Girl Sleuth (19 page)

It did not take long to confirm that the prospects for selling the Syndicate were dismal at best. The Depression had severely limited the number of people with the means to purchase the company, and those who were left, like the foolhardy young man, hardly seemed appropriate. As the sisters began to wonder what course of action to take next, Otis Smith warned them against further indecision. “If the books do not get under way before long the publishers can hardly have them, at least not more than one or two of them, for early spring publication . . . The greatest danger is that if things drift too long the authors will be immersed in other things and cannot go on with the Syndicate books, for, after all, their needs will continue in spite of the law's delay, and that, just at this time of readjustment, would be perhaps an irreparable loss.” She also enlightened them on the matter of just how difficult it was to find writers suited to the unique work of the Syndicate. “Authors cannot be picked out of the gutter at will—or out of a garret, the traditional place for authors to live. Nor have the new authors ever done perfectly satisfactory work until after a preliminary training under your father's methods on some three or four or five books. The first volumes have always had to be written in part, talked over, usually rewritten and then in the end heavily edited.” To lose any one of their writers at such a critical juncture would deal a blow to the company and its publishers that could prove fatal.

By early June Harriet had begun to take a more active part in the business, if only to make sure it did not fail. She handled all the correspondence with the Syndicate's publishers (who tended to respond with letters addressed “Dear Sir”) and tried to amass a more complete understanding of the company even as she and Edna continued to hope for its sale. Otis Smith was editing the final manuscripts that had been received before and just after Edward's death, and a decision was made to solicit no new work until things could be gotten back on track.

Among the stories on Otis Smith's desk was the fourth Nancy Drew title,
The Mystery at Lilac Inn,
which Mildred had sent in, as instructed, in early June. Though she had made the error of hinting rather obviously at the solution to the mystery too early on in the plot, her work otherwise met with Otis Smith's approval. Ever the responsible employee concerned with the quality of the product, Otis Smith wrote to Mildred to tell her so. “The manuscript of ‘The Mystery at Lilac Inn' was received here in this office yesterday afternoon,” she acknowledged. “I am afraid the story will need a little jacking up, but so little that it can be done easily in this office . . . The changes will consist largely in cutting off the last sentence in various paragraphs in which ‘Nancy' states her unalterable belief in the innocence of those whom the police, and with very good reason, suspect. The executrixes of the estate of course have charge of all financial matters, and I will notify them at once of the receipt from you of this manuscript.” In the middle of the chaos, it was Otis Smith who kept a firm hand on the practicalities. While Harriet and Edna struggled, she ensured that the Syndicate had continuity, writing letters very much in the tone Edward had always used.

As Otis Smith continued to press on with the books and manuscripts the Syndicate already had in progress, Harriet tried desperately to keep up with complexities at the office and Edna stayed at home and waited for reports from the front. “My sister
stopped by last night and told me of the office doings,” Edna wrote to Otis Smith in June. For her part, Otis Smith was pleased with the progress she saw, writing to Edna a few weeks later, “I really think that Mrs. Adams has assimilated most wonderfully all the information that has been poured over her as though it were an avalanche.”

But there was one critical function that Harriet, no matter how ambitious she was, could not perform. The writing of the outlines her father sent to authors as the basis for each volume in a series was utterly beyond her, as she was not familiar with the individual series and the casts of characters in each one, nor was she even acquainted with the various ghostwriters. Most importantly, she had no knowledge of where her father had planned to send his much-loved characters next. It fell to Otis Smith to divine her former boss's plans for four of his most popular series, Nancy Drew, Honey Bunch, the Ted Scott Flying Stories, and the Bobbsey Twins—all of which had volumes due for publication in 1931. By the time of Edward's death, she had been the sole other member of the Stratemeyer Syndicate for fifteen years, but even for her the task was going to be formidable.

