In 1931, a trio of thieves stole a rare book by Edgar Allan Poe worth more than half a million dollars from the New York Public Library. To bring them to justice, the library called in G. William Bergquist, a special investigator who specialized in recovering stolen books.
Above: . “Guarding the Library—New York”(1940s).This postcard depicts the main entrance to the New York Public Library with its famous lions. Popular belief imagined the stone felines as guardians of the NYPL. They were little help when it came to the theft of a rare volume by Poe.
SHOW NOTES
Braden Brothers, “The Astor Library” (ca. 1911). Located in the East Village, the Astor Library opened to the general public in 1849. It was later consolidated with the NYPL. In 1911, the building was abandoned and its books moved to the library’s main branch in Bryant Park. The Astor collection was an important source for the NYPL’s early collections, including rare books (Image courtesy of the Getty Museum.)
Customers looking for a good read on Book Row (1940). For decades, readers were drawn to the area known as “Book Row,” where a large number of book shops clustered. Some shops, such as Weiser’s, specialized in used books, others in antiquarian ones. (Image courtesy of the New York Historical Society.)
Walker Evans, “South Street, New York” (1936). The widespread poverty caused by the Great Depression gave a boost to the traffic in stolen books. Evans’s photographs are among the most startling chronicles of this economic disaster. (Image courtesy of the Getty Museum.)
Shanty town in Central Park. As happened elsewhere in the U.S., “Hooverville” settlements popped up like mushrooms in different parts of New York City during the 1930s. (Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.)
Shanty town in Central Park. As happened elsewhere in the U.S., “Hooverville” settlements popped up like mushrooms in different parts of New York City during the 1930s. (Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.)
First edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane and Other Poems, credited to “A Bostonian.” Though not quite as rare as the follow-up to this tome, Al Aaraaf, TAmerlane could fetch a high price from book collectors. (Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.)
Tavik Frantisek Simon, “New York Public Library” (1920s). The theft of Al Aaraaf happened on a snowy day like the one portrayed here.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
-Burns, Ric and James Sanders. New York: An Illustrated History. New York: Knopf, 1999.
---“G. William Bergquist, 84, Dies.” New York Times. May 30, 1967.
---Homberger, Eric. The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.
---McDade, Travis. Thieves of Book Row: New York’s Most Notorious Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
---Mondlin, Marvin and Roy Meador. Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2004.
---Poe, Edgar Allan. Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Baltimore: Hatch & Dunning, 1829.
---Wallace, Mike. Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898-1919. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
TRANSCRIPT
It was January 10, 1931, and John Eliot was the only librarian on duty in the Reserve Book Room of the New York Public Library. Like other staff members, Eliot took pride in his place of work and the services it offered. The first truly public library in Gotham, the NYPL officially opened in 1911 and inherited much of its original holdings from two pre-existing private collections: the Astor and Lennox Libraries. The NYPL occupied two full blocks along Fifth Avenue, housing approximately one million books at the time of its opening, with seven floors given over to stacks and another reserved for a reading room. The most celebrated architectural flourish can still be found outside—two majestic, sculpted lions, perched on either side of an enormous granite staircase. The library was busy this Saturday afternoon. Many New Yorkers had come inside to escape the cold. Others were using a day off from work to read in quiet. Still others were viewing a series of special exhibitions, including one dedicated to Russian icons.
Not long after 1 pm, the elderly, heavy-set, mild-mannered Eliot received a request, filed by a patron whose name he recognized, Lloyd Hoffman. This young man had become a familiar face in the past few weeks and had shown a keen interest in nineteenth-century American literature. Today, he had requested three rare items. One was a first edition of The Scarlet Letter by Nathanael Hawthorne. Another was a first edition of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. These two were treasures in and of themselves, but the third was even more valuable, the first and only edition of Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems by Edgar Allan Poe. The Poe was entirely unimpressive in appearance—a flimsy volume that might have turned to dust if you looked at it too long, with a greenish-blue cover and seventy-one pages the color of dry sand. The “Tamerlane” on the title page was circled with blue ink—a trait that distinguished this copy from any other. But as any bibliomaniac will tell you, a visually unremarkable rare book might just be remarkably valuable. Before the Great Depression, in the late 1920s, a copy of Al Aaraaf could sell for more than half a million dollars in modern-day currency. Eliot picked up Hoffman’s request form and took it into the Reserve Book Room stacks, home to high-value items like Shakespeare’s first folio and the first Gutenberg Bible to come to the Americas. One by one, he retrieved the titles that Hoffman had asked for.
With the books in hand, the librarian found Hoffman waiting patiently on the other side of his desk. The young man thanked Eliot. Then, apologizing, he fished two slips of paper out of his pocket and explained that he had forgotten to place additional requests. Would Elliott mind pulling these books for him, too? Eliot hesitated. He was the only librarian in the room, and he was never to leave it unsupervised. Then again, he knew Hoffman, and the kid was as kind and studious as they came. He doubted it would hurt to make an exception this one time. The librarian instructed Hoffman to stay put and went to fetch the items. When he reappeared, he stopped in his tracks. Hoffman was gone—and so were the books. The realization hit Eliot like an asteroid: he had placed his trust in a thief.
In the early twentieth century, rare book dealers did booming business in New York City, but that business was not always lawful. Indeed, many knowingly resold stolen books at sky-scraping profits. Today, we’ll hear how one crooked bookman, Harry Gold, hatched a plan to steal Al Aaraaf, how his team of thieves pulled it off, and how a detective scrambled to hunt down the priceless Poe for the NYPL. This is The Art of Crime, and I’m your host, Gavin Whitehead. Welcome to episode 6 of Crimes of Old New York . . .
