by The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer;His Mysterious Disappearance
Mercifully, Lenz enjoyed an easy run the next day to the capital, the "city of the shah." He admired its picturesque backdrop featuring snowcapped mountains and slender white towers that pierced the bright blue sky. He soon felt at home with the hospitable American missionaries and English telegraph officials, one being "the only wheelman I had the pleasure of meeting in the Shah's dominions." Unfortunately, however, Lenz came down with "Persian fever" and had to spend yet another week in bed.
Finally, in mid-April, Lenz left Teheran for Tabriz, via the ancient city of Kasveen. At the end of that month, he reached Tabriz. Thanks to General Waldo Wagner, a resident Austrian military adviser, Lenz visited the royal palace, where he met the crown prince himself, Mozaffar al-Din Shah. For most of his forty years, the future shah had been pursuing his pleasure in Tabriz, waiting for the day when he would replace his father in Teheran. A technology buff, he grilled Lenz about his gear and took copious notes. As a solid line of royal hangers-on watched in the wings, the prince himself took a photo of Lenz in the royal courtyard, mounted on his bicycle.
During his five-day stay, Lenz met numerous foreigners. Mary Whipple, wife of the missionary, recalled that the cyclist was in high spirits: "Lenz told us of a letter he had received from his mother, telling him how glad she was that he was so near the outside world where he would be safe. He, too, felt that he was nearing home." Concerned nonetheless for his safety, several Westerners in Teheran, including the English physician Hugh Adcock and W H. Bright of the telegraph company, implored the wheelman to head to Europe via Russia rather than Turkey. Lenz, however, was determined to take the shortest route possible.
Lenz was happy indeed, knowing that he would soon have Charlie at his side. He was especially eager to visit Germany, the land of his forefathers. Karl Lenz, the younger brother of stepfather William, was already planning a grand reception in Karlsruhe to include local cyclists. Lenz was well on his way to meeting his goal of traveling twenty thousand miles overland, even though it would take him a bit longer than the two years he had originally allocated.
Just before he left Tabriz, Lenz dashed off a pensive letter to Charlie: "It has been a long while since I've tasted pie and ice cream. Nothing but sour cream and black bread most of the time now. But I'm only 900 miles from Constantinople." And to his old club mates he wrote: "Maybe you fellows think that I am tired of this kind of life. Well, I am not. I enjoy it hugely." He conceded, however, that "it has been rather rough for a year or over." To Worman, he was even more forthcoming. "I must confess to a feeling of homesickness. I am tired, very tired, of being a 'stranger.' I long for the day which will see me again on my native hearthstone and my wanderings at an end."
II. The Search
10. EAST LIVERPOOL, OHIO
October 12, 1894
"FRANK LENZ IS LOST," blared the Evening News Review, stunning the residents of East Liverpool, Ohio, a prosperous pottery center on the banks of the Ohio River forty miles west of Pittsburgh. To the locals, the famous wheelman was the unassuming nephew of Mrs. Catherine Walper of Sixth Street. According to the paper, he had visited her frequently, "spending weeks at a time from boyhood days up." In fact, Mrs. Walper's son-in-law, John J. Purinton, a lawyer and a confidant of Lenz's distraught mother, was the source of the disturbing revelation. A few days earlier, the attorney had written the State Department to report Lenz's disappearance and to request an immediate investigation for the sake of Mrs. Lenz, "who already mourns her only son as lost to her forever."
To be sure, Anna had already feared for his life twice before. After word of Lenz's initial travails in China reached home, in early 1893, he fell terrifyingly silent. Letters sent to Calcutta, where he was expected that March, had been returned. By July, she was convinced that he had vanished in western China, until at last she received a letter from Frank announcing his arrival in Yunnan. Just a month earlier, in September 1894, Mrs. Lenz had suffered yet another scare when Frank fell silent once again after leaving Kurrachee. Happily, William Amory, Lenz's mute friend in Chicago, announced that Lenz had written him from Teheran on April 14, putting an end to the rumors that Lenz had perished in the scorching sand of Baluchistan.
