The Beautiful Cigar Girl Page 7
If there was romantic significance in this gesture, Crommelin failed to apprehend it. Only a few weeks earlier he had stood on the front stoop of the boardinghouse and pledged his unwavering devotion, urging Mary to call on him if she were ever in need. Now, confronted with a clear, urgent, and perhaps amorous summons, Crommelin balked. Later, he would explain that he “had been coldly received when last there,” leaving him ill disposed toward the possibility of further indignities. He also mentioned, in passing, that he felt no great desire to see the smirking face of Daniel Payne, who still believed himself to be the victorious suitor. Crommelin claimed that he briefly considered paying a call on Sunday—unaware that Mary planned to be out for the day—but on further reflection he decided against it. Instead, he remained at home, in his new boardinghouse on John Street, and passed the day in the company of Padley.
Daniel Payne was also enjoying a day of ease. Having learned of Mary’s plans at ten o’clock, he set off an hour later and walked to his brother John’s house on Warren Street, a few steps across City Hall Park. The two of them visited a market called Scott’s Bazaar on Dey Street, idly picking over the various goods on offer, then parted in front of St. Paul’s Church on Broadway. Payne continued on to Bickford’s Tavern on James Street, where, in keeping with Sunday tradition, the saloon’s owner made a “compromise with the day” by putting his employees into clean shirts and closing up the wooden shutters halfway. Payne would later testify that he sat and “read the papers until 2 o’clock.” This done, he continued to a Fulton Street eating house and took a solitary lunch. Afterward he returned to the boardinghouse and, perhaps exhausted from his study of the newspapers, took a three-hour nap.
As evening fell, Payne rose, refreshed himself at the washbasin, and set out to keep his rendezvous with Mary. Walking along Broadway, he ran across his brother coming in the opposite direction with his wife and children. He exchanged pleasantries for several minutes before continuing on to the omnibus stop beside Barnum’s Museum. Only then did it occur to him that the omnibuses did not run on Sundays. Payne paused to wonder how Mary had traveled uptown to her aunt’s house in the absence of her usual mode of transportation, but the question was soon driven from his head by the approach of a violent summer thunderstorm. Payne assumed, based on past experience, that Mary would not venture out in a driving rain shower, and would instead pass the night at her aunt’s house and return in the morning. As the storm bore down, Payne took shelter once again at Bickford’s Tavern, where he remained until nine o’clock. As the skies cleared, he returned to Nassau Street. In the front parlor he encountered Mrs. Hayes, another of Mary’s aunts, who agreed with him that Mary was not likely to return until morning. Payne went upstairs to his room and retired for the night.
The following morning when Payne came down to breakfast he found Phoebe Rogers in a state of high anxiety. Mary still had not returned, and Mrs. Rogers now believed that something catastrophic had occurred. Mrs. Hayes, who had stayed the night, offered her assurances that Mary had simply lost track of time and would be along shortly. Payne shared Mrs. Hayes’s view of things. Although concerned, he still believed that Mary’s absence was well within the realm of normal behavior, and he thought it likely that she would return at any moment. After saying as much to Mrs. Rogers, he headed off to work as usual.
When he returned to the boardinghouse for lunch, Payne discovered that Mary was still missing. With Mrs. Rogers growing ever more alarmed, Payne volunteered to mount a search. It is probable that Payne was merely humoring Mrs. Rogers at this stage, as his search seems to have been conducted in taverns and dram shops. “It was hoped,” ran one account, “that some genial companion might offer a clew as to the lady’s whereabouts.”
When these inquiries failed to bring results, Payne progressed up Broadway to Jane Street, where he knocked on the door of Mrs. Downing’s house. There he learned that Mary had never arrived the previous day, nor had she been expected—the family had been out for the entire day.
Payne now realized that something was seriously amiss. With a gathering sense of foreboding, he launched a remarkably wide-ranging search, calling at the homes of various friends and relations in a trek that took him as far as Harlem and Staten Island. No one had seen Mary, or had any word of her.
