Mrs. Sherlock Holmes

by Brad Ricca

  From then on, Mr. Cruger made a trip to Mr. Dooling’s office every single night. He came armed with the letters that each day’s mail had brought to his home. Henry Cruger looked noticeably older to his friends and acquaintances; his friends could see it in his eyes and cheeks. All he could do was push forward. His daughter had now been missing for over a week.

  When he returned home on the night of February 22, Henry Cruger once again took a call from his favorite reporter from the Evening World. When the reporter asked him what he thought of the state of the investigation, Henry didn’t hold back.

  “The police of New York City and the reporters of police news of all the New York newspapers and news bureaus have been digging, picking, gossiping, guessing, pretending, and hinting in the chance of finding a defect in the girl’s reputation on which they might put the blame for her disappearance, and they have found not one sliver of scandal; not even a surreptitious note in a Sunday School book or a wave of the hand from a window, or a meeting with a boy at which anybody and everybody was not welcome.”

  “It is a test,” offered the reporter, writing about Henry, “with pride swelling up above his troubled grief and worry … to which he would not care to put any young girl’s station; but he cannot help being proud to the tips of his fingers of the way Ruth’s reputation has stood it.”

  “Even if she had not stood that test so beautiful,” Henry added, “even if the meanest and nastiest guesses about her were true, she is my own dear girl and I would want her and I don’t want her a bit more than her mother and sisters want her. And nothing else is going to count until we find her or know what has become of her.” He felt like telling the cops to all go to thunder. But he didn’t. He knew that to let yourself go was easy, but to keep hold of yourself was hard.

  “My girl Ruth must not be a lost girl,” Henry said. But as he looked at the black-and-white photo of his daughter, staring up from the newspapers, he couldn’t help feeling like the whole city had already turned her to stone.

  5

  These Little Cases

  June 1905

  A long line of people unwound itself from the open door at 269 Madison Street. Men twirled their hats and women pulled their thin knit shawls around their shoulders. As the people slowly moved forward, their eyes lingered on a golden sign hung near the door. Those who knew English read JUSTICE FOR THOSE OF LIMITED MEANS FOR MODERATE FEES. Those who could not just marveled at the gold. Ever since the office had opened on June 1, 1905, everyone in the neighborhood knew this was the place to get good, honest legal help.

  When they finally reached the waiting room inside, they saw plush chairs and inviting walls painted in soft green and white. There were gay prints on the walls and fresh curtains at the windows. When the owner of the firm was in her office, people in the waiting room could see her through the open door, seated at her desk or moving between stacks of papers in a flutter of black clothing. Her office had high-backed chairs and deep red walls. Her desk had a lamp on it and was covered in inkwells and knickknacks. Hanging heavily on the wall behind her was a painting of Mother Mary, holding a swaddled baby Jesus, her right hand pointing up to an imagined sky just above the gilded frame.

  In a corner of the little office was a framed card on the wall with a quote from Kipling. It read:

  No one shall work for money,

  No one shall work for fame,

  But each for the joy of working,

  And each in his separate star,

  Shall draw the thing as she sees it

  For the God of things as they are.

  As the people came in and poured their stories out to the woman in black, a young man stood and took notes behind them. When a client was finished telling his or her story, Grace would, with a flush of animation, grasp their hands to give them a feeling of hope. The next person was then beckoned in with a welcoming smile. Today, though, a small man and his associates were seated in Grace’s office. She was not smiling.

  “You know,” said Grace, “I should not hesitate to send any of you men to jail if you don’t do what is right.” The man, a German, was an East Side employment bureau proprietor involved in crooked practices. Grace paused, letting her words sink in.

  “But,” she continued. “if you will do the best you can and work on the level, I will do everything in my power to help you.” That was her standing promise to all.