To Catch a Book Thief
The Best Place to Buy Stolen Books in New York
If you were in the market for something to read in early twentieth-century New York, you knew just where to go: Book Row. This bibliophile’s paradise came into being in the late nineteenth century and encompassed seven consecutive blocks, stretching along Fourth Avenue from Astor Place to Union Square.
It’s hard to imagine a more suitable name for Book Row. Books covered almost every available inch of space. They lined hundreds upon hundreds of shelves in dozens upon dozens of shops; hand-painted images of them decorated signs that promised bargains; the dusty, decades-old odor of them hung in the air. Books were to be found outdoors as well, heaped on tables that were situated in stalls. Browsers combed through these offerings on the dreariest of days. In the words of Christopher Morley, a novelist and book collector, even when a gale “blew down the street, the pavement counters were lined with people turning over disordered lines of volumes.”
There was no such thing as a quintessential Book Row establishment. According to Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador, authors of Book Row, they “came in a variety that approached the infinite, from narrow, hole-in-the-wall crannies to multistory buildings with sagging floors creaking from the weight of their volumes.” Some stocked anything they could possibly sell while others specialized in out-of-print antiquities and hyper-specific subgenres.
The booksellers were just as varied as their businesses. Not surprisingly, some could recite passages from Tolstoy, Dickens, Goethe, and Homer. But others hated reading and may not have been able to spell Tolstoy or Goethe—they sold books as a way to make a living, and there was nothing more to it. The more affable shop-owners chatted with customers as they perused the display tables. In striking contrast, their more cantankerous counterparts practically shooed you out of the door as soon as you came in, all so they could read their Milton, Marlow, or Montagne in peace.
Like any retail outlet, a used bookstore relied on a steady supply of new stock to be sold. Yet bookmen could not just snap their fingers and make their merchandise appear out of the ether. Many replenished their dwindling collections by illicit means. Mondlin and Meador hint at the prevalence of crime in the trade: “Various Book Row proprietors and employees would have been quite comfortable at a university faculty meeting. Others would have to skip the meeting to see their parole officers.”
The most audacious skullduggery revolved around rare books. Nowadays, the rare book trade is a niche industry. But in the New York of the early 1900s, it was anything but. Interest in the business was so intense that the New York Book Review dedicated a regular, 1,500-word column to the topic. There were plenty of enthusiastic buyers in this market, and unfortunately for them, there was no shortage of dishonest sellers.
Many dealers engaged in the fraudulent act of what was called “sophisticating,” a kind of literary “upcycling.” Here’s an example. Say a dealer get his hands on a first edition of Tom Sawyer. Now, a first edition of Mark Twain’s masterpiece can fetch a high price, but this copy won’t because the pages are torn. This is no setback to the unscrupulous bookman. He hires a “sophisticator” to remove the binding from the damaged first edition as well as a later edition of the same novel with pristine pages. Then, the sophisticator inserts those pages from the later edition between the cover of the first edition. Next, he re-binds the first edition. Voila! The dealer is ready to sell an immaculate Tom Sawyer, and not knowing any better, collectors would pay handsomely for the hybrid.
You could confect a first edition by this method—or you could just steal it. Many of Book Row’s hard-to-find titles had been pilfered from the very institutions that were meant to make them available to the public. In the words of one book thief, American libraries were “perpetual springs, always filling and always overflowing.” Most Book Row proprietors handled stolen goods at one time or another, whether wittingly or not. In the most heinous cases, dealers recruited thieves and provided them with lists of books to be stolen. Their sticky-fingered minions dutifully plundered libraries in New York and New England, traveling as far as Boston for the job. The average library heist was a far cry from cat burglary, partly because libraries had low security. In most cases, the thief walked in like any other patron, swiped a few volumes right off the shelves, tucked them into an oversized overcoat, and headed for the exit. It might be necessary to outrun the occasional librarian or security guard, but otherwise minimal exertion was needed. An efficient thief could hit as many as three libraries in a single day. Then, it was back to Book Row, where they earned in the neighborhood of two dollars per book. In special cases, they might secure a commission of up to five percent of the resale value.
It was simple enough to steal from libraries, but the crime was not without challenges. To begin with, there were library marks. These stamps were specific to each institution and typically came in one of three varieties: ink, embossing, or perforation. Such markings could expose an item as stolen—libraries seldom discarded rare books—and also lowered its resale value. Booksellers were therefore keen to remove them whenever possible. A majority of libraries imprinted their books with a simple ink stamp, which was easily enough eradicated with bleach and other chemicals.
The Architect of the Al Aaraaf Affair
While it was not uncommon for a dealer to commission the theft of a rare book, few would dare steal one as rare as Poe’s Al Aaraaf. The architect of the 1931 caper answered to the name of Harry Gold. The son of a single mother, Gold was born and bred in the Lower East Side, a slum with a sizable immigrant population. The WPA Guide for tourists to New York lamented the “subhuman conditions” of his neighborhood, declaring that its “two square miles of tenements and crowded streets magnify all the problems of big city life. . . .. Crowded, noisy, squalid in many of its aspects, no other section of the city is more typical of New York.” Amid the squalor and hardship of his early years, Gold discovered an escape in fiction. He dreamed of becoming a doctor as he neared adulthood but lacked the financial wherewithal to pursue that career. Disappointed, he found a way forward in the world of letters yet again. In the words of Travis McDade, author of the excellent Thieves of Book Row, “success in the book trade seemed like it could be had by anyone with a bit of know-how and a very small stake of money. For Harry Gold, who had exactly that, the idea [of joining the industry] was particularly beguiling.” In 1925, Gold opened his first shop at 98 Fourth Avenue, christening his venture the Aberdeen Book Company. He fashioned his own bookshelves with sturdy Maine lumber and filled them with volumes that he bought on the cheap—just one dollar could purchase a carload.