This time, however, the situation seemed truly ominous. Explained the News Review: "Late last April, the young man wrote to his mother from Tabriz, Persia, stating that he would remain there a few days and then take the road for Erzeroum [sic], Turkey, which he expected to make in ten days. Since that time not a word has been heard of him. Week after week has passed and his friends have been growing more anxious." Compounding their worries were the sensational reports just reaching American newspapers of widespread massacres of Armenians in the very region where Lenz was bound.
Even under ideal circumstances, the three-hundred-mile stretch between Tabriz and Erzurum—filled with narrow mountainous passes and daunting rivers at their highest levels that time of year—was exceptionally dangerous. Worse, the inhabitants, especially the Kurds, were known to attack vulnerable travelers, often leaving them for dead. Worse still, much of the region on the Turkish side was sliding into a fiery chaos as Turks and Kurds mercilessly massacred Armenians in the wake of an ill-fated tax revolt begun in the town of Sassun. Conceivably, if Lenz had dawdled after Tabriz and bent his way southward after crossing into Turkey, he could have unwittingly drifted into the maelstrom.
What on earth had befallen the wayward wheelman? Some initially brushed off concerns, asserting that Lenz, as in the previous scares, was simply muddling through a tough stretch without access to modern communications, or perhaps keeping a low profile until the surrounding turmoil had passed. A few even suggested that his silence was part of an elaborate hoax staged to boost magazine sales. Charlie Petticord, however, would have none of that. "Oh, tut, tut, nonsense," he told a reporter. "Frank would never enter into such a scheme. He knows such silence would almost kill his mother. No amount of money could hire him to hide himself."
"Where is Lenz?" pressed Cycling of London as word of his mysterious disappearance spread far and wide. The paper noted with alarm that the all-consuming question had been asked "half-humourously at first, when many believed that the round-the-world cycling tourist was merely laying low, but seriously enough now that his prolonged silence has given rise to the greatest fears."
Indeed, the rosy notion that Lenz was somehow still in charge of his destiny seemed increasingly implausible with each passing day. A more somber—but still hopeful—theory was that he had been temporarily waylaid by some unforeseen impediment. A less attractive prospect was that he was being held hostage. Darker still was the distinct possibility that he had succumbed to an illness, injury, or accident. The ugliest theory of all, of course, was that he had met with a violent end. Conceivably, he could have been targeted on account of his valuables, a perceived offense, or even his Christian faith.
Whatever his fate, if there was any hope of finding him alive, or indeed of recovering his remains, it was of paramount importance to determine just how far he had gotten along his proposed route—in particular, whether he had crossed the Turkish border about one-third of the way between Tabriz and Constantinople. Not only would that vital piece of information dictate which set of officials to engage in the search, but it might also shed light on the nature of Lenz's mysterious disappearance.
The Persian portion seemed the most likely territory for a kidnapping. After Khoi, as Sachtleben described it, "rose a wild and lonely mountain pass leading up to the highlands of Armenia." Every spring Kurds residing just over the border in Turkey were said to raid that territory to attack travelers and steal sheep. A foreigner on a shiny bicycle loaded with baggage might have been an especially tempting target. Lenz could easily have been ambushed in such rugged environs.
If, instead, Lenz had managed to cross the border, he would have entered the vast Alashgerd Plain. There, he was presumably less vulnerable to a surprise attack. Still, he would have faced several treacherous river crossings along the way. Perhaps the most d
angerous obstacle of all was the Deli Baba Pass, about eighty miles east of Erzurum. Named after the town at the midpoint of the range, it was a notorious robbing ground. In this wild setting, the murder of a lone foreigner was an all-too-chilling possibility.
Mrs. Lenz had been worried sick about her son since mid-July, when she received an ominous telegram from Thomas Cook & Son, a worldwide travel agency based in London. The message from the Constantinople office tersely informed her that Frank's trunk remained unclaimed, along with a pile of mail. In desperation, she turned to her brother-in-law, Fred Lenz, who wrote to Outing to find out what it knew about Lenz's progress. Worman's secretary confessed that they were uncertain about his precise location, but insisted that they were not at all troubled by his long silence given that he was in a country with few mail facilities.