  Grace left the Legal Aid Society because she felt that she could do better on her own. So on her own dime, she opened the People’s Law Firm. Her mission was to help the city’s poor immigrants with their legal problems. Her main goal was to avoid taking cases to court. Instead, she worked toward private settlements. It was less expensive for her clients, avoided endless hours in court, and helped speed up matters when a client couldn’t speak English well. Grace had seen countless of examples of how language barriers hindered the judicial process at the Legal Aid Society and seemed assured of her solution. Grace wasn’t so sure that the poor needed a lawyer so much as they needed someone to plainly interpret the law for them. The convoluted phrasing and mouth-twisting Latin words spoken by lawyers were hard enough even for English speakers to understand.

  As new waves of people were sifted into New York’s sundry neighborhoods, the city was full of new legal problems, which were caused by everything from wicked employers to the slumlords running the city’s many stylike tenements. The location of the People’s Law Firm in the center of lower New York was ideal. To the east were the Hungarians; to the west, the Austrian and Russian Jews. There were Italians, Armenians, and sometimes even a Greek or an Egyptian in Grace’s sitting room. She caught her cases from walk-ins or through local groups such as the New York Charity Organization Society, which sent new people to her almost every day. Her settlement fees were sometimes the whole sum of one dollar, with the time of payments made to suit the condition of the client. If people were desperate and had no money, Grace would reassure them that it would be fine. She was affectionately known as the “Portia of the East Side.” Among the Italians, her card announced her as “Prezzi Moderati per Cliente di Modeste Condizioni.” Near the Williamsburg Bridge, her cards were in Yiddish. Her most popular nicknames however, were “sister” and “mother.”

  The lines outside the People’s Law Firm began to stretch so long that an Upper West Side branch was soon opened at 216 West Twenty-third Street, followed by a Lower East Side location at 156 Leonard Street in Little Italy. Soon, the little headquarters itself had to be moved to 10 Bible House, across from Cooper Union, the free institution of higher education whose great hall was still filled with the invisible words of presidents, including the echo of Lincoln himself.

  On Monday evenings, Grace joined the heads of the East Side branch to hear the more complicated cases. In her little office after hours or sometimes on the warm front steps in the summertime, unofficial courts were convened where both parties would plead their case. Grace, her face alive with sympathy and interest, would listen carefully. Afterward, she would confer with her lawyers, and they would try to work out a fair settlement. This was the outcome Grace always strived for, but, despite all her efforts, there were some cases that defied that hope. This was New York, after all.

  One such case involved a young, lost-looking boy with black hair who wandered into the People’s Law Firm one night asking for the lady lawyer. He looked like he was wearing hand-me-down clothes cut from a man triple his size. Through an interpreter, Grace learned that the boy had been sent over from Russia by his relatives and put to work by a kinsman who ran a haberdashery in the city. The boy worked hard for a year and half without any wages. When he realized that his friends were getting paid at their jobs, the boy went to his boss and boldly asked for his money. The boss pulled him aside, smiled broadly, and said he would give the boy twenty-five dollars and a ticket back home to Russia instead. He knew that the boy was very homesick. Months passed by, and the boy never saw the money or a ticket. But he had heard of the woman who wore black.
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  Grace wrote a note to the boy’s employer asking him to meet with her and the boy the following Monday. The man wrote back and agreed to come around in the evening. When the time came, Grace lurked outside the building, around the corner and out of sight. But no one showed up. Grace briskly walked up to some women who had gathered near the steps and asked if they had seen a boy. The ladies said they had seen a boy approaching from the other direction but that he had gone away with an older man. Grace had guessed that the boss might try something like this. Mad at herself, Grace stormed home. Later that night, she was summoned to the police station to attend to two little girls she knew, who were accused of stealing a hundred dollars.