It was not long before he earned a reputation as one of the most disreputable bookmen in the business. Not only did he traffic in illegal erotica, but he also made frequent and brazen recourse to thievery. Ever on the lookout for up-and-coming talent, he would sit on a tall chair near the front door and scrutinize potential customers—and thieves. If he caught a thief in the act, he seldom if ever turned them over to the authorities. Instead, Gold invited the culprit to steal for him. He would type up lists of high-value titles from the trade publication, Book Prices Current, and distribute them to his operatives, directing them to locate those books and steal them from libraries. Other times, he ripped out pages from bookseller catalogues and highlighted listings to be acquired in like fashion. Gold relied on thieves more than ever after the stock market meltdown of 1929. The Great Depression hit Book Row hard, with countless New Yorkers unable to afford books like they had before, especially luxury items like first editions. With less money coming in, Gold had less to spend. It was more profitable to sell stolen books than to do honest business, so that’s what Gold did. By all accounts, he slept just fine at night.
In 1930, Gold recruited a thief by the name of Samuel Raynor Dupree. Dupree had recently settled in New York, having grown up in Pinetown, North Carolina, a farming village that could not have differed more from the metropolis. The North Carolinian made his home in Central Park, where penniless locals moved en masse after suffering eviction in the wake of the crash. As they arrived in greater numbers, chimneyed shacks sprang up to form shanty towns. Dupree encountered plenty of paupers, but then there were Paul and Swede. They dressed sharply and always seemed to have money in their pockets. Curious about what they did for a living, the southerner sidled up and asked one day. Paul and Swede made no secret of their livelihood: they stole books, from up and down Manhattan. It seemed like a lucrative, low-stress gig, and Dupree wanted in. Paul and Swede took him on as an apprentice. Over the next few weeks, they nicked books from here and there—never anything of much value—and the neophyte took a liking to the lifestyle.
In December 1930, Paul and Swede introduced Dupree to Harry Gold, the crook who had introduced them to book theft. Dupree tagged along with the more experienced thieves to the Aberdeen Book Company, and he watched as Gold paid Paul and Swede for the loot they had brought him. Mid-transaction, Gold looked up and asked Dupree, “Don’t you have anything?” Not right now, the North Carolinian stammered in reply. But he might later. Eager to play Fagin to another Oliver Twist, Gold beckoned him over and pulled out a Midtown bookdealer’s catalogue. He pointed at a title—The Man of Property, a novel by John Galsworthy—and told him he wanted a copy. Once he had the book, the shop-owner instructed, Dupree was to take a cab to Book Row rather than walk or ride the subway. Gold passed him two dollars to cover the fare. He did so less out of concern for Dupree’s comfort than for the safety of the stolen merchandise. Prohibition might have been the law of the land in 1930, but there were currently twice as many places to buy liquor in New York than there had been before the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment. Gold did not want his latest recruit swinging by a speakeasy and running his mouth about what he had done, nor did he want him negotiating a higher price from a competitor. It was better for Dupree to hail a cab and head straight for the Aberdeen. Dupree had received his first assignment, and he completed it to his employer’s satisfaction. A much bigger—and more audacious—job lay just around the corner. We’ll hear Gold masterminded the Al Aaraaf affair after a quick break.
The Exploding Value of Al Aaraaf
It was a snowy afternoon in late December when Harry Gold summoned his trio of thieves—Paul, Swede, and Dupree—to a neighborhood café. He had big plans: he wanted them to steal three books from the New York Public Library: a first edition of The Scarlet Letter, another first edition of Moby-Dick, and—rarest of all—a copy of Al Aaaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems by Edgar Allan Poe.
