Girl Sleuth (20 page)

Except for ongoing and generous offers of help from Howard Garis, one of Stratemeyer's original writers and the by-now famous author of the
Uncle Wiggily
books—published under his own name—Harriet and Edna were alone with their father's creations. Though the company was solid and the two were well-off in their own rights, they were aware that the Syndicate's financial position was precarious. Book sales were far from brisk, so in addition to canceling failing series, the sisters began writing to longtime authors of their less important series asking if they would temporarily accept a fee reduction from $125 to $100. Still, once all the new office arrangements had been made and Garis had signed on as a kind of godfather, the prevailing sentiment was not of worry, but excitement. The Syndicate was sound enough that Harriet and Edna could not really fail to make a go of it, regardless of the general economic malaise that surrounded them. It would take many months of errors to bankrupt their father's financial stores, which gave them a safety net.

Soon after the move to East Orange, a letter went out from Harriet to Miss Otis Smith, describing the exhilarating chaos that had marked the time since her departure from the company. “As you will see from the above address, the ‘reorganized' Stratemeyer Syndicate is in full swing in Jersey. We had a great time moving, finding many hidden treasures beneath piles in the back room. The duplicate books are still piled upon the floor here and we are still trying to decide how to dispose of them. If we so choose we might make them an aid to our Christmas budget, but with times the way they are I presume they should go directly to charity. Although not as quiet as the room on the 18th floor, this office is a very pleasant one and very handy for both my sister and me. Things are going along nicely, and I am most happy to report that my sister has become very interested in the doings here, has written several corking outlines for new books, and really enjoys coming to the office.” She finished off, “I suppose the doings of Bomba, Ted Scott and Ruth Fielding seem like a dream to you now. As you travel about perhaps places and peoples will remind you of your work with my father, but I trust that you will recall us all and let us hear from you often.”

For Harriet and Edna, the doings of Bomba, Ted Scott, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and all the others were anything but a dream—they were the new reality. As Edna would later write to an old high school friend, “I am sure you will be surprised to hear from me and especially on this stationery. For I am a business girl since the death of my father . . . I little dreamed when I was at Townsends that I should some day be in this kind of work. We handle many boys' and girls' books, carrying on the literary syndicate along the lines my talented father laid down. It is intensely interesting, and I can give my imagination free reign, [sic] and you know that is always a pleasure for anyone.” Pleasure was only a small part of it, however—at least in Harriet's mind. “Getting courage out of the air,” as she later recalled, and much to their great surprise and seeming contentment, she and her sister had become businesswomen.

8

T
HE START OF
1931 rushed in new and full of promise—not only for Harriet and Edna, who had begun to settle into their offices in earnest, but also for Mildred, who was embarking on the most productive period of her creative life. Over the next two years, twelve books written both under her own name and under several pseudonyms would be published. Nancy Drew was thriving, too, on that western ranch in Arizona, in the company of Harriet Otis Smith's final innovation before her departure from the Syndicate—otherwise known as Bess and George, the matched pair of girl chums would soon become as much a part of Nancy Drew's legend as her blue roadster.

One a dark-haired tomboy, the other giggly and blond, cousins George Fayne and Bess Marvin appeared for the first time in
The Secret at Shadow Ranch,
published in early 1931. Mildred later acknowledged that of all the stories she had worked on, it was one of her favorites because of its setting, which she
had a grand time researching at the Cleveland Public Library. She wrote many of the chapters in the tiny kitchen of the rental apartment where she and Asa were living in Cleveland, on a typewriter set up on an overturned orange crate. While Asa worked the night shift at the Associated Press, Mildred wrote and attempted to perform the duties of a housewife that were currently so in vogue, the latter out of a sense of obligation rather than any interest in or proficiency at the culinary arts. While writing
Shadow Ranch,
she later recounted, she had become so engrossed in the plot as she hammered away on her typewriter that a can of condensed milk she had boiling on the stove for a caramelized dessert was left too long and exploded onto the ceiling. There, she recalled, “it splattered a huge blob of dark brown goo on the white wallpaper above my head. As a result of this mishap, we moved to a better apartment.”