Privately, however, Worman himself was starting to worry about his long-silent correspondent, even though the July issue of Outing had falsely reported Lenz's safe arrival in Constantinople. In fact, the editor had received nothing from Lenz since the first of June, when his packet from Tabriz arrived. Moreover, Worman's subsequent letters to Constantinople had all been returned, including a $200 draft payable to Lenz. In mid-August, Worman wrote the American ministers in Constantinople and Teheran, asking them to quiz the locals for any news about his man.
Worman knew it would be about a month before he heard back from the diplomats, or twice that long if they posted rather than cabled their replies. In any case, by then, he fervently hoped to have already received happy tidings from Lenz. Still, as a precaution, he deemed it prudent to open correspondence with these officials. After all, he might need their help down the road, especially if, as he had begun to fear, Lenz had been taken prisoner.
When fall commenced, Worman had yet to receive any word from abroad. He had nonetheless convinced himself that Lenz's prolonged silence all but confirmed his captivity. Fearing, however, that publicizing that theory would only embolden the captors and prompt them to escalate their demands, Worman resolved to handle the matter as discreetly as possible. He reassured Lenz's loved ones that the lost traveler would soon re-emerge from the wilderness, even as he quietly continued to probe Lenz's fate. The magazine, meanwhile, after falsely reporting in July Lenz's arrival in Constantinople, imposed its own strange silence and offered no update on the wheelman's whereabouts.
Mrs. Lenz was now utterly distraught. She tried telling herself that Frank had fallen silent before, but she was now convinced that something had gone terribly wrong. At nights she lay awake in bed tossing and weeping, overcome by anxiety. Frank's friend Theodore Langhans tried his best to soothe her in her native language, and in a desperate drive to uncover Frank's whereabouts, he wrote letters on her behalf to missionaries and diplomats along Lenz's route. Petticord also sent out letters and met regularly with Mrs. Lenz at Pratt's sporting goods store to discuss the latest developments in the hunt for clues. Scores of other local wheelmen voiced their concern for Lenz's safety.
Lenz's sympathizers, in fact, were getting increasingly frustrated with Worman. Huffed the Press: "If they [Outing] know anything about Lenz they should make it public. The mere statement that he is alright is comforting, but it should be backed up with facts and some explanation for his long silence." The Press editor himself wrote Worman, demanding that he reveal exactly what he knew about Lenz's whereabouts.
Calls for a search party, meanwhile, intensified. The Press broached the subject, while expressing its disdain for Outing: "The company would do itself more credit if instead of saying it hopes the wheelman is alright, it would send out an expedition to see whether he is or not. This should have been done long ago." Petticord, for one, agreed wholeheartedly. He declared that he would have left months before for Asia Minor to search for his lost companion had it not been for his injured leg. Many urged Worman to dispatch immediately a dynamic rescuer in the mold of Henry Morton Stanley, Livingston's discoverer a generation earlier, to get to the bottom of the matter.
Others, however, questioned the wisdom of sending any more adventurers to that troubled region, at least until the State Department had completed an investigation. While conceding that its position might appear callous, a Philadelphia paper argued: "Is it not also inhumane to send out more individual riders who will in all probability meet with the same fate?"
By revealing Lenz's plight to his local newspaper, Purinton hoped to thrust the matter into the national spotlight and force swift and decisive action. The attorney succeeded on both counts. Within hours, dozens of newspapers across the country picked up the cable dispatch, much to Worman's dismay. Acting Secretary of State Edwin Uhl instructed the American ministers in Teheran and Constantinople to launch immediate investigations.
Even the sluggish Worman was spurred to action. He quietly dashed off a second round of letters to the same ministers, though he had yet to hear from either one. He also opened correspondence with several missionaries along Lenz's route—who had already heard from Purinton and Langhans—and sent a letter to Cook & Son in London requesting that its Constantinople office send a native guide to the area where Lenz had disappeared.
Publicly, however, Worman continued to feign complete confidence in Lenz's well-being. To one reporter he declared: "The sensational reports of his long silence are altogether unwarranted." Reassured the editor: "We have no serious apprehensions regarding his safety." He wrote Mrs. Lenz himself to assert that her son was fine and would soon resurface, though he offered no supporting evidence. He simply pointed out that Stevens had likewise fallen silent some years earlier while traversing the same remote region.
