The Phantom of Manhattan (8 page)

‘Yes, New York will indeed be for all of us a great adventure and who knows what will happen to us here? God alone knows but He will not tell us. So we must find out for ourselves. Now, time to go and change for the civic reception. Young Meg will stay with your mama; you stick close by me all the way to the hotel.’

‘OK, Father Joe. That’s what the Americans say. OK. I read it in a book. And will you look after me in New York?’

‘Of course, lad. Do I not always, when your papa is not here? Now run along. Best suit and best manners.’

8

THE DESPATCH OF BERNARD SMITH

SHIPPING CORRESPONDENT,
NEW YORK AMERICAN
, 29 NOVEMBER 1906

FURTHER PROOF WAS OFFERED, IF FURTHER PROOF was even needed, that the great harbor of New York has become the greatest magnet in the world for the reception of the finest and most luxurious liners our earth has ever seen.

Just ten years ago barely more than three luxury liners plied the North Atlantic route from Europe to the New World. The voyage was hard and most travelers favored the summer months. Today our tugs and lightermen are spoiled for choice.

The British Inman Line now has a regular schedule with her
City of Paris.
Cunard match their rivals with the new
Campania
and
Lucania
, while the White Star Line fight back with
Majestic
and
Teutonic.
All these Britishers are fighting for the privilege of carrying the rich and famous from Europe to experience the hospitality of our great city.

Yesterday it was the turn of the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique out of Le Havre, France, to send the jewel of their crown,
La Lorraine
, sister ship of the equally sumptuous
La Savoie
, to take up her reserved berth on the Hudson river. Nor were her passengers confined to the cream of the high society of France; the
Lorraine
brought us all an extra and very special prize.

Small wonder that from the breakfast hour, before even the French ship was clear of the Roads and rounding the tip of Battery Point, a host of private broughams and hansoms was beginning to choke Canal Street and Morton Street as sightseers from the mansions uptown sought a place from which to applaud our guest, New York style.

And who was she? Why, none other than Christine, Vicomtesse de Chagny, deemed by many to be the greatest opera soprano in the world - but don’t tell Nellie Melba, who is due in ten days!

The French Line’s Pier 42 was decked overall with bunting and
Tricolore
flags as the sun came out and the mist lifted to reveal the
Lorraine
, with her tugs fussing about her, easing herself stern first into her berth on the Hudson.

Space was at a premium for the craning crowds as the
Lorraine
greeted us with three great whoops from her foghorn and smaller vessels up and down the river responded in kind. At the head of the pier was the podium, hung with French flags and Old Glory, where Mayor George B. McClellan would offer Mme de Chagny a formal welcome to New York, just five days before she will star in the inaugural opera at the new Manhattan Opera House.

Grouped around the base of the podium was a sea of shining top hats and waving bonnets as half of New York society waited for a glimpse of the incoming star. From neighboring piers dockers and stevedores who must surely never have heard of the opera house or the soprano clambered up cranes and derricks to satisfy their curiosity. Before the
Lorraine
had cast her first hawser down to the pier, every structure along the quay was black with humanity. French Line staff rolled out a long red carpet from the dais to the base of the gangway as soon as the latter was in place.

Customs men scurried up the gangway to complete the necessary formalities for the diva and her entourage in the privacy of her stateroom even as, with due pomp and circumstance, the Mayor arrived at the pierhead accompanied by a blue-coated squad of New York’s Finest. He and the bosses of City Hall and Tammany Hall who had come with him were escorted through the throng to mount the podium while a police band struck up ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. All hats were doffed as the Mayor and city dignitaries took their places on the dais, facing down the pier to the lower end of the gangway.

For myself, I had avoided the ground-level press enclosure to occupy a window on the second floor of a warehouse right on the pierhead and from here I could look out upon the entire scene, the better to describe to readers of the
American
just what happened.

Aboard the
Lorraine
herself the first-class passengers stared down from the upper decks, having themselves a grandstand view but prevented from disembarking until the civic welcome was over. In the lower portholes I could see the faces of the steerage-class passengers peering out and up to see what was going on.

At a few minutes before ten there was a hubbub on the
Lorraine
as the captain and a group of officers escorted a single figure towards the head of the gangway. After cordial farewells to her French compatriots, Mme de Chagny began her journey down the gangway to her first-ever contact with American soil. Waiting to greet her was Mr Oscar Hammerstein, the impresario who owns and runs the Manhattan Opera and whose tenacity of purpose has succeeded in enticing both the vicomtesse and Nellie Melba across the Atlantic in winter to sing for us.

