“I haven’t seen her since she made a stop at Gardella’s stationery store,” John said, shaking his head. He estimated that was sometime past two, but not much after. Helen went over to Gardella’s, but no one could remember her being there. No one at the Keysone Department store had seen her, either. Helen was puzzled.
Three blocks over, Helen went to the Metropolitan Motorcycles shop at 542 West 127th Street, one of those strange Harlem roads that came out of nowhere to cut across another at a sharp, sudden angle. It lay across the map like a broken stitch. Helen looked up. She was only about two and a half blocks northeast from home. Up close, the store was big and inviting, with a door in the center of two long windows. Helen saw black metal motorcycles poised behind the plate glass, which was covered with painted lettering. The store had a sign that read SKATES SHARPENED, so Helen knocked on the door, shaking the thin glass. She shivered. The sun had already set. The store was closed, which she sort of expected, so Helen turned back down the street, passing a candy store on the corner. They had conversation hearts for sale in the window.
There were cabbies in stands and people up in windows, who all seemed to watch her. Helen talked to a few other people here and there. Someone on the street told her that they did see a girl in a blue coat leave the motorcycle shop and head east. Helen’s eyes lit up. But why would Ruth be walking in the opposite direction from home? That didn’t make sense. Then it hit her that Ruth had probably headed for the ice.
Helen walked swiftly to the Notlek outdoor ice rink on 119th Street and Riverside. She knew they still had an evening session going on. Helen circled the low fence and peered at all the people in mackinaw coats pushing and twirling around. Her eyes focused. She saw hands that were held tight across the cold, white ice. Helen’s eyes watched spinning, moving figures, visible against the white, but she couldn’t—or didn’t think—she saw her sister. She cursed herself for not coming here first.
The skies were dark now, and almost everyone had gone back to their homes, high or low in the clear, cold air. Helen knew she had to go home, too. Ruth had probably been at the rink, she told herself, but had probably left before her arrival. Helen walked home with speed. She imagined walking into the apartment and seeing Ruth there, nursing a purple ankle. Helen would scold her sister, and they would all laugh, agreeing never to tell their father about any of it. As she made her way home, quicker now, her boots cracking the icy crust, the street was lit by a moon that was split in half between light and darkness.
When Helen returned home, Christina was crying. So Helen, age twenty-three, who had her father in her, picked up the telephone receiver and asked to be connected to Mr. Alfred Brown, a lawyer who was the corporation counsel of Mount Vernon and her father’s partner in an oil concern. Henry had told his daughters that if anything untoward happened at home, they should ring Mr. Brown straightaway. Helen filled him in, and the two immediately agreed to summon her parents back home.
On the way to the apartment, Mr. Brown sent a telegram to their father. It read:
COME HOME QUICKLY, RUTH HAS DISAPPEARED.
At the apartment, Mr. Brown tried to calm the girls down. He called the police, relating the details as Helen and Christina watched. By the time their parents came home, early the next morning, it was Valentine’s Day, 1917. And pretty Ruth Cruger, eighteen years old, was lost.
Somewhere out in the snow.
*
Ruth Cruger was smiling from under a deep pompadour of pulled-back hair, her mouth spread into an easy smile. She was wearing a soft white dress and had a great bow in her hair. Her hands were clasped on her lap. Her dark eyes were made up of tiny black dots. As she looked out, unmoving, from the front page of the New York Evening World, over the crease and with a handwritten “Ruth Cruger” beneath her photograph, she seemed closed in by the hand-drawn, curlicue frame. She looked positively happy. In fact, the photo seemed purposefully cropped to show only her face. Henry Cruger, her father, stared at the photo even though he had a hard time doing so. He had not imagined that everyone would see her so soon, in the evening edition on February 14, amid reports of Germany and war.
Henry was a short, unassuming man. The top of his head was bald, framed by two clumps of black hair. He wore dark, circular eyeglasses and had a mustache shot with gray. Henry was a public accountant of some renown and had offices at Grand Central Terminal. The night before, he had been eating dinner in Boston at the Grand Hotel with his wife when he was told that he had a long-distance call from his friend Mr. Brown. As Henry put the receiver to his ear and tried to hear over the clinking of silverware, Mr. Brown said words that made no sense to him. Henry found himself nodding and agreeing anyway. He and his wife left the restaurant immediately and got on a train at twelve thirty in the morning, bound for New York.
Later that morning, from home, Henry called the police himself. After he was transferred to the Fourth Branch detective house, Henry told the story of his daughter’s disappearance. He could almost hear the detective on the other end of the line skritching out words on his notepad like blue coat and tam-o’-shanter hat. When Henry was done, the detective said that the police would be back in touch soon. When the detective hung up, Henry thought he must have forgotten to tell him everything.
Henry stayed home that day as his family watched the door and the phone. Henry had to focus. When the mail came, he went through each square envelope very carefully, fearful of what he might find. There was nothing. Henry had to be strong for his family. So he said good, hopeful things. Henry finally decided that he should hire a private detective. As Henry reached for his worn New York City directory, his daughter Helen slipped away from the small apartment.