, and it hasn’t changed at all through all these years. Diamond Jim Brady and Lillian Russell and Tony Pastor ate here, and tonight we’re going to do the same!”

With a bow and a flourish, Mal and Randy opened the doors and led the girls into, not just a restaurant, but another century and another world.

XII _Intermission_

Peggy had never seen anything like it! The tremendous, high-ceilinged rooms paneled in darkly polished brown wood led in a seemingly endless procession from one to the other, connected by arch after arch. In front of them, across the first room, four steps mounted up to a kind of gallery, itself an immense chamber that stretched back as far as one could see. In the front of the gallery, near the steps, a small, three-piece orchestra played Viennese waltz music. Peggy noted with amusement that the three musicians looked as old as the restaurant, almost as if they had been playing ever since opening night.

To the right, an oversized archway connected the room they were in with what appeared to be the central room of the place, even higher and more glittering than the others. Peggy’s eyes mounted up toward the ceiling, which appeared to be three or more stories high, and she saw that it was a kind of old-fashioned leaded glass skylight.

Another arch between the rooms contained the largest ship model that she had ever seen. It was a full-rigged ship and stood easily six feet high. Everything here was on such a large scale! Even the beer steins that stood all around on shelves high on the paneled walls were immense. Some would easily hold two quarts of beer.

Everywhere were waiters scurrying about between the crowded tables, carrying trays loaded to improbable heights with dishes, glasses, covered serving vessels, baskets of bread, rolls, and cheeses. The whole place glittered with hundreds of lights, each caught and reflected in the tall mirrors, the glassware and the polished wood.

And the noise! The many conversations, the clink of silver on dishes, the rattle of glasses, the waltz tunes of the small orchestra, all blended into one happy, congenial roar.

Peggy and Amy stood dazzled by the sights and sounds of Luchow’s, and tried to get their bearings, while Randy and Mal checked their reservations with the headwaiter. Soon they were assigned by this impressive personage to a lesser headwaiter whom Peggy thought of as their guide. This gentleman, beckoning them to follow, plunged into the jungle of tables and, in a kind of safari fashion, they tracked him through several rooms, up some steps to a gallery like the one on which the band was playing, and to a large round table by the rail.

It was not until they were seated that Peggy realized that there was not an endless number of rooms, but only about six. The illusion was caused by giant mirrors on either wall, set in arched frames like the arches that separated the rooms. Even so, it was the biggest and busiest restaurant that either she or Amy had ever seen.

“Well, what do you think of it?” Randy asked. When Peggy replied with a smile and a bewildered shake of her head, he continued, “I know. It always affects me that way, too, but I still love to come here. This is what New York was really like in the Gay Nineties, and they haven’t changed a thing that they didn’t have to change. Even the lighting fixtures,” he pointed out, “are the original gaslights, except that they’ve had to wire them for electricity. But the best thing is—as it should be—the food. That hasn’t changed either. Let’s order now, then we can talk.”

The menu, Peggy thought, was of a size to match the restaurant, and it was crammed with dishes she had never heard of, most with German names, many with British names. At Randy’s suggestion, she let him order her dinner, which was sauerbraten, the house specialty. Amy, less adventurous about food, settled for roast beef. Randy ordered a lobster for himself, and Mal asked for roast larded saddle of hare, which made Amy shudder a little.

“I just don’t like the idea of eating rabbits,” she explained. “They’re such cute little things!”

Mal grinned. “If you once start to think like that,” he said, “you’d have a hard time eating at all. Think about all those cute lambs, and those nice, sweet-tempered cows. And think about—”

“I do my best not to think about them,” Amy interrupted, “and if you don’t stop, I’m going to order a vegetable dinner and have an awful time!”

Still, when the food came, she and Peggy consented to try the hare, and were forced to agree that it was one of the most delicious things they had ever tasted. Amy also liked Peggy’s sauerbraten, which was a kind of sweet-and-sour pot roast of beef, done in a rich brown gravy and served with potato dumplings and red cabbage.

“You know, it’s an odd thing the way Americans eat,” Mal said between bites of the saddle of hare. “I’ll wager that there are millions of people in this country who have never eaten anything but beef and pork and perhaps a bit of fish. And I don’t mean poor people, either. I found out on my first tours here that there are many parts of the country where you can’t even get lamb or veal, and mutton is almost unheard of.”

“Is it very different in England?” Peggy asked.

Randy answered before Mal had a chance to reply. “In England they eat things that would make the average American turn pale with fright.” He laughed. “They eat suet puddings and kidney pies and chopped toad....”

“Chopped toad!” Amy almost shrieked.

“It’s not at all what it sounds,” Mal explained in his most British tones. “It’s actually a sort of a hamburger thing, and it’s not made of toads or anything like toads. And, personally, I can’t stand it.”

“Is the food the reason why you left England?” Amy asked teasingly.

“Partly,” Mal said with a smile. “But not because I didn’t like it. I liked it well enough when I could get it. The reason I left was that I wasn’t able to earn enough money to eat with any degree of regularity. When I got a part with an American movie company that was filming a picture in England, I was asked to come back with them, and I jumped at the chance. I made a few films in Hollywood, and then I decided to come to New York.”