With an old-world gesture seen with increasing rarity in our society, he bowed and kissed her extended hand. There was a loud ‘Ooooooh’ and some whistles from the workers clinging to the surrounding derricks but the mood was joyful rather than mocking and a round of applause greeted the gesture - it came from the ranks of the silk top hats grouped around the podium.

Reaching the red carpet Mme de Chagny turned and, on the arm of Mr Hammerstein, proceeded along the length of the quay towards the dais. As she did so, and with a flair that would certainly put her in the running for Mayor McClellan’s job, she waved and flashed a beaming smile at the dockers atop the packing-crates and hanging from the girders of the cranes. They replied with even more whistles, this time of great appreciation. As none of them will ever hear her sing, this gesture went down extremely well.

Through powerful glasses I could bring the lady into focus from my upper window. At thirty-two she is very beautiful, trim and petite. Opera-lovers have been known to wonder how such a magnificent voice could be contained in such a lissom frame. She wore from shoulder to ankles - for despite the sun the temperature was just above zero - a tight-waisted and befrogged coat in burgundy velvet, trimmed with mink at throat, cuffs and hem, with a circular Cossack-style hat of the same fur. Her hair was tucked into a neat chignon behind her head. The ladies of fashion of New York City will have to look to their laurels when this lady saunters down Peacock Alley.

Behind her I could see her remarkably small and non-fussy entourage descending the gangway: her personal maid and former colleague Mlle Giry, two male secretaries to handle her correspondence and traveling arrangements, her son Pierre, a handsome boy of twelve, and his traveling tutor, an Irish priest in black soutane and broad-brimmed hat, youthful himself, with a wide and open grin.

As the lady was helped up to the podium Mayor McClellan shook her hand, American style, and launched into his formal welcome, something he will have to repeat in ten days’ time for the Australian Nellie Melba. But if there were any fears that Mme de Chagny might not understand what was being said, these were soon dispelled. She needed no translation and indeed when the Mayor had finished she stepped to the front of the dais and thanked us all most prettily in fluent English with a delightful French accent.

What she had to say was both surprising and flattering. After her thanks to the Mayor and the city for a most touching reception, she confirmed that she had come to sing for one week only in the inaugural opera at the Manhattan Opera House and that the work in question would be an entirely new opera, never heard before, by an unknown American composer.

Then she revealed new details. The story was set in the American Civil War and entitled
The Angel of Shiloh
, concerning the struggle between love and duty besetting a Southern belle in love with a Union officer. She would sing the role of Eugenie Delarue. She added that she had seen the lyric and score in Paris in handwritten form, and it was the sheer beauty of the work that had caused her to change her itinerary and cross the Atlantic. Clearly her implication was that money had played no part in her decision, a poke in the eye for Nellie Melba. The working men on the cranes around the pier, silent while she spoke, let out a prolonged cheer and many whistles which would have been ill-mannered if they were not so obviously admiring. Again she waved at them and turned to descend the steps on the other side in order to board her waiting coach.

At this point, in a hitherto carefully staged and flawless ceremony, two things happened which were emphatically not on the foreseen scenario. The first was puzzling and seen by few; the second caused a roar of amusement.

For some reason I let my glance stray from the dais below me while she was speaking and saw, standing on the roof of a great warehouse directly opposite mine, a strange figure. It was of a man, standing quite motionless and staring down. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and was otherwise wrapped in a flowing cloak that flapped about him in the wind. There was something strange and vaguely sinister about the lone figure, standing high above us, looking down on the lady from France as she spoke. How did he get up there unseen? What was he doing? Why was he not with the rest of the crowd?

I adjusted my eyeglasses for the new focus; he must have seen the sun glint on the lenses for he suddenly looked up and stared straight back at me. Then I saw that he wore a mask over his face and through the eyeholes it seemed as if he gazed fiercely at me for a couple of seconds. I heard a few shouts from the dockers clinging still to the cold steel of the derricks, and saw pointing fingers. But by the time those below started to look up, he was gone, with a speed that defies explanation. One second he was there, the next the skyline was empty. He had vanished as if he had never been.

Seconds later the small chill this apparition might have created was dispelled by a roar of applause and laughter from below. Mme de Chagny had emerged from the rear of the raised speaking-dais and was approaching the liveried brougham prepared for her by Mr Hammerstein. The Mayor and the city fathers were a few steps behind. All saw that between their guest and her carriage, beyond the range of the red carpet, lay a large pool of half-melted slush, evidently left over from yesterday’s snowfall.