By late Monday afternoon Payne realized that further measures were needed. Stopping at the offices of the New York Sun, he placed a missing persons ad. Unwilling to risk a repeat of the newspaper sensation caused by Mary’s earlier disappearance, Payne decided to withhold her name. Instead he gave a full description of the clothing she had been wearing:
Left her home on Sunday Morning, July 25, a young lady, had on a white dress, black shawl, blue scarf, leghorn hat, light colored shoes and parasol light colored; it is supposed some accident has befallen her. Whoever will give information respecting her at 126 Nassau Street shall be rewarded for their trouble.
This done, Payne returned to the boardinghouse and reported on his efforts to Mrs. Rogers, who had now sunk into a state of brooding lethargy. Payne retired to his room and passed an uneasy night, resolving to resume his search in the morning.
On Tuesday, in response to the newspaper notice, Payne received word from a tavern keeper on Duane Street that a young woman and her escort had passed several hours on the premises on Sunday afternoon. Payne rushed out of the house, but when he arrived at the tavern he found that the description of the young woman bore no resemblance to Mary. Undeterred, he resumed his efforts, casting his net even wider than he had the previous day. He walked to the Barclay Street ferry launch and crossed the Hudson to Hoboken, stopping to ask strangers at the ferry landing, and at three different homes in the vicinity, if they had seen a dark-haired young woman pass by. Continuing along a winding path to a wooded area known as Elysian Fields, Payne stopped to make inquiries of various people along the way, but he learned nothing of any use. Frustrated, he recrossed the Hudson and put in a brief appearance at the shop where he worked, resuming his search that evening.
Alfred Crommelin learned of Mary’s disappearance on Monday, but he took no action and carried on with business as usual until Wednesday, when he was shown the previous day’s missing persons notice in the Sun. The brief notice had a galvanizing effect. Although Crommelin had ignored Mary’s earlier requests to call, he now hurried directly to Nassau Street, where he found a glassy-eyed Phoebe Rogers sitting in her parlor with Payne standing at her side. At the sight of Crommelin, Payne turned on his heel and left the room without a word, leaving Phoebe Rogers to offer a halfhearted excuse on his behalf. Payne, she murmured, had “gone to Bellevue.” Payne may, in fact, have made a stop at the Bellevue hospital, which at that time dealt mainly with disease victims, but he spent most of the morning following up on several other notes that had arrived in response to his notice, all of which proved fruitless.
Crommelin, meanwhile, questioned Mrs. Rogers about the details of Mary’s disappearance, and soon formed a decisive plan of action. He hurried directly to the police office, as the Herald would later report, “with the fixed intent of seeing Hays.” This would have been Jacob Hays, known far and wide as “Old Hays,” the celebrated high constable of New York, known not only for his prowess as a detective, but also for his inventive manner of controlling unruly gangs. A short and stocky man, Hays would hurl himself into the midst of even the most vicious street fight and use his gold-tipped walking stick to knock the hats from the heads of the brawlers. When the gang members bent down to pick up their hats, Hays knocked them off their feet and ordered them to go home. “He held the monopoly on catching thieves,” wrote one admirer. “He was about the only constable in the state who did any business.” Unfortunately, the constable was unavailable on the morning Crommelin went looking for him, and Crommelin refused to wait, believing that every moment was essential. After leaving a message for Hays, Crommelin began a search on his own, unwittingly retracing many of the steps Payne had made the previous day, including the tavern on Duane
Street and the home of the friends in Harlem.
When these inquiries brought no results, Crommelin enlisted his friend Archibald Padley, proposing to carry the search to Hoboken, just as Payne had done a few hours earlier. By some accounts the two suitors missed crossing paths by a matter of minutes, though Crommelin was unaware of Payne’s efforts as he made his way to the Barclay Street launch.