You know an author’s legit when people still care about his most mediocre writing even decades after his death. Poe’s literary career began with Tamerlane and Other Poems in 1827, which he published anonymously, referring to himself as only “a Bostonian.” He was wise to withhold his name. Tamerlane was just plain bad, but to be fair, it was written by a temperamental teenager, between bouts of gambling and weekend benders at the University of Virginia, so maybe the joke is on us for expecting any better. Though still flawed, the follow-up to Tamerlane showed greater promise. Published in 1829, it bore the title Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. It recycled several poems from the earlier collection but also included several new verses. The most compelling new addition was titled “Al Aaraaf,” named for a supernova discovered by astronomers in the sixteenth century. Poe refers to the astral body as a “wandering star” that “burst forth, in a moment, with a splendor surpassing that of Jupiter.” In November 1829, Baltimore, Hatch & Dunning agreed to print a run of just 250 copies of Poe’s sophomore effort. Reviews were mixed. In the Ladies’ Magazine, one critic opined, “It is very difficult to speak of these poems as they deserve. A part are exceedingly boyish, feeble, and altogether deficient in the common characteristics of poetry; but then we have parts, and parts too, of considerable length, which remind us of no less a poet than [Percy] Shelly [sic].” Like most of us, happily, Poe improved with practice, helping to popularize the modern detective story with tales like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” while also penning important poems such as “The Raven.” Despite these accomplishments, Poe never achieved renown in his lifetime. It was not until after his death in 1849 that critics recognized him as one of America’s literary luminaries.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, Poe’s juvenilia ranked among the most sought-after rare books in the United States. His fame and the scarcity of his early works increased their desirability, sure, but that was only part of it. A body of rich lore also added to the aura of excitement that surrounded these writings. Early Poes had a way of turning up in rubbish heaps, long forgotten and rescued from obscurity by savvy bookdealers, who in turn sold them at a colossal profit. As McDade reveals, many of the legends about these lucky finds stemmed from a 1925 article in the Saturday Evening Post, titled “Have You a Tamerlane in Your Attic?” The story came to the attention of an impecunious old woman named Ada Dodd. A resident of Worcester, Massachusetts, she lived in “two poor rooms with her elderly sister.” After reading the write-up in the Saturday Evening Post, Dodd thought, “Eh, what the hell?” and went to see if she had a Tamerlane in her attic. Turns out she did. Heeding the advice of a local librarian, she visited Boston to meet with a bookseller. “I understand this is a very rare book,” she told him. “I should like to sell it.” After confirming the text’s authenticity, the dealer scouted out a buyer, a former lawyer and lover of books who had amassed a great fortune. Dodd walked away with a lottery jackpot of $14,000, roughly $460,000 in today’s currency. Accounts of such miraculous discoveries abounded in the book trade, playing to the advantage of criminal fences like Harry Gold. If they commissioned the theft of a Tamerlane, they could claim to have found it in an attic or an outhouse or whatever. That sort of thing happened, and many a potential buyers would choose to believe it.
By about 1920, Al Aaaraaf was known as the most elusive of Poe’s writings, even more so than Tamerlane. In 1928, rare book collector and dealer A.S.W. Rosenbach purchased a copy for $10,000. He turned around and sold it the very next year for $33,000, something like $600,000 in modern currency. Nobody would pay quite that much for Al Aaraaf in Depression-era New York, but they would pay well enough, and twell enough was good enough for Harry Gold.
He and his underlings set about plotting. The heist would unfold in the Reserve Book Room, on the third floor of the NYPL. Nicking these novels would not be as simple as grab-and-dash. Several lines of defense shielded them and other priceless works from the would-be thief. Only librarians could access the stacks, which were kept locked behind massive metal doors at all times, even during regular hours of operation. Two librarians patrolled the Reserve Book Room, ensuring that visitors abided by the rules and keeping an eye out for suspicious activity. In the words of Travis McDade, “There was not then (and is not now) a more effective means of discouraging theft than an attentive librarian. And the RBR employed two.”
If the thieves could manage to obtain the books, they needed to leave the library—and fast. They would have to exit of the Reserve Book Room on the southern side of the building, turn toward the east, and traverse about thirty yards before reaching the main hallway. From there, they would walk—or sprint, if needed—half a football field to the stairs, snaking their way through patrons and library staff. The staircase would take them more or less directly to the exit. Though simple on paper, the plan could go wrong in any number of ways. For instance, the hard marble flooring of the NYPL would amplify noise, alerting security guards to fast, heavy footfalls or the shouts of bystanders. Confronted with signs of even the slightest disturbance, watchmen would be waiting to capture the thieves when they came down the stairs.
The New York Public Library Heist
Whether because he had shown a knack for stealing books or because Gold considered him expendable, Dupree took the lead in the Al Aaraaf affair. First thing was first: Dupree would need to gain the trust of the librarians. In January, he became a habitue of the Reserve Book Room, requesting rare books on a regular basis and taking them out under the pseudonym Lloyd Hoffman. He typically asked to examine works of early Americana, passing himself off as a student of that genre. As he stooped over the tomes he had requested, however, he was less interested in scrutinizing the text than identifying the library’s every weakness. Soon enough, he noticed that you could make requests at two locations. Option One required two steps. First, you filled out a form in General Circulation, in “the great rustling oaken silence of the reading room.” Then, you picked it up in the Reserve Book Room. Option Two was more direct. You filed your requests inside the Reserve Book Room, and a librarian retrieved them. Dupree also noted which librarians were working and when, as well as the ebb and flow of other patrons. If Dupree wanted any hope of escape, it was imperative to strike with few witnesses present.
Dupree was given to understand that two librarians oversaw the Reserve Book Room. This at first appeared to be the case. Even when one stepped out for lunch, another filled in from a different part of the NYPL. Yet Dupree discerned a fatal flaw in scheduling. Due to a weekend staffing shortage, there was a window from 1:00-1:30 on Saturday afternoons when only a single librarian was there. The Reserve Book Room was thus most vulnerable during this time. Saturdays were more crowded than weekdays, no doubt about it, but that was a risk Dupree would have to take. After a few days of reconnaissance, Dupree was ready to purloin Al Aaraaf.
On January 10, 1931, joined by Paul and Swede, Dupree ascended the granite stairs leading to the entrance of the NYPL. The weather was favorable—for thieves, at any rate. It was cold enough that nobody would think twice about Dupree’s baggy overcoat. At the same time, there was no snow on the ground, meaning that he and the others would not have to fret about slipping as they hustled out of the library and back to Book Row.
Inside, Dupree went first to to General Circulation, where he requested Americana like he always requested: The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, and finally Al Aaraaf. While his order was being processed, he strode to the Reserve Book Room and planted his feet before a librarian’s desk. A telephone sat on either side of the workstation. As Dupree waited to receive his books, Paul and Swede looked on from the hall, a few feet away.