A man’s stout boots would have made short shrift of it, but the French aristocrat’s dainty shoes? New York City’s government stood and stared in dismay but helpless. Then I saw a young man vault over the barrier that surrounded the Press enclosure. He was wearing a coat of his own but carried over his arm something else which was soon revealed as a large evening cape. This he swung in an arc so that it landed right over the slush between the opera star and the open door of her brougham. The lady flashed a brilliant smile, stepped onto the cape and in two seconds was inside her carriage with the coachman closing the door.

The young man picked up his soaking and muddied cape and exchanged a few words with the face framed in the window before the coach rattled away. Mayor McClellan gave the young man a grateful pat on the back and as he turned I perceived it was none other than a young colleague of mine on this very newspaper.

All’s well, as the saying goes, that ends well and the welcome given by New York to the lady from Paris ended extremely well. Now she is ensconced in the finest suite at the Waldorf-Astoria with five days of rehearsals and voice-protecting before her no doubt triumphant debut at the Manhattan Opera House on 3 December.

Meanwhile, I suspect that a certain young colleague of mine from the City Desk will be explaining to one and all that the spirit of Raleigh is not entirely dead!!

9

THE OFFER OF CHOLLY BLOOM

LOUIE’S BAR, FIFTH AVENUE AT 28TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY, 29 NOVEMBER 1906

DID I EVER GET AROUND TO TELLING YOU GUYS THAT being a reporter in New York is the greatest job in the world? I did? Well, forgive me but I’m going to say it again. Anyway, you have to forgive me, ‘cause I’m buying. Barney, could we have a round of beers?

Mind you, you got to show flair, energy and ingenuity amounting almost to genius and that is why I am saying this job has got it all. I mean, take yesterday. Were any of you at Pier 42 yesterday morning? You should have been. What a spectacle, what an event. You read this morning’s coverage in the
American
? Good for you, Harry, at least someone here reads a decent newspaper, even if you do work for the
Post
.

Now, I have to say it wasn’t really my job. Our shipping man was there to give complete coverage. But I had nothing assigned for the morning so I figured I’d go anyway and, boy, did I get a break. Now, the rest of you guys would have spent the morning in bed. That’s what I mean by energy; you got to be out and about to get life’s lucky breaks. Where was I? Oh yes.

Someone told me the French liner
Lorraine
was docking at Pier 42 and bringing in this French singer lady who I had never heard of but who is very big bagels in the opera world. Mme Christine de Chagny. Now I have never been to an opera in my life but I thought what the hell? She’s a big star, no-one can get near her for an interview, so I’ll go and have a look anyway. Besides, the last time I tried to help a Frenchie out of a jam I damn near got a major scoop and I would have done except that our City Editor is a four-star schlemiel. I told you about that? The weird incident at the E.M. Tower. Well, listen up, this gets weirder. Would I lie? Is the Mufti a Moslem?

I went down to the pier just after nine. The
Lorraine
was coming in stern first. Plenty of time, these dockings always take for ever. So I wave my pass at the bulls and saunter over to the Press enclosure. Clearly it is as well I showed up. This is obviously going to be a major civic reception - Mayor McClellan, city fathers, Tammany Hall, the lot. I know the whole shindig will be covered by the Docks Correspondent whom I spot after a while in an upper window with a better view.

Well, they play the anthems and this French lady comes down the pier, and she’s waving at the crowds and they are loving it all. Then the speeches, Mayor first, then the lady and finally she steps down off the podium and makes for her carriage. Problem. There happens to be a great puddle of slush between her and the brougham, and the red carpet has run out.

You guys should have seen it. The coachman has the door open as wide as the Mayor’s mouth. McClellan and the opera man Oscar Hammerstein are each side of the French singer and they don’t know what to do.

At this point something odd happens. I feel a nudge and a jostle from behind me and someone lays something over my arm which is resting on the barrier. Whoever he was, he was gone in a second. I never saw him. But what is hanging over my arm is an old opera cape, fusty and tattered, not the sort of thing you’d be carrying or wearing at that hour of the morning, if at all. Then I remembered that as a boy I was given a coloured book called
Heroes Down The Ages
- with pictures. And there was one of a fellow called Raleigh - I guess they named him after the capital of North Carolina. Anyway he once took off his cape and threw it over a puddle right in front of Queen Elizabeth of England and after that he never looked back.