It was no wonder she was distracted, considering the adventures that befall the teen sleuth in
The Secret at Shadow Ranch.
The story opens with “an enticing invitation” to a ranch owned by Bess and George's Aunt Nell, a woman “of a practical turn of mind, but always in for a good time.” It also establishes a very specific pecking order among the three teenagers, a structure that would remain unbroken for decades. “Look at this straight hair and my pug nose,” George wails at Nancy soon after the cousins drop by to tell their friend about the invitation:

 

“And everyone says I'm irresponsible and terribly boyish.”

“ Well, you sort of pride yourself on being boyish, don't you? Your personality fits in with your name, you will admit.”

“I do like my name,” George admitted, “but I get tired of explaining to folks that it isn't short for Georgia. Bess doesn't have half the trouble I do.”

As she spoke, George glanced up at her cousin as though trying to discover the secret of her dignity and composure. Elizabeth was noted for always doing the correct thing at the correct time. Though she lacked the dash and vivacity of her cousin, she was better looking and dressed with more care and taste. Yet, had a stranger entered the room, he undoubtedly would have looked first at Nancy Drew, for though she could not be termed beautiful, her face was more interesting than that of either of her companions.

 

So begin the adventures of the three female musketeers—pretty, timid Bess; rough, athletic George; and indescribably, almost inscrutably fascinating Nancy. The introduction of two recurring characters provided girls with an even greater opportunity to identify with the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories; if you were not as perfect as Nancy, surely you were at least interesting enough to be like—and thus to be—one of the closest chums of the queen bee.

From this moment, the plot moved along at an almost feverish pace. After securing permission for the trip from Carson Drew (“Four girls ought to be able to take care of themselves,” George insists, including her aunt in the band of capable women), a flurry of shopping, and a train ride on which Nancy meets a mysterious stranger named Ross Rogers, who just happens to live in the town nearest to Shadow Ranch, the girls arrive at their breathtakingly scenic destination. Along the way, George explains the origins of her odd name to readers by way of explaining it to a crotchety ranch hand, also named George, who growls, “That ain't no name for a gal!” While boyish nicknames were common—Harriet was still called Billie, her college nickname, by her college pals and by Russell—an actual boy's name was another matter. George defends herself with a piece of lore that must have been extremely satisfying to little girls who loved her tough edge and were tired of watching their brothers get selected to carry on family traditions: “Every one had given up hope for a boy in our family by the time I came, so I was named George, just plain George, for my grandfather.”

Then, while Bess laments the practically geriatric cowboys at hand (“Not one of them is under forty years of age!”), further emphasizing her flighty, boy-crazy qualities, Nancy immediately asks to see the ranch's resident broncos. Free from insecurities about her femininity and her single status, she has all the time in the world for adventure.

She's also the only one of the three with the maturity to tackle life's little surprises, no matter what form they take. When the girls go out on a long horseback ride a few chapters later, their guide calls Nancy aside to tell her about yet another impending storm. “I don't want to alarm the others,” he says to her in hushed tones, transporting her instantly from the world of jittery, inexperienced teens to the Olympus of capable adults. From then on out, it's clearer than ever who's in charge, so it comes as no surprise when Nancy, somehow an expert horsewoman in spite of the miles she logs in her trusty roadster, rescues pitiful, terrified Bess from a raging stream a few pages later. Riding into the swirling water on her pony, she first calms the beast, and then her friend, who exclaims, “I never was so frightened in all my life . . . You saved me, Nancy.” Just another day in the life of America's teen sleuth.