Within a few minutes, librarian John Elliott emerged with the books that Dupree put in for. What happened next was Swede’s idea. Thanking him for his trouble, Dupree explained that he had forgotten additional requests. He named the titles, and Elliott disappeared back into the stacks. The ruse had worked. Dupree was now alone with the books, arrayed in front of him and his for the taking. Except that Dupree could not bring himself to take them. He stood as if frozen, utterly motionless as seconds ticked by and Eliot fetched the other two books. Paul and Swede grew increasingly agitated. What was Dupree waiting for? All he had to do was pocket the volumes and beat a retreat. Swede whispered to him that it was now or never. Dupree remained paralyzed. Swede addressed him again—louder this time but not so loud as to attract attention. Still nothing. Finally, exasperated and desperate to salvage the plan, Swede walked to the table, grabbing hold of the petrified Dupree with one hand and snatching Al Aaraaf with the other—the Poe happened to be on top of the pile. Swede let go of his accomplice and vanished into the hall. Snapping out of his reverie, Dupree scooped up the other two books and hurried after him.
Out in the corridor, Dupree passed Moby-Dick over to Paul. (Quite by chance, Paul had lifted a first edition of this very novel from the English Bookshop on 55th Street just a few weeks earlier.) With the books distributed, they strode down the hallway, hung a sharp left, and hastened toward the stairs. By this time, the two more seasoned thieves had already secreted their books in their coats. Dupree followed suit. Up ahead, a crowd had gathered between them and the stairwell. The throng would slow them down, Dupree realized, but they could also act as cover if they needed to dodge security guards. Dupree hazarded a backward glance to see if anyone was in pursuit and saw to his relief that nobody was—at least not yet. His calm evaporated when he turned back around. Paul and Swede were nowhere in sight, having already melted into the mass. They had no qualms about leaving him behind, nor would they shed a tear if he were thronwn in jail. Spurred by mounting panic, he jostled his way past men and women to the stairs and bounded downward, two at a time.
Dupree was right to worry. Back in the Reserve Book Room, Eliot had wasted no time. As soon as he returned to his table and discovered young “Lloyd Hoffman” gone, he resisted the urge to give chase. Overweight and much older, he would never catch up, nor could he forgive himself if he left the area unattended again. The NYPL had security measures in place for precisely this emergency. Unbeknownst to Dupree, Eliot’s telephone had two lines, each of which connected him with a security guard. Eliot dialed and prepared to provide a physical description of the culprit. He tried both lines, and, to his horror, both were busy.
Elliot had one last hope. Holding his breath, he dialed Keyes Metcalf, chief of the stacks. Nobody knew the NYPL floorplan better than he did. It was a long shot, Elliott realized. Metcalf was not always in on Saturdays, especially during the college football season. But then, the Rose Bowl, the final game of the season, had taken place just over a week ago. Metcalf picked up. There’s been a theft, Eliot explained. Metcalf flew out of his office and in the direction of the nearest exit.
He stopped at the top of the great granite staircase and scanned Fifth Avenue. He had just enough time to spy Dupree as he sprinted out of sight, toward Fourth Avenue, his outerwear flapping behind him as he ran.
An hour or so later, Dupree took a seat opposite Harry Gold in Foltis-Fischer, a nearby restaurant. Giddy with the success of the caper, Gold paid the southerner twenty-five dollars for The Scarlet Letter. Soon thereafter, he rewarded Paul and Swede one hundred dollars each for Moby-Dick and Al Aaraaf.
Back at the NYPL, Elliot reproached himself. He bore the blame for the theft—he had left the books unsupervised. Meanwhile, Metcalf considered how to proceed. He decided against notifying the police—recovering rare books was not their forte. Instead, he made a call to the Connecticut residence of G. William Bergquist, a man whose job it was to track down book thieves.
The Handoff
G. William Bergquist had followed a long and winding path to his position as special investigator of the NYPL. He had done manual labor, served in the military, traveled as a salesman, and generally worked whatever job he could before he decided to become a librarian in his early forties. Where better to enter that career, he thought, than the NYPL? He took the first step in comically straightforward fashion. One day, he walked into Keyes Metcalf’s office—without an appointment, as far as I can tell—and declared his business. “My name is Bergquist,” he told Metcalf. “I want to be a librarian.” Thoroughly non-plussed by the stranger’s directness, Metcalf just kept talking to Bergquist. Soon, he was impressed by the sheer length and diversity of Bergquist’s résumé. Not only had he worked every job you could think of, but he had accumulated a vast reservoir of self-taught knowledge. On Metcalf’s recommendation, Bergquist applied to the NYPL’s library school, one of few such institutions in the country, and aced the entrance exams, despite little preparation or relevant experience. Within a few years, he joined the NYPL as special investigator, a detective who prevented and investigated book theft. He certainly looked the part. According to his obituary in the New York Times, “Mr. Bergquist, a white-haired man with blue eyes, had the impassiveness and the bulk . . . of the police officer, and the soft speech and love of books of the bibliophile.” By the end of his career, Bergquist had attained near-legendary status, bringing countless book thieves to justice.