  At the police house, Grace was surprised to see her Russian boy in the custody of an officer. She discovered that the boy’s devious employer had brought the boy in on a makeshift charge of larceny. At court the next morning, the boy’s boss had seven witnesses to back up his charges that the boy stole from him. On the other side of the aisle, Grace had no witnesses. It looked as if she had already lost. When it was finally her turn, she asked for the specific charges against the boy to be repeated. Once they were, Grace pointed out that the boy was being officially charged with stealing money from his place of employment. She then asked the judge if he knew that the boy had been working for this man the whole time without pay. How could he steal from an employer he didn’t really work for? The judge dismissed the boy and ordered his boss to be brought up on charges instead.

  When news of cases like this began to spread, some of the other, more unscrupulous lawyers for the lower class began to get nervous. For years, these lawyers had invented the work of filing and fee gathering to take advantage of New York’s newly American, mostly illiterate community. When they heard that the People’s Law Firm was growing, these shysters grumbled in saloons as they drank their long beers. Some of these lawyers, who managed long, endless cases, were not only angry at Grace’s obvious success, but that she was actually getting results for her clients.

  As her enemies kept their hours in bars, Grace continued to spend hers in court during the day and in her office late into the night. At Bible House, Grace paid for most everything herself. She hoped that whatever people could pay—and many could—would allow her to hire a stenographer and some more assistants. Especially women. “I will train any woman who comes to me,” Grace said adamantly. “There is plenty of work for women lawyers who are womanly and do not let their brains dominate their hearts.”

  Many of Grace’s clients were women. Mrs. Rosie Pasternack lived in a tenement house on the East Side with her tailor husband when the stork surprised them with three screaming babies. A few newspapers ran their story, and people soon began sending in donations to the newly expanded family to help with the hungry mouths. But once the money started coming in, Mr. Pasternack quit his job and started drinking full-time. Rosie sneaked out one afternoon to meet with Grace. She didn’t know what to do. She needed that money for her babies, but she had no use for her husband anymore. But what could she do? Grace had an idea. She sued the embezzling father for lack of child support, and, when he couldn’t pay, she sent him off to Blackwell’s Island, leaving Rosie alone with her children and free from her parasitic husband. Rosie panicked, wondering who would provide for her, but Grace told her to wait. Once the new developments of Mr. Pasternack’s imprisonment were reported in the papers, Rosie got even more donations than before.

  A great number of Grace’s cases involved marriage, especially translating European unions into American ones. One happy couple had been married by a rabbi in Austria before they came to New York. But things changed once they hit New York, and the husband left, claiming that the Austrian government never sanctioned the marriage in the first place. The woman came into Grace’s office and cried her eyes out. She begged Grace to talk to her husband. Grace asked the woman if she really wanted her to do that. When the answer was finally a no, Grace sent a letter to the Austrian government instead. When she received an official reply that the match had been sanctioned, Grace sued the husband for support.

  There was also the case of Mary, who had been in jail for three months before she got a message to Grace that she desperately needed help. Mary, who was tall with brown skin, held a good position in a clean, decent household but worked long hours and was homesick. One day, a new female friend invited Mary to a ball, and Mary readily accepted the invitation. She wore the best thing she owned to the ball.

  After the ball, the friend left Mary alone with a man, a friend of hers, to escort Mary home. Mary was nervous but went along anyway. Her friend had assured her that the man was a gentleman.

  “If you don’t give me your money, I’ll have you arrested,” the man told Mary once they were alone in the dark.

  Mary resisted. The man called a policeman and falsely charged her with larceny. When the court couldn’t prove the larceny charge, the prosecutor had her arrested for violation of section 150 of the Tenement House Act: prostitution. The man lied, said Mary. Her employer testified to her good character, but it was to no avail.

  “That woman saw my lady pay me,” Mary told Grace, adding that she earned twenty dollars a month and that her new friend had seen how much money she had when Mary treated her to a picnic. Grace could see what had happened. Grace knew that she couldn’t get charges brought against the man, so she focused on getting Mary released instead. Some of her cases were victories only in that they avoided even worse outcomes.