Worman nonetheless acknowledged that he was investigating the matter. Shortly after Purinton's story broke, he cabled the Pittsburg Times: "Outing wishes to advise the friends and relatives of Frank Lenz that all necessary steps have been taken to ascertain his whereabouts." But the editor steadfastly refused to reveal his course of action, citing the need for secrecy.
Soon, however, Worman gave in to the mounting pressure to come clean. In the November issue of Outing, he finally revealed the dates and places of Lenz's last communications. He also noted that he had engaged Cook & Son and he expected its report imminently. He even conceded that something was evidently amiss, though he continued to offer an upbeat theory: that Lenz had voluntarily gone into hiding.
At first, the press ran with that intriguing hypothesis. Among the possible refuges cited were Russian oil fields and the Holy Land. Cycling of London described the fanciful scenario worthy of a Sherlock Holmes adventure: "In some Eastern disguise, Lenz is visiting towns and temples where no European would knowingly be allowed to enter, but he is unable to speak to the outer world for fear of betraying his disguise."
Hope, however, continued to fade. In particular, the notion that Lenz, renowned for his dash and daring, had deftly maneuvered himself out of harm's way seemed increasingly untenable. Surely he would not voluntarily hold his silence indefinitely, knowing the pain it would cause his anxious mother.
Many were already convinced that Lenz had paid the "forfeit of his daring." William Sachtleben, who had ridden the same route between Erzurum and Tabriz, instantly suspected murder at the hands of the "lawless Kurds." His partner, Thomas Allen, shared that view, adding that a critical lapse of discretion on Lenz's part might have cost him his life. Allen noted that he and Sachtleben had spent "considerable time" in that hostile region familiarizing themselves with the "customs of the people" before daring to proceed. He surmised that Lenz had "omitted this precaution, and possibly quarreled with them, in which case he would have been very roughly dealt with."
Others preferred to think that Lenz, despite his athleticism and sound constitution, had succumbed to natural causes. He had been afflicted, after all, with the dreaded "Persian fever" while in Teheran, and that ordeal might have left him in a weakened state or in dire need of medical attention unavailable in the region. Certainly, a fatal accident could not be ruled out either. Robert Bruce, fo
r one, strongly suspected that Lenz had drowned while trying to ford a turbulent river alone with all his gear—losing out, at last, to his "very rashness."
Only one faint hope remained: that Lenz had been taken captive. Worman had secretly suspected as much from the start and was now convinced that it was the most likely scenario, even if ransom demands had yet to be made. John Tyler, the American vice consul in Teheran, gave credence to the kidnapping theory in his belated reply to Worman. "Most of Lenz's acquaintances here," the diplomat confided, "hint that he may have fallen into the hands of brigands."
Nor was Worman the only one grasping at straws. "Depend on it, Lenz is living," Petticord insisted to a reporter. "I cannot think otherwise." Confided Purinton in his opening letter to the State Department: "Our fears are that he may be in the hands of the Kurds." The Bulletin even suggested that Lenz might be a political prisoner. "By too free use of his camera," the paper hypothesized, "Lenz aroused the suspicions of Kurds and was arrested as a spy."
Suddenly, startling news broke that seemed to vindicate the optimists. The Reverend Samuel G. Wilson, a missionary based in Tabriz who had just returned to his home in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on furlough, had reportedly hosted a healthy Lenz at his mission house that past July, two months after Lenz was thought to have left that city. Perhaps the wheelman had indeed recognized the danger ahead and stopped in his tracks after all. Alas, Wilson quickly clarified that the two had crossed paths in May, not July.
By November, with no word from Lenz, the public had grown distrustful of the State Department's ability to resolve the matter. The Press, asserting that governmental investigations always get bogged down in red tape, insisted that "Pittsburghers ought not to wait for anything of that sort." Nor was there widespread confidence in Worman's purported initiative. One cycling paper suggested that it was little more than a "Cheap John" sham calculated to save face and limit expenses.