Girl Sleuth (16 page)

Mildred, however, was not one of the tempted, and so she wrote the first six chapters of
Ruth Fielding and Her Great Scenario
at her parents' house in Ladora, where she was staying before heading back to school, and sent them in to Stratemeyer for his opinion before she went any further with the text. As was his custom, he sent back a detailed edit and a letter explaining some general Stratemeyer Syndicate writing guidelines.

Mildred had had a difficult time with Ruth and the world in which she operated. Writing about romance was never her strong suit, and the character, she later admitted, had “fought her on every page,” not least because she knew almost nothing about the motion picture industry, a new and wild world cropping up on the West Coast. But she was a relentless worker and a quick study, and she knew how to take criticism, no doubt from her journalism classes at Iowa. She wrote back to Stratemeyer immediately, and in the process displayed both graciousness and an incredible efficiency as a writer.

 

Dear Mr. Stratemeyer:

I regret that the chapters of the Ruth Fielding serial were not satisfactory. I have attempted to rebuild the story, and appreciate your criticism. In the first chapter I have changed a number of speeches and have entirely rewritten the second and third chapters. I had the first eighteen chapters finished when I received your criticism, but if you find the enclosed ten chapters suitable, I can polish it up, and place the entire manuscript in your hands within a few days.

 

By the end of October, after a few more back-and-forths,
Ruth Fielding and Her Great Scenario
was done. From Stratemeyer's short outline, Mildred had spun out 208 vigorous pages that portrayed Ruth as a forward-thinking, multitalented girl who always kept her head in an emergency and was by far the most well-informed, capable person, male or female, in any situation. Despite his stern comments, Stratemeyer knew he had not chosen wrong in Mildred Augustine. He was accustomed to training talented new writers in the style and methods of the Syndicate, and he expressed his utter faith in Mildred, lest she should be discouraged, telling her, “I think you can do this work when you catch the idea of just what is wanted.”

I
T WAS NOT
an accident that Ruth Fielding was turning into a detective of sorts, for a nationwide craze for mystery novels was on. Agatha Christie—who had been responsible in large part for the trend when her first Hercule Poirot book,
The Mysterious Affair at Styles,
was published in 1920—could barely write her new books fast enough for her devoted fans. Dashiell Hammett had begun to publish his crime stories in pulp magazines, and S. S. Van Dine's Philo Vance mysteries and the early books of Erle Stanley Gardner, who would go on to create the inimitable Perry Mason, were also selling like crazy. Stratemeyer believed the passion for mystery was bound to trickle down to children, and he had an eye toward exploiting it when it did. Around the time Mildred was turning in her first Ruth Fielding, he contacted a young Canadian writer named Leslie McFarlane—who was churning out the adventures of underwater explorer and deep-sea diver Dave Fearless for him at the rate of a book every three weeks—to see if he was interested in taking on a new series of mysteries.

Stratemeyer had already devised a pen name for his new idea—Franklin W. Dixon. The series would feature “two brothers of high school age who would solve such mysteries as came their way. To lend credibility to their talents, they would be the sons of a professional private investigator, so big in his field that he had become a sleuth of international fame. His name—Fenton Hardy. His sons, Frank and Joe, would therefore be known as . . . The Hardy Boys!”

With that, the series that would go on to be one of the Stratemeyer Syndicate's best loved and most enduring was off to a running start. The outline for the first story,
The Tower Treasure,
went off to McFarlane in the mail. It was soon followed by the outline for Hardy Boys number two,
The House on the Cliff.
By March of 1927 Stratemeyer was confident enough in his new series and its writer to suggest a fourth title even though the first three had not yet been published (they were intended to come out simultaneously as a “breeder” set that would give children a chance not only to get to know the series well but to hanker for more).

When the breeder set was published in mid-May 1927, little boys went wild for Frank and Joe Hardy. Lindbergh had flown across the Atlantic and now the Hardy Boys had arrived in the bedrooms of America's youth by motorcycle. (As McFarlane later joked, they were somehow talking at the time. “Don't ask how they managed this with two motorcycles going full blast. They just did.”) Boys clamored for more stories about these bright, modern heroes; by mid-1929 more than 115,000 Hardy Boys books had been sold. In the meantime, Stratemeyer had begun
to dream up another detective, though he had neither convinced a publisher to take on a new line nor settled on a name for his heroine. He did know one thing, however, and that was who would write it for him. “For this series I have in mind one of our younger writers, a woman who has just graduated from college and who has written one book already for my Syndicate and a number of stories for St. Nicholas and other high-grade magazines,” he wrote to one potential editor. “She writes particularly well of college girls and their doings, both in college and out, and I feel that she could make a real success of this new line.”

By February of 1929, when Stratemeyer was more anxious than ever to get his new series going, he was still just as sure that Mildred was the one to do it for him. She was ready and waiting to go to work. All that remained was to find a name for the main character and a publisher to take her on. She might be called Nell Cody, Stratemeyer thought. Or Stella Strong. Or Nan Nelson, Diana Dare, or Helen Hale. Or, possibly, Nan Drew. Whoever she was, she was everything America had been waiting for.