So I think, ‘If it’s good enough for Raleigh it’s OK for Mrs Bloom’s little boy,’ so I leap over the railing round the Press area and put the cape right down on the slush in front of this vicomtesse person. Well, she loved it. She walked right over it and got into the cab. I picked up the wet cape and saw her smiling at me right through the open window. So I thought ‘Nothing ventured …’ and walked up to the window.

‘My Lady,’ says I. That’s how you have to talk to these people. ‘Everyone tells me it is quite impossible to get a personal interview with you. Is that really true?’

That’s what you need in this game, guys: flair, charm … oh, and looks, of course. What do you mean, I’m OK in a Jewish sort of way? I’m irresistible. Anyway, this is one very beautiful lady and she looks back at me kind of half-smiling and I know Hammerstein is growling in the background. But then she whispers, ‘Tonight at my suite, seven o’clock,’ and up goes the window. So there we are, I have New York’s first exclusive personal interview lined up.

Did I go? Of course I went. But wait, there’s more. The Mayor tells me to put the cleaning of the cape on to his personal check at the laundry that does all the Mayoral Mansion work, and I go back to the
American
feeling pretty pleased. There I met Bernie Smith, our shipping man, and guess what he tells me? When the French lady was thanking McClellan for his welcome Bernie looked up at the warehouses opposite him, and what did he see? A man standing looking down, all alone, like some kind of avenging angel. Before he can go on, I say to Bernie, ‘Stop right there. He wore a dark cloak right up to the chin, a wide-brim hat and between the two a sort of mask covering most of his face.’

Now Bernie’s chin drops right down and he says, ‘How the hell did you know that?’ Then I know for sure I was not hallucinating back in the Tower. There really is a sort of Phantom in this city who lets nobody see his face. I want to know who he is, what he does and why he is so interested in a French opera-singer. One day I am going to break that story wide open. Oh, thanks, Harry, most welcome, cheers. Now, where was I? Oh yes, my interview with the diva from the Paris Opera.

Ten before seven, there I am in my best suit walking in on the Waldorf-Astoria like I own the place. Right down Peacock Alley towards the main reception desk with the society ladies of the city drifting up and down to see and be seen. Very grand. The main man at Reception looks me up and down like I should have been round the back at the tradesmen’s entrance.

‘Yes?’ he says. ‘Vicomtesse de Chagny’s suite, if you please,’ says I. ‘Her Ladyship is not receiving,’ says the uniform. ‘Tell her Mr Charles Bloom in a different cape is here,’ says I. Ten seconds on the phone and he is bowing and scraping and insists on escorting me up personally. It just happens there is a bellboy in the lobby with a big parcel tied with ribbon, same destination. So we all go up to the tenth floor together.

Ever been in the Waldorf-Astoria, guys? Well, it is something different. The door is opened by another French lady, personal maid; nice, pretty, with a gimpy leg. She lets me in, takes the parcel and leads me through to the main salon. I tell you, you could play baseball in it. Enormous. Gilt, plush, tapestries, drapes, like part of a palace. The maid says, ‘Madame is dressing for dinner. She will be with you presently. Please wait here.’ And I sit on a chair by the wall.

There is no-one else in the room except a boy who nods and smiles and says ‘
Bonsoir
‘ so I smile back and say ‘Hi.’ He gets on with his reading while the maid, whose name seems to be Meg, reads the card on the gift-wrapped present. Then she says, ‘Oh, it’s for you, Pierre,’ and that’s when I recognized the kid. He’s Madame’s son, I saw him earlier at the pier, coming up behind with a priest. He takes the present, starts to unwrap it and Meg goes off through the open door to the bedroom. I can hear the two of them laughing and giggling in there, and speaking French, so I look around the salon.

Flowers everywhere; bouquets from the Mayor, from Hammerstein, the opera management board and a host of well-wishers. The boy strips off the ribbon and the paper to reveal a box. This he opens and pulls out a toy. I have nothing else to do, so I watch. It’s an odd toy for a boy of twelve going on thirteen. A baseball mitt I could understand, but a toy monkey?

And a very strange monkey at that. It is sitting on a chair and its arms are in front, the hands holding a pair of cymbals. Then I get it: it’s mechanical with a wind-up key in the back. Also, it turns out it’s a sort of music-box, because the boy winds up the key and the monkey starts to play. The arms move back and forward as if it were beating the cymbals together, while from inside it comes a tinkly tune. No problem recognizing it: ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’.