There was, however, one new wrinkle in Nancy's character. As edited by Harriet and Edna instead of their father, she acquired a new patina of modesty. “All I did was to grab hold of the bridle,”
she responds to Bess's grateful sighs. Where she would once have simply remained silent on the matter, she now feels compelled, at this and many other moments in
The Secret at Shadow Ranch,
to remind others that, while she may be brilliant and capable, she'll also be the last to admit it. The Wellesley motto—“not to be ministered unto but to minister to”—was already kicking in. Still, she remained the quintessential detective. After a few more treacherous trail rides and the discovery of a cabin in the woods inhabited by a mean old woman and a little girl dressed in rags, she's utterly in her element: “Was it not possible, she asked herself, that she had accidentally stumbled on a mystery?”

Yes, it was. And in order to solve the puzzle and discover the true identity of the little girl and her relation to her miserly keeper, as well as sort out a subplot involving another girl's missing father, there is work to be done. When a picnic in the mountains is planned a few pages later, Nancy receives yet another vote of confidence from the grown-up world in the form of a bit of advice from her friends' aunt: “If you girls go alone, I'm going to insist that you take a revolver,” Aunt Nell tells them, after which George adds, “Nancy can tote the gun because she's the only one that could hit the broad side of a barn.” Though she'll later prove to be a crack shot when she fells a wild lynx in hot pursuit of the trio, the evolving Nancy of course assures her chum that “it would have to be a big barn.” In later years the Syndicate was much maligned for such politically incorrect scenes, which were eventually edited out, but as Mildred herself pointed out in the 1990s, “at the time, long before animal rights or violence became an issue, [they] seemed quite natural.”

Such stunts were merely a sideshow for the larger story, not even its highlight. After one more chase through the woods, a
dance in town to which the girls wear “their best party frocks,” and a run-in with a villain named Zany Shaw, Nancy straightens everything out. The friends head back to River Heights contentedly, having solved a double mystery and reunited a long-lost father and daughter. “I'm beginning to think it may be wise to protect my practice by taking you in as a partner,” Nancy's father jokes with her when she gets home. “All right,” she tells him. “Put out your sign. ‘Carson Drew and Daughter.'”

Nancy was not the only character being whipped up in Mildred's Cleveland kitchen, either. Around the time that the sleuth made her thrilling trip to Arizona, Mildred achieved enough fame to merit a profile in the
Cleveland Plain Dealer,
in a series called “Chats with Cleveland Writers.” Accompanied by a photo of the youthful-looking twenty-six-year-old author with her dark bob and bangs, the piece mentioned—in parentheses—that she was married, but it also noted that “she signs her name Mildred Augustine to most of her short stories and magazine articles.” Mildred was, in other words, a thoroughly modern young woman, and just the sort that parents should wish as a role model for their girls. Over the course of the article, it became clear that perhaps one of the reasons for the popularity of everything she wrote, even from a Stratemeyer outline, was her willingness to take her audience seriously. “One must be careful not to insult the intelligence of the youthful reader by making the words too simple,” she told her interviewer, perhaps thinking back on her own frustrating childhood reading efforts. “And I try never to have impossible situations, as I would not have my readers lose confidence in me.” The profile ended with some talk—or chat—about the changes in children's literature and one final flourish: “Mrs. Wirt tactfully combines what children want with what they need. There is artistry here. Perhaps this is why, even in 1931, publishers are taking her books as fast as she can write them.”

The Stratemeyer Syndicate also made an appearance in the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
article. Clearly aware of the debt she owed Stratemeyer, Mildred acknowledged that the Syndicate had started her off as a writer of books, and also that Edward had been an exceptional talent. But she was not aware, apparently, of the necessity of keeping the details of her work for the Syndicate out of the press, so Mildred allowed the
Plain Dealer
to name all three Syndicate series she was working on, including Nancy Drew, as well as their publishers and the fact that she wrote them under pseudonyms. The pseudonyms themselves went unmentioned, and perhaps Mildred believed this was enough to keep her promise of anonymity.