At the time of the Al Aaraaf affair, he was relatively new to the position. Still, he already knew what he was doing. Two days after the heist, a Monday, he and Metcalf got together to draw up a list of potential culprits. In a testament to Bergquist’s instincts, Harry Gold sprang to mind immediately—he was one of few book dealers who were both unscrupulous and brazen enough to steal a book as dear as Al Aaraaf. Bergquist and Metcalf became more confident in their hunch that same day when who should stroll into Metcalf’s office but Harry Gold himself. He was sorry to hear that the NYPL had just lost a first edition of Moby-Dick—such a fine read, an American classic, love all the bits about the whale and whatnot. Well, he—Gold—just so happened to own a first edition of Melville’s novel, which he had purchased from the NYPL in a super legal transaction. He currently had it for sale in his shop. The last thing he wanted was for the library to suspect him, so here he was to pre-empt any doubts. Gold’s unannounced visit fed Metcalf and Bergquist’s suspicions: the heist was not yet public knowledge, so it looked fishy for him to have come forward about it.
Devising their strategy, Metcalf and Bergquist concentrated their efforts on locating Al Aaraaf. First editions of The Scarlet Letter and Moby-Dick were rare, no doubt, but it was not so unusual for them to come up for sale. Al Aaraaf, however, was in a league of its own. If a copy surfaced, it was quite probably the one stolen from the NYPL. If they could locate the Poe, they could almost certainly locate the thief. The two men reckoned that Al Aaraaf would enter the market in New York or at least nearby—maybe Philadelphia—and they wanted to be among the first to know when it did. To that end, they would need a bookdealer-ally of unimpeachable character, one they could count on to contact them as soon as he caught wind of the Poe on sale. With these criteria in mind, they phoned a noted New York dealer called Arthur Swan. He specialized in buying and selling American firsts (bookdealer lingo for “first editions”), and if anybody would know about the sudden appearance of an Al Aaraaf in town, Swan certainly would. Metcalf and Bergquist instructed the bookman to keep an ear to the ground and apprise them of any suspicious rumblings. Until then, the investigators would bide their time and wait for the culprit to make the first move.
The Rare Book Food Chain
They only had to wait about two-and-a-half months. One rainy day, in late March, bookman and writer Abe Shiffrin was shopping around on Book Row. Shiffrin owned the mid-town Academy Book Shop on 50th Street and left his father-in-law in charge while he was away. He popped into Aberdeen Book Company, owned by Harry Gold, where he was hoping to find something he could resell at a profit. At the same time, it was his wish that he could browse in peace, without interruptions from the owner of the establishment. His wish was in vain. Shortly after Shiffrin came in from the early-spring drizzle, Gold hopped off his elevated stool and sauntered over to the Midtown bookseller. Shiffrin was just the sort of man he wanted to talk to, Gold declared. Leaning in, he asked if Shiffrin “could use something good.” Against his better judgment—Shiffrin was fully aware of Gold’s propensity for selling stolen books not to mention pornography—he took the bait. The Aberdeen had made remarkable sales of late. “What do you mean something good,” Shiffrin responded. His eyebrows shot upward when Gold told him about the Poe. Shiffrin had never even seen a copy of Al Aaraaf, let alone owned one, and part of him wondered how this Book Row dealer had come by it.
How much was Gold asking?
$2,000 came the reply. That was the end of that, as far as Shiffrin was concerned. He strongly doubted he could resell the book at a higher price in the midst of the Depression. Yet Gold had other ideas. In the book trade, one dealer often sold to another. That’s what Gold tried to do to Shiffrin. But that was one of several options. A dealer could also sell a book on another dealer’s behalf, acting as a middle-man. In some cases, the intermediary would facilitate a sale to an ordinary buyer. In others, however, the go-between brokered a sale between two bookdealers in a three-link chain of bookmen. This was common practice in early twentieth-century New York, where the book trade consisted of multiple tiers. A low-end fence and dirty-picture-peddler like Harry Gold might not like his chances of selling directly to an upmarket competitor, in which case he could enlist the aid of a go-between who stood above him—Gold—on the pecking order, though perhaps underneath or even on the same level as the target buyer. That was precisely what Gold wanted from Shiffrin.
Intrigued by the proposal, Shiffrin thought he could find a buyer. The candidate in question was Harry Stone, one of the Big Apple’s biggest bookmen, and one who had sold his fair share of rare Poes. Shiffrin agreed to pitch the deal to Stone, though he reckoned he could ask for no more than $1,000. Gold could live with $1,000, so Shiffrin opened his umbrella and went back out into the light rain. When Shiffrin reached Stone, he quoted him not one but $2,000 for Al Aaraaf. If the sale went through, Shiffrin would thus keep half of the payout—$1,00o for himself and the same amount for Gold. For his part, Stone estimated that he could resell Al Aaraaf at $4,000, but this savvy businessman was not about to let on as much. Stone told Shiffrin that $2,000 was a mighty high price, especially if Stone had not laid eyes on the volume himself. He insisted on inspecting the Poe before committing to a sale.
So off Shiffrin plodded to retrieve Al Aaraaf. Back at the Aberdeen Book Company, Shiffrin promised Gold $1,000, and Gold agreed. (Not bad for a book that had cost him just $100 to procure.) Gold needed to grab the book from an off-site location, he informed Shiffrin. In the meantime, Gold suggested, Shiffrin could stretch his legs outside while he fetched the book. As usual, Gold was lying. In truth, he had locked his copy of Al Aaraaf in a safe at his store, a safe that he didn’t want Shiffrin to know about. Fifteen minutes later, as Shiffrin was eyeballing the bargain stalls outside, Gold reappeared and ushered him indoors. He gave him a glimpse of the uber-rare book before wrapping it up in drab paper—a nondescript package that never would have warranted an afterthought. Because of its value and because of where it came from, Al Aaraaf was one of the hottest books Gold had ever handled, and he was glad to be rid of it.