Although at that time Hoboken was known chiefly for its attractive greenery and “health-bearing breezes,” the city also offered less wholesome diversions for those who were so inclined. Later, Crommelin would declare that if Mary Rogers had gone to Hoboken on the Sunday in question, she could only have been “decoyed there by malice.” Jacob Hays and his contemporaries would have understood the inference. As Crommelin would later elaborate, something in Mrs. Rogers’s account of her daughter’s absence had led him to conclude that Mary was being “forcibly detained in some assignation house or some other place.” Although he never said so explicitly, it is likely that Crommelin went to Hoboken intending to call in at various houses of ill repute.
As Crommelin knew, New York and its environs had a thriving and varied trade in prostitution at this time. In addition to the seedy “concert saloons of ill repute” to be found in Five Points and elsewhere, the city also offered a decidedly more refined class of brothel for the well-to-do. “No hotel is more elegantly furnished,” wrote a diarist of the time. “Quiet, order and taste abound. The door swings on well-oiled hinges. The bell is answered by an attentive servant. The lady boarders in these houses never walk the streets nor solicit company. They are selected for their beauty, grace and accomplishments. They dress in great elegance, and quite as decorously as females generally do at balls, parties or at concerts.”
Another commentator addressed the troubling question of how these lady boarders came to be employed in this manner: “From whence comes this unceasing supply of brilliant, well-educated, accomplished, attractive and beautiful young girls? They come, many of them, from the best homes in the land.…Men and women are employed in this nefarious work as really as persons are round the country to hunt up likely horses; and when the victim is uncommonly attractive the pay is large. No system is better arranged with bankers, express-men, runners and agents.…They hang about hotels, under pretense of being strangers to New York; they get acquainted with young lady visitors, invite them to church, to a walk, to the opera, and, when confidence is gained, they are invited to call at the house of an acquaintance; and, after a pleasant evening, they wake up in the morning to know that they have been drugged and ruined, and that their parents are in despair.”
With thoughts of a drugged and ruined Mary preying on his mind, Crommelin hurried down the gangway of the Hoboken ferry and made his way north along the shoreline. Padley, trailing a few steps behind, had to hurry to catch up with his friend. He would later recall that Crommelin seemed gripped by a sense of urgency, as though Mary were not merely missing but in some immediate peril. It seemed to Padley that his friend’s conscience was troubling him greatly, though he could not be certain why this should be.
Payne, meanwhile, had returned to Nassau Street, where he found Phoebe Rogers sitting ashen-faced in the parlor, twisting a linen handkerchief in her hands. Payne reported on his efforts and insisted that Mary would likely return home at any moment. Perhaps, he offered, Mary had gone to visit some friend in the country. Perhaps she had even tried to send word to that effect. The city had only two post offices, and it was not unknown for letters to miscarry.
Mrs. Hayes, who had been through this at least once before during Mary’s earlier disappearance, did her best to echo Payne’s reassurances. She hovered at her sister’s side, patting her hands and offering words of comfort. Mary was simply off enjoying herself, she said. Like before. She would be along shortly.
Phoebe Rogers would not be comforted. She simply stared through the front windows and twisted at the square of cloth in her hands. Her life had been a catalogue of loss—four children, two husbands, and whatever small comforts she might have wished for in old age. Sighing deeply, she reached up and took her sister’s hand. When she spoke, her tone was grim but resigned and matter-of-fact, as though she were pointing out the approach of a thunderstorm.
“I fear,” she said, “that we shall never see Mary again.”
IV
Very Clever with His Pen
IN DECEMBER OF 1835, a strange mechanical marvel, described as “the greatest and most baffling wonder of this or any other age,” appeared at an exhibition hall in Richmond. Variously known as “The Turk” or the “Automaton Chess Player,” the device’s owner claimed that it would “engage and defeat scores of human chess players” and would “defy all attempts at explanation” of its mysterious inner workings. For Edgar Allan Poe, the appearance of the Turk would mark a turning point. In approaching the problem of the chess-playing machine, Poe demonstrated the first stirrings of what he would later call “ratiocination,” or the science of deduction. Poe took up the matter as if he were a detective interrogating a suspect.