Now the kid starts to take an interest, holding it up and staring at it from all angles to try and see how it works. When it winds down, he cranks it up and the music starts again. After a while he begins to explore the back of the animal, lifting away a patch of fabric to reveal a sort of panel. Then he comes over to me, very polite, speaking English. ‘Do you have a penknife, mon-sewer?’ he asks. Of course I do. Pencils have to be kept sharp in our game. So I lend him my knife. But instead of cutting the animal open he uses it like a screwdriver to remove four small screws from the back. Now he is looking straight at the mechanism inside. This seems to me a good way of breaking the toy. But this kid is very bright and just wants to find out how the thing works. Me, I have trouble understanding a can-opener.

‘Very interesting,’ he says, showing me what is inside, which looks like a mess of wheels, rods, bells, springs and dials. ‘You see, the turning of the key tightens a coil-spring like that of a watch but much bigger and stronger.’ ‘Really,’ I say, just wishing he would close it back up and play ‘Yankee Doodle’ until Mama is ready. But no.

‘The power of the unreleased spring is transmitted by a system of rod-gears to a turntable here at the base. On the table there is a disc with various small studs on its upper surface.’

‘Well, that’s great,’ says I. ‘Now why not put it back together again?’ But he goes on, forehead furrowed in thought as he works it all out. This kid probably understands motor-car engines. ‘When the studded disc turns, each stud nudges a presprung vertical rod, which is then released and springs back into place, tapping one of these bells as it does so. The bells all have a different pitch, so in the right sequence they make music. Have you ever seen musical bells, M’sieur?’

Yes. I have seen musical bells. Two or three guys stand in a line behind a long trestle with different bells on it. They pick up a bell, ring it once and put it down. If they get the sequence right, they can play music. ‘It’s the same theory,’ says Pierre.

‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ says I. ‘Now why not put it back together again?’ But, no, he wants to explore some more. In a few seconds he has extracted the playing disc and holds it up. About the size of a silver dollar, with small knobs all over the surface. He turns it over. More knobs. ‘See, it must play two tunes, one for each side of the master disc.’ By now I am convinced this monkey will never play again.

But he puts the disc back, other way up, pokes around with the blade of the knife to make sure everything is touching that should be touching and closes it back up. Then he winds it up again, puts it on the table and stands back. The monkey starts to wave its arms and play more music. This time a tune I do not know. But someone does.

There is a kind of scream from the bedroom and suddenly the singer lady is in the doorway, in a lace dressing-gown, hair tumbling down her back, looking a million dollars except for the expression on her face which is like someone who has just seen a very large and fearsome ghost. She stares at the still-playing monkey, rushes across the room, embraces the boy and holds him against her like he was about to be kidnapped.

‘What is it?’ she asks in a whisper, evidently badly frightened.

‘It’s a toy monkey, ma’am,’ says I, trying to be helpful.

‘“Masquerade”,’ she whispers. ‘Thirteen years ago. He must be here.’

‘There’s no-one here but me, ma’am, and I did not bring it. The toy came in a box, gift-wrapped. The bell-hop brought it up.’ Meg the maid is nodding furiously to confirm what I say.

‘Where does it come from?’ asks the lady. So I take the monkey, which has now gone silent again, and look all over it. Nothing. Then I try the wrapping paper. Nothing again. So I look all over the cardboard box and right on the underside there is a slip of paper pasted on. It says: S.C. Toys, C.I. Then the old memory checks in. About a year last summer I was walking out with a very pretty girl who waited table at Lombardi’s on Spring Street. One day I took her down to Coney Island for a whole day. Of the various funfairs we chose Steeplechase Park. And I recall a toyshop there, full of the strangest mechanical toys of all kinds. There were soldiers that marched, drummers that drummed, ballet dancers on round drums who high-kicked - you name it, if it could be done with clockwork and springs, they had it.

So I explained to the lady that I thought S.C. stood for Steeplechase and C.I. almost certainly stood for Coney Island. Then I had to explain what Coney Island was all about. She became very thoughtful. ‘These … sideshows … that is what you call them? They have to do with optical illusions, tricks, trapdoors, secret passages, things mechanical that seem to work all by themselves?’

I nodded. ‘That’s exactly what sideshows at Coney Island are all about, ma’am.’

Then she gets very agitated. ‘M’sieur Bloom, I must go there. I must see this toyshop, this Steeplechase Park.’ I explain there is a rather large problem. Coney Island is a summer resort only and this is the start of December. It is closed, shuttered up; the only work going on is maintenance, repairs, cleaning, painting, varnishing. Not open to the public. But by now she is nearly crying and I hate to see a lady in distress.