Shiffrin dutifully retraced his steps northward, stepping into Stone’s shop and handing over the book. To Shiffrin’s chagrin, Stone placed a receipt in his hand instead of a check. Stone had stipulated that he wanted an hour to examine the book before going through with the purchase. Shiffrin could only hope for the best as he left, weary and wet after a lot of back-and-forth in late-March showers.
After less than an hour’s inspection, Stone had doubts about the Poe’s provenance. The book showed signs of erasure, including bleach stains, and a blue oval on the reverse of the title page indicated that it had once belonged to the Lennox Library. This wasn’t a dealbreaker, but he could make sure the book was clean before moving forward. Stone sought the advice of an expert on such matters, a Manhattan seller whose name is already known to us, Arthur Swan. It was about 4:30 when Stone crossed the threshold of Swan’s shop. He produced the Poe and asked Swan’s opinion. Like Stone, Swan immediately noted the marking on the reverse of the title page and was virtually certain that he was holding the NYPL’s missing copy of Al Aaraaf.
Swan thought carefully about what to do next. On the one hand, he could end this literary game of cops-and-robbers right here and now, declaring the Poe stolen and seizing it from Stone to return to the NYPL. On the other hand, there were reasons to keep the game going. Swan considered Stone a friend and did not want to cause him any discomfiture by roping him into this mess. At the same time, if Swan returned Al Aaraaf to its proper owner, he could damage his reputation, alienating dealers who saw him as a nark. On top of all that, there was the fraught relationship between rare book vendors and public libraries. Many in Swan’s line of work felt intense animosity toward institutions like the NYPL. At the beginning of this episode, I mentioned that the NYPL inherited its original holdings from the private collections of the Astor and Lennox Libraries. These belonged to wealthy families, and when the Astors and Lennoxes donated their impressive book collections to the NYPL, they set a trend. Suddenly, it became routine for private collectors to bequeath their collections to public libraries and universities rather than selling them to the highest bidder. This development incensed rare book dealers because it meant that fewer first editions and autographed manuscripts were circulating in the market. In fact, this practice contributed to the gradual decline of the rare book trade over the course of the twentieth century. For all their resentment of public libraries and universities, rare booksellers like Arthur Swan relied on places like the NYPL to stay in business. After all, they often bought bundles of rare books from them. All that to say: many conflicting interests underpinned Swan’s thinking in this situation.
For whatever reason, Swan decided not to end the game of cops and robbers. He returned the book to Stone and informed him that it was almost certainly stolen. Then, he picked up a phone and dialed the number for the NYPL, giving Stone a nifty opportunity to get the hell out of there. On receiving his call, Metcalf and Bergquist left the library at once, hurrying northward to Swan’s bookshop as Stone hastened in the opposite direction. When Metcalf and the special investigator turned up at Swan’s and learned that Stone was long gone, they groaned and hurried back outside, splashing through puddles as darkness fell across the city. When they walked through the door of Stone’s establishment, they heard with dismay that he had given the book back to Shiffrin. When they made it to Shiffrin’s place, they learned that he had given it back to Gold. When they came to a stop in front of the Aberdeen Book Company, they found it shuttered and dark inside, the proprietor nowhere in sight. They had come so close to recovering the Poe, but all they could do now was traipse back to the NYPL, empty-handed.
They paid a visit to the Aberdeen Book Company the very next morning and met with a story that neither of them believed. “You want to know about that book, don’t you?” Gold asked. “A very peculiar thing,” he continued. “I had no sooner opened the store this morning when the fellow who left the book with me on consignment came in. I said to him, see here, there is something phony about that book.” According to Gold, this fellow went by the name of “Smith” and hailed from Canada. “He pronounced his A’s with a broad ‘ah,’” he added, fleshing out the falsehood. Bergquist guessed—and guessed correctly—that Al Aaraaf lay just a few feet from where they were talking, tucked away in Gold’s safe. Unfortunately for Bergquist, he lacked the authority to search the premises. More than a year would pass before he had another chance to recover the Poe. We’ll hear what happened after a quick break.
The Sting
In 1932, G. William Bergquist resolved that Harry Gold would go down with several of his fellow criminal fences. The special investigator collaborated with several library and Columbia University officials along with members of local law enforcement to targer three egregious book thieves—Charles Romm, Ben Harris, and (last but not least) Harry Gold. After visiting numerous stores and interviewing thieves to ascertain which stolen volumes were where, the library-crimefighters broke into three groups. Each subgroup would show up at a different one of the wanted men’s shops at the same time, gather whatever incriminating evidence they could, and place the owner under arrest. One November afternoon, Bergquist and company set out from the NYPL, destined for Book Row. The raids on Charles Romm and Ben Harris’s enterprises came off beautifully—scores of books that had been stolen from Columbia University were discovered in both. But the success of this coordinated strike ended there; nimble as ever, Gold evaded the long arm of the law yet again. It’s unclear how precisely it happened, but Keyes Metcalf believed that a disgruntled former NYPL employee spotted Bergquist on his way to Book Row and tipped off Gold. By the time the detective arrived at the Aberdeen, all stolen property had been cleared from the premises.