In light of that, Otis Smith knew that the most important thing was to get the series' practiced, reliable authors on board. Writing to Mildred in early July, while the future of the Syndicate was still hanging in the balance, she indicated yet again how vital Nancy Drew, and by association her author, had become to both the Syndicate and its publishers:

 

Before Mr. Stratemeyer's death Grosset & Dunlap OK'd a title for a fifth volume in the “Nancy Drew Mystery Stories” for publication in 1931. Mr. Stratemeyer had indicated briefly to the publishers, as he always did, the direction the story was to take. He had not, however, elaborated that nucleus for the author. The publishers are asking for their manuscripts for their 1931 output, and this morning I wrote out the outline in full for this new “Nancy Drew” tale. Mr. Stratemeyer's heirs, and I as well, hope you will undertake this new volume. Also the publishers are eager to have the author continue with this line. I should like to hear from you if you think you can undertake the work. The executors, Mrs. Russell V. Adams and Miss Edna C. Stratemeyer, will have to settle the financial part, though I shall offer now on their part the same compensation you have been getting. Hoping to hear from you soon a favorable reply, and if I do and as soon as I do I will send to you the outline for the new tale.

 

The book in question was
The Secret at Shadow Ranch,
which Mildred happily agreed to write. She and Asa were also feeling the squeeze of the Depression, though they had wisely removed all their money from the bank before the stock market crash and were storing it, rather whimsically, in the tubes of Mildred's xylophone. Otis Smith sent off her outline, revealing in a letter to Edna later that week that all she had had to go on while writing it was the extremely slim description Stratemeyer had sent to Grosset & Dunlap some months before: “A thrilling tale of mysterious doings at various places in the valley and around the ranch. It remained for Nancy Drew to solve some perplexing situations.” It was enough to reassure Edna, anyway, who wrote back that she was sure “the books on the way having my Dad's touch will be quite alright and the writers will help all they can to do their part.” Upon receiving the outline, which detailed adventures at a “a real Western ranch” in Arizona, including riding horses through yet another blinding storm (“loved by me as space fillers,” Mildred later confessed) and being stalked by a lynx in the forest, Mildred settled down to work.

Back in the quiet, sunny offices on Madison Square Park, Harriet had settled down to work, too. Her interest had been sparked, and though Otis Smith still handled much of the day-today work, Harriet was finding the opportunity to have a career, however temporary, not entirely unpleasant. Edna, meanwhile, remained at home, steadfast in her belief about what to do. She was losing interest in the Syndicate and was wrapped up in daily life with her mother, who, despite having a nurse attending her, required constant care. “My sister keeps me informed somewhat of the New York business,” she wrote to Otis Smith somewhat wearily. “She is trying hard to learn a great deal and I give her credit but personally I feel that the sooner we get people interested in buying the syndicate the sooner some real progress will be made.” In another note several weeks later, she reiterated her worry, even lowering her standards a bit: “Personally I am very anxious to hear from any one interested in buying the business whether their price fits our approval or not, just to get a working basis at least.”

In a last-ditch effort, Harriet and Edna decided to run an advertisement in
Publishers Weekly
to see if they could drum up any interest. Written in the vaguest of terms, it ran for several weeks in July of 1930. It did not mention the name Stratemeyer or any of the names of series or “authors.” The only indication it gave of the success of the Syndicate, in fact, was a single word: prosperous. That alone may have been enough to scare off anyone reading the ad. In 1930 it was as good as saying the company was unaffordable to anyone but the very rich.

Whatever the reason, the ad failed to produce a buyer, and by late July the sisters were faced with the only alternative. They would run the Stratemeyer Syndicate themselves. Edna wrote to
Otis Smith on the nineteenth of that month, somewhat resignedly, “In spite of ourselves it looks as if we must carry on.” Though she enclosed a few ideas for the next volume in the Hardy Boys series—admitting, “I have not read any of the books and I only have the advertisement of them in another book”—it was clear from her tone that she was barely more than a reluctant participant. For Harriet, on the other hand, it was the chance of a lifetime. She had always loved a challenge, and this one was hard to pass up. Not only would she be able to work, as she had so wanted to do after college, but she would be the boss. Perhaps most importantly to a woman who valued family and tradition passionately, she would be able to make sure her father's series and his name carried on.