6

I
N
M
AY OF
1927, as the Hardy Boys stormed the juvenile book world, Mildred received a letter of hearty congratulations on her master's degree from her editor. In spite of his attitude toward his daughters' education—certainly neither of them would have been permitted to go back to school for an advanced degree with an eye to employment—Stratemeyer thought her accomplishment “a fine thing,” telling her, “I hope it will do you much good.” But Mildred did not take her new credentials out to find a job immediately. Instead, she spent the following summer at home in Ladora, selling stories to
St. Nicholas
magazine and, as she told Stratemeyer, “attempt[ing] to improve my style of writing.” A year later the probable cause for her holding off on full-time employment in an office was revealed. In May of 1928 she wrote to Stratemeyer from Ohio, telling him her news and making sure he did not mistake her for a newly minted housewife of
the kind that were popping up all around the country: “A few months ago I married Mr. Wirt, who is a member of the Associated Press staff here at Cleveland. I have of course continued my writing, and am doing special articles for Cleveland trade journals in addition to my juvenile fiction.” Her letter was signed “Mildred Augustine Wirt/Mrs. A. A. Wirt.”

Asa Wirt, a Nebraska native, had a great sense of humor and, like his new wife, loved to travel and to work hard. A fellow student, he had taken a year of technical classes at the Iowa School of Journalism while working for the Associated Press in Iowa City and then transferred to Cleveland. After a small March wedding in Chicago, attended by only a few family members and friends and followed by dinner at the ritzy Palmer House hotel, the couple moved to Ohio to start their life together. But it was clear from the start that Mildred was also going to continue her life apart from Asa. Even in the short note informing Stratemeyer of her nuptials, change of name, and change of address, she did not fail to mention her eagerness to write another book for him. Soon she would get her chance at last.

“As perhaps you know, I was talking to Mr. Grosset about the steady popularity of our ‘Ruth Fielding Series,'” Edward wrote to his editor at Grosset & Dunlap in the summer of 1929. “For the past four years I have had a young western woman (newspaper woman) doing this line and making the series more popular than ever. This author is now anxious to start a brand new line and I am wondering if it wouldn't hit you. At present our line is weak on girls books with a single heroine. We have ‘Outdoor Girls' and ‘Blythe Girls' but not a single line in which a single character dominates the page, like ‘Tom Swift,' ‘Ted Scott,' and ‘Don Sturdy.' This author could do this line under my directions and do it well.”

A few months later, Stratemeyer mailed off his one-and-a-half-page description of the new series to Grosset & Dunlap, including a pen name and the plots and possible titles of what he envisioned to be the first five books. Under the heading “Suggestions for a new series of girls' books. From Edward Stratemeyer. Confidential. Please return,” he laid out his general ideas for the cast of characters, the star of which was a teenaged sleuth, and the basic tenor of what he planned to call the “Stella Strong Stories.” Then he listed plots for the first five stories in thrilling, telegraphstyle prose, each one attesting to the enormous ingenuity and generous spirit of Stratemeyer's new invention:

 

S
TELLA
S
TRONG AT
M
YSTERY
T
OWERS

How Stella visited the old Tower House and met the rich and eccentric maiden ladies, Patricia and Hildegarde Forshyne, who were much disturbed by many unusual happenings about the place. She learns that some relatives are trying to get possession of the Forshyne fortune. Stella was once made a prisoner, but turned the tables and made a most startling exposure.

 

T
HE
M
YSTERY AT
S
HADOW
R
ANCH

A thrilling tale of mysterious doings at various places in the valley. Many thought that robberies of rich homes were contemplated. It remained for Stella Strong to clear up the perplexities.

 

T
HE
D
ISAPPEARANCE OF
N
ELLIE
R
AY

In this tale either a rich girl or an eccentric rich lady disappears under most puzzling circumstances. The authorities were at their wits' end to locate her. Stella Strong unearths one clue after another and followed a perilous trail to triumph.

 

T
HE
M
ISSING
B
OX OF
D
IAMONDS

Stella arrives at a summer hotel to find great excitement because of the disappearance of a box containing some famous diamond jewelry. Stella gets mixed up in the affair, but finally manages to clear herself and find the valuables.

 

T
HE
S
ECRET OF THE
O
LD
C
LOCK

A large estate remains unsettled because of a missing will. Some domineering rich folks claim the entire estate. But Stella Strong thinks it should go to two deserving poor girls. A letter is found stating that the location of the will is described in a paper secreted in the old family clock. This clock has disappeared and efforts to find it had been in vain until Stella hears that is had been taken to a summer camp miles away. She arrives at this camp to find that the place has been looted and the clock is gone. How the old timepiece was finally recovered and how this led to the finding of the will makes interesting reading.

 

Looted treasure; poverty; kind, eccentric rich people and mean, ordinary ones; the opportunity for endless Robin Hood scenarios with a little bit of danger thrown in—as with the Hardy Boys outlines, all the elements that would make the series an instant hit were right there in his two pages. Grosset & Dunlap jumped at the idea (though they weren't exactly crazy about Stella, so they pulled “Nan Drew” from his other suggestions and lengthened it to Nancy). They wrote to Stratemeyer immediately, saying they would take on this new girl detective, but that they had new names for the series and for most of his plots as well. “If the titles are acceptable,” Stratemeyer's longtime editor at Grosset & Dunlap wrote to him, “the stories can be written in some consecutive order around them and we shall be very glad to have
them worked out along these lines . . . We very much like your title
THE SECRET OF THE OLD CLOCK
, and the other titles suggested are:
THE HIDDEN STAIRCASE, THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY, THE MISSING JEWELS, THE MYSTERIOUS GUEST, THE SEVEN BLACK PEARLS
.”