  Grace dealt with financial predators of all stripes. Another case involved an Armenian tea merchant who arrived in New York with a hefty seven thousand dollars with which to begin his dream business. After consulting with one of the large brokerage firms on financial opportunities, the man was advised to invest his money several times over in a variety of important-sounding investments. The only problem was that, afterward, there was nothing left for him but plenty for his consultants. The tea merchant hired an attorney who was able to negotiate a settlement of only a few hundred dollars. The tea merchant turned to Grace next, who roared into court and was able to get him back a much larger portion of his money to start his business anew.

  Unfortunately, there were also cases of a more pitiful nature. Grace met a poor tailor who mortgaged his precious sewing machines and household furniture for a much-needed seventy dollars. But the bankers handling the paperwork wrote up the mortgage note for $95 instead of $70. The tailor found he could no longer pay the people working for him or make his normal mortgage payment. So he flung himself into the Hudson River, leaving his wife and six little ones to struggle on alone. The little family was days away from losing everything when the widow went to the People’s Law Firm. Grace took the case and threatened to sue the mortgage holders if they did not release the debt on the poor tailor’s family. The bank told Grace that the family couldn’t afford a lawsuit. Grace defiantly told them that she would fund it herself. The bank released the debt, and the man’s widow, selling all his machines but one, was able to eventually enlarge her late husband’s business and support all of their children.

  “There is something deeply tragic about these little cases that are spread out before lawyers,” Grace said. “The newly-made Americans are almost at the mercy of any older, cleverer citizen that wants to grind down the heel of oppression on their necks. Things are all so strange to them and the law is so curiously complicated that they awake suddenly to find themselves tangled hopelessly in muddles that seem often to choke them and blind them. It is to fight the battles of these poor and ignorant without taking all their profits that the People’s Law Firm was started, to fight as eagerly for $5 as for $500.”

  Grace would tell the story about how a man once came to the firm, very earnest over a case but unable to pay. Grace told him that he could sue as a poor man but that he had to make out an affidavit that he had not a hundred dollars in the world.

  “Is your wife worth a hundred dollars?” Grace asked, as she always did, referring to his wife’s net
worth.

  The man looked over at his wife.

  “You want to know if my wife is worth a hundred dollars?” the man gasped. “I tell you I would not sell my wife for ten thousand dollars. You don’t get my wife!”

  Another client, an old woman named Mrs. Glover, had no money but said she would pay with something else. Grace agreed. Once the case was over, Mrs. Glover patted Grace on the shoulder.

  “Dearie,” she said. “I’m going to make you something loverly.”

  “What are you going to make me?” Grace smiled.

  “I’m going to make you a hat. A lovely hat with two white wings, so you won’t have to wear that awful one you have on now.”

  As Grace’s reputation began to grow, greater New York began to hear whispers of the indomitable woman in black. Soon, people in the nicer neighborhoods began paging through the city directory and asked to be connected to number 2659 Gramercy. Soon, Grace was representing New Yorkers in insurance trust-buster cases. One such suit lasted three years and was finally ruled in Grace’s favor; she was able to return seventeen thousand dollars to twenty-three widows in Bath Beach. Regardless of her clients’ income base, Grace’s opponents remained similar: they were often the rich or the desirous to be, driven by that merciless presence that stood behind all the great possessions, carrying its own kind of curse.

  One afternoon, a man with dark features and fashionable clothing made the trip to Bible House. His watch and cufflinks gleamed in the otherwise dreary line. When it was finally his turn, he walked in, sat in Grace’s office, and announced that his name was Manuel Walls, the second secretary of the Spanish delegation to Washington. Grace closed the door. Mr. Walls, who was young and handsome, told Grace that on returning from a trip to New Brighton in August, he entered his Fifth Avenue bachelor apartment to find that his door had been forced open, his armoire broken into, and the dress suitcase in which he kept his jewels and coins missing. The total loss amounted to three thousand dollars in personal property, which Mr. Walls immediately reported to the police. After a few days, the police told him they had no leads.