With the enormous decision made at last, she threw herself into the one aspect of the business she had not been over with a fine-tooth comb in the previous months. “Your sister went home armed yesterday with books and outlines and casts of characters for a new volume in the ‘Buck and Larry' series to try her hand at this work,” Otis Smith wrote to Edna after spending a day in the office with Harriet. “It is far from easy.” Now that the decision about the Syndicate's future had been made, the trustworthy assistant did not plan to stay on, and it was imperative that Harriet and Edna learn the creative side if the company was to continue successfully. For her part, Edna began to read the Hardy Boys books, and by a week or so after her first letter on the subject to Otis Smith, she found herself with “a better idea of the stories already.” A few days after that, the sisters had procured Stratemeyer Syndicate stationery with their names on it.

There were, however, a number of contingencies that had to be dealt with before it was possible to really get down to work. First
and foremost was the fact that Harriet was a mother. In spite of employing a nanny, she could not leave her children every day for an office in the big city, close as it was; that was strictly for men. Edna did not have the constitution for such a commute, nor could she leave Lenna, who was growing weaker and more difficult by the day. Something had to be done, and the answer was surprisingly simple. “Perhaps my sister has been into the office, and has told you of the idea of bringing the office to Newark, making it convenient for us both and less expensive,” Edna wrote to Otis Smith. In due course, the bright offices in Manhattan were sublet and the sisters rented space in East Orange, New Jersey, a fifteen-minute car ride away from their homes. For Harriet, especially, the decision to go to an office every day, no matter how nearby it was, and to run a company was an enormous break from not only the way she had been raised, but the upper-class world in which she lived. Cushioned as she was, the Depression had not made it either necessary or acceptable for her to work, but the death of her father had given her the only possible excuse to do just that. Luckily, she had chosen wisely in Russell, who knew his wife's strengths and encouraged her to put them to use in spite of social mores. “I was 38 when [my father] died, and my youngest child was still a baby,” she recalled decades later. “But my husband and I talked it over and he agreed with me . . . Oh, it was a radical thing to do all right, and some of my friends didn't think I should work. But my children have turned out all right, so I guess I was right.” Unlike so many women during the Depression, she did not think her husband's job should come first, and neither did he.

The remainder of the summer was spent streamlining the company for the sake of saving money. The sisters took a hard look at their inventory and begin cutting failing series. They also devised a new one about a girl detective named Doris Force—modeled on the Ruth Fielding books but “more youthful, as several volumes must be written before there is any hint of matri-mony”—which was assigned to Mildred that fall along with another Ruth Fielding. They began work on new outlines for existing series, including one for the next Nancy Drew book,
The Secret of Red Gate Farm,
which Edna concocted.
The Mystery at Lilac Inn
and
The Secret at Shadow Ranch
were both ready to go to press, giving Harriet a chance to try her hand at some publicity for the first time. The blurb for
Lilac Inn
that she sent Grosset & Dunlap that fall showed she had already started to master her father's talent for the ambiguously exciting sentence-long pitch. “While working on the mystery that had its inception at Lilac Inn, Nancy Drew finds she must think quickly and act instantly both to solve the mystery and to extricate herself from some dangerous situations.” It was the best she could do on such short notice: Unlike her father, who conceived of each book himself before advertising it, she had probably only read
Lilac Inn
once, and hurriedly at that.

In early October Harriet and Edna said good-bye to Harriet Otis Smith and moved to the offices in East Orange. The letters they wrote during the fall and winter of 1930 show that they had spent considerable time studying their father's methods and had picked up a great many of them. They gave authors tips on their writing (“We would advise that you keep up a tone of excitement from the beginning, although the outline, of necessity, had to be rather explanatory in the first part”); they reassured publishers that series would be carried on “satisfactorily”; they chewed out writers who did not meet their new standards; they even began to respond to fan mail, a task their father had considered critical to his business. In the process, they were putting their mark on his company and his books, transforming both, bit by bit, into their
own endeavors. In writing back to fans, for example, they began to weave personas for the pseudonymous authors. Where Edward had simply said that so-and-so was not a real person, or that he or she was “a good American,” Edna and Harriet offered something more personal. “My dear Robert,” began one of their efforts to a young fan of Victor Appleton, author of numerous series. “Mr. Appleton is not able to answer your nice letter just now, and has asked us to tell you that he is very pleased that you enjoy the Don Sturdy books so much. And it is splendid that your geography mark has improved so quickly.”