Both Charles Romm and Ben Harris went to trial, in that order. Many who paid attention to the proceedings did not expect the defendants to face meaningful consequences if convicted—largely because book theft was widely considered a minor offense. Many were pleasantly surprised by the outcome. The kingpin of an interstate ring of book thieves operating throughout New York and New England, Romm pleaded guilty to a single count of larceny, under the assumption that doing so would secure a negligible punishment. Instead, he got slapped with a sentence of to up to three years in Sing Sing, a prison notorious for its appalling conditions. When the overlord of book theft begged for clemency on account of his age, the judge showed none. “Word must go out from this court to book purchasers and sellers,” he declared, “that a conspiracy such as uncovered in this case cannot continue. The libraries of New York must be protected from book thieves.”
Ben Harris had struck a similar plea deal, also in the belief that the court would merely slap him on the writst. When he heard about the judgment against Romm, however, he feared that he had made a severe miscalculation; he had no reason to count on leniency. Sure enough, he was sentenced to up to three years in Sing Sing, just like Romm. Harris might as well have slept in a sarcophagus—his cell was that cramped—and the bookish convict hungered for intellectual stimulation that was nowhere to be found in this penitentiary. Even before his sentencing, Harris started racking his brains for ways to alleviate his suffering and quickly hit upon a viable solution: he would help Bergquist recover Al Aaraaf. Like others in the industry, Harris knew that Gold had it. He also understood that Gold would not part with it out of the kindness of his heart, to help a fellow bookman get out of jail. Gold wanted to sell it without legal consequences. This left Harris with a single option: he would just have to buy Al Aaraaf.
This was easier said than done. If the incarcerated Harris approached Gold directly, the latter would likely suspect a trap. So Harris did what plenty of bookdealers did when they ran up against barriers in rare-book transactions: he enlisted an intermediary. His go-between was his brother, Ed, who was currently running Ben’s bookshop while he was in prison. Ben told Ed to get in touch with a guy named Oscar Chudnowsky, another unsavory bookseller, and then tell him to find out how much Gold was asking for the Poe. Ed stressed to Chudnowsky that the buyer was to remain entirely anonymous. Happy to join in, Chudnowsky broached the subject with Gold at his earliest convenience and braced himself for what he expected would be a high price. It was now late summer 1932. Eighteen months earlier, Gold had hoped to net $2,000 by selling Al Aaraaf. Now, he was prepared to ask just $425. He was clearly desperate to sell the book and be done with it all. Chudnowsky reported back to Ed Harris. Just as Abe Shiffrin had done two years earlier, Chudnowsky added an undisclosed gratuity to the asking price. He informed Ed that Gold would sell for $500. If the book was sold, Chudnowsky planned to keep the extra $75.
The Harris brothers reasoned that they could earn the sum of $500 on their own but were soon disappointed. Business was sluggish on this side of the stock market collapse, especially since their supply of stolen books had run dry. It was not long before they realized the only surefire means of raising the money would be to loop in Bergquist and the authorities. So Ed took a meeting with the special investigator at the NYPL. Bergquist had already spearheaded two failed efforts to nail Gold and regain Al Aaraaf, and the book detective had an insurmountable feeling that he would never have another opportunity beyond this one. He agreed to cooperate with Ed and Ben Harris. Together with law enforcement, Bergquist and the brothers masterminded a plan that would return the Poe to its rightful owner—the NYPL—and topple Harry Gold.
On Friday, September 2, 1932, more than a year-and-a-half after the theft of Al Aaraaf, Bergquist greeted Ed Harris, one police officer, and a representative of the district attorney at the Amalgamated Bank. There, they withdrew $500 on the city’s account, carefully recording the serial number of every single bill. Ed Harris packed the money into a satchel, tipped his hat, to the lawmen and librarians, and headed for Book Row. A few minutes later, he entered a pool hall just west of Fourth Avenue. Chudnowsky was waiting for him. Harris transferred the money to him, initiating the next phase of the operation. Chudnowsky would now deliver the bundle to Gold. Little did Chudnowsky know that representatives of both the NYPL and the police department were trailing him—Bergquist had thought it best not to let him in on their little scheme. As Chudnowsky neared the Aberdeen Book Company, the special investigator kept his distance from Book Row—he was recognizable on sight, and if he was seen in the vicinity, tongues would start wagging. If Gold heard about it, he might call off the sale.
Chudnowsky carried his package into Aberdeen, followed a few minutes later by Charles Shaw, a reference librarian who was tasked with keeping an eye on Chudnowsky. Shaw pretended to browse for a few minutes, eavesdropping as the transaction unfurled. Then, he exited the shop to examine the stalls outside. For whatever reason, he kept glancing up from the tables and through the window, as if trying to catch Chudnowsky’s eye. Known around the neighborhood for his preternatural attentiveness, Gold immediately keyed into Shaw’s behavior. It gave Gold the jitters, but he pressed on with the sale, nonetheless.
A minute or two later, Chudnowsky came out of the Aberdeen Book Company, went to a street corner, and then just . . . stood there. Shaw waited for his next move. After loitering for a few moments, Chudnowsky headed to a public telephone and made a call. This was not at all expected, and Shaw wasn’t sure whether Chudnowsky had Al Aaraaf yet. It was not until later that the cause of the phone call came to light. Chudnowsky was using this interval to separate seventy-five of the $500 he had received from Ed Harris, his unofficial commission, into another coat pocket. A quarter-hour later, Chudnowsky went back into the Aberdeen Book Company, presented Gold with the $425, and accepted Al Aaraaf in return. He tucked it under his arm like it was nothing but a copy of the New York Times and, bidding farewell to Gold, headed up Fourth Avenue to Ben Harris’s bookshop. There, he reunited with Ed and delivered the