  “So. ’Ow marches the search for the theater, Peggee?” Gaby asked, bouncing into the living room at the Gramercy Arms. “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. |
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