“Why did you leave pictures?” Peggy asked. “I mean, if you were working, and if you were starting to be an established actor, why did you come to the Academy to study?”

“I didn’t like the roles I was being given,” Mal answered. “It’s because of my face, you know. I look like a young thug, so I was given nothing but young thug parts. But, when you come to think of it, how many roles are there for young thugs with English accents? Besides, I didn’t want to spend the whole of my life in cops-and-robbers films. I decided that I should try the stage, where I might have a chance to play a variety of roles. Also, I thought I might like to direct. The trouble was that I had no experience with stage technique, so I applied to the Academy for a year of basic training. It was there that I met Randy, who has given me my first chance to direct, and now that I’ve had a taste of it, I know that’s what I really want to do.”

“It’s nice of you to say that I’ve given you a chance to direct,” Randy put in, “but unless Peggy and Amy can produce a theater, I’m afraid that the chance will be a strictly imaginary one. Which reminds me, how are you girls doing with the search?”

Peggy told him about the troubles they had encountered in making up a list, and he nodded sympathetically. “We’re finished with that part of it now,” she said in tones of relief, “and we only have to finish checking against the phone book before we go out to look.”

“And when will you start?” Randy asked.

“Tomorrow afternoon, I think,” she said. “We ought to be done with the telephone book by noon, if we don’t sleep the whole morning away as a result of this heavy dinner. Then we can look in the afternoon.”

“Sounds good,” Randy said. “It looks as if the best help we can give you is to see to it that you work off this dinner so that you don’t waste the morning in sleep! What do you suggest, Mal?”

“Dancing,” Mal said firmly. “Best way to get rid of the full feeling. But, unfortunately, I can’t dance on an empty stomach, so we’d best order a sweet, right?”

The girls and Randy protested with groans, but somehow managed to eat every scrap of the thin pancakes with lingonberries that Mal ordered for them. A final cup of coffee, and then it was time to go.

“I feel as if my dress is going to split any minute!” Peggy whispered to Amy. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk to the door, much less dance!”

Stepping out of Luchow’s, leaving its noise, gaiety, and glitter behind, was once more like making a transition between worlds. Fourteenth Street, now almost deserted, looked even sadder and more run-down than before. The night lights in the windows of the closed shops cast baleful gleams on the pavement; the thin sound of a cheap dance band far off lent its sad jazz beat to the relatively quiet night. Peggy shivered a little in the first chill of autumn.

“It’s like two different cities, in there and out here,” she said. “It’s a shame, isn’t it, that the real one is out here?”

Catching her mood, Randy put a reassuring arm about her shoulders. “It’s two hundred different cities,” he said, “and the real one is wherever you happen to be at the moment. So let’s leave this one, to make it unreal, and go uptown. By the time we turn our backs on this, it will disappear.”

And it did disappear, or nearly, in the sophisticated decor and subdued harmonies of the St. Regis Roof. Randy was, as Peggy had suspected, a fine dancer. His lightness and his certainty helped her, and she knew that she had never danced so well before. But even as they floated about the gleaming floor, the sounds of the elegant music could not quite drown out the tinny jazz sound of Fourteenth Street that echoed in her mind.

No, she thought, Randy had not been altogether right. This beautiful room, these handsome, well-dressed people were not nearly so real as the world outside. And it was that world, in which she would start her search tomorrow, that stayed uppermost in her thoughts through the rest of the dreamlike night with its dancing, its carriage ride around the park and (or was this too a dream?) Randy’s gentle good-night kiss on the steps of the Gramercy Arms.

XIII _The Hidden City_

When the list was completed, Peggy had found over forty theaters built since 1890 and not currently listed as theaters in the classified phone book. Now there was nothing to do except visit each one to see if it was still there at all, and if there, to see what it was being used for. Checking the addresses against her city map and street-number guide, Peggy listed those that she would visit first.

“I’ve started out with a group I think we can cover in one afternoon,” she explained to Amy. “And the district I’ve picked is not too far away from most of the off-Broadway theaters in Greenwich Village. I’d like it best if we could find a theater near where people are used to going, or at least in districts that are easy to get to by bus or subway.”

“Don’t worry too much about that,” Greta commented from the depths of an easy chair. “If you can just find a place to put on the play, and if the play is good, people will come. Even if they have to walk, or pay tremendous cab fares. That’s one wonderful thing about New York. People love the theater, and they’re willing to go through all kinds of hardships to see a good play.”

“The proof of that is the prices people pay to see a Broadway show,” Amy agreed. “Six and eight dollars a seat for some of them!”

“And that’s at box-office prices,” Irene commented. “They pay twenty-five dollars to a ticket broker sometimes to see a really popular show. I think that the thing to be in this business is a broker, not an actress. That’s where the big money is!”

“We’ll remember that when we get our theater,” Peggy said, laughing. “I’ll put aside a whole lot of seats in my name, and if the show’s a hit I’ll make a fortune on them!”

“No theater, no tickets,” Amy said dryly. “And no show either. We’d better get going now.”