At the time of its appearance in Richmond, the chess-playing automaton already had a long and storied history. Created in 1769 by a Hungarian nobleman, the device appeared to be nothing more than a mannequin in Turkish robes and a turban sitting behind a polished wooden cabinet. Doors at the front of the cabinet opened to show a complex array of gears and cylinders. A chessboard sat on top. At the turn of a key the Turk pushed its chess pieces across the board, and moved and nodded its head as it followed the play of opponents. Sometimes, if a human player made a particularly egregious blunder, the Turk would even roll its eyes. The device created a sensation in Europe; in Paris, no less a figure than Benjamin Franklin lost a spirited match against the device.
By the time Poe saw the chess-player it had passed into the hands of a talented showman named Johann Maelzel, who burnished the device’s fame with a much-publicized match against Napoleon Bonaparte. As Maelzel toured throughout Europe and the Americas, any number of treatises and so-called exposés appeared, all of them focusing on the question of whether the Turk was a legitimate mechanical marvel or an elaborate hoax, with a human operator concealed inside the cabinet to control the movements. Poe, who had recently won a position as the assistant editor of Richmond’s Southern Literary Messenger, resolved to settle the argument once and for all, in hopes of bringing national attention to both himself and the magazine.
“Perhaps no exhibition of the kind has ever elicited so general attention as the chess-player of Maelzel,” Poe declared. “Whenever seen, it has been an object of intense curiosity to all persons who think. Yet the question of its modus operandi is still undetermined.” Poe then offered a brief discussion of other celebrated mechanical marvels, including the “calculating machine of Mr. Babbage,” the precursor of the modern computer. In Poe’s view, Charles Babbage’s “analytical engine,” however impressive, was nothing more than a mathematical machine, while the Turk was able to apprehend and counter the moves of its human opponent, a far more complicated and subtle process. If the device truly was a “pure machine,” he reasoned, “we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most wonderful of the inventions of mankind.”
But Poe was not prepared to make this admission, and pointed to its original presenter’s description of the device as “a bagatelle whose effects appeared so marvelous only from the boldness of the conception, and the fortunate choice of the methods adopted for promoting the illusion.” That being the case, Poe asserted, it was “quite certain that the operations of the Automaton are regulated by mind, and by nothing else.…The only question then is the manner in which human agency is brought to bear.”
In discussing the theory of an earlier writer, Poe made an observation that would loom large in his future work: “We object to it as a mere theory assumed in the first place, and to which circumstances are afterward made to adapt themselves.” In other words, as a later writer would remark, “It is a capita
l mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” To avoid this trap in the case of the chess-player, Poe determined to clear his mind of any preconceptions about how the device might work, and draw his conclusions based solely on what he had seen with his own eyes. Dupin, Poe’s detective, would take much the same approach to the problem of Mary Rogers.
Poe began with an elaborate recounting of the exhibitions he had witnessed, lingering on the manner in which Maelzel opened the doors at the front and back of the cabinet to reveal “wheels, pinions, levers, and other machinery,” then held a burning candle at the rear opening to throw a bright light through the interior, “which is now clearly seen to be full, completely full, of machinery.” Poe then described the movements of the Turk during the chess matches, emphasizing the manner in which the left arm and gloved hand grasped the chess pieces from above and moved them to the appropriate positions. “At every movement of the figure machinery is heard in motion,” Poe reported. “During the progress of the game, the figure now and then rolls its eyes, as if surveying the board, moves its head, and pronounces the word echec (check) when necessary.…Upon beating the game, he waves his head with an air of triumph [and] looks round complacently upon the spectators.”
Occasionally, Poe noted, the Turk’s mechanical hand failed to grasp one of the chessmen. In these instances, the empty hand continued on to the intended position “as if the piece were in the fingers,” leaving Maelzel to complete the move as the automaton had intended. In Poe’s view, this was just one of several irregularities put in practice “with a view of exciting in the spectators a false idea of the pure mechanism in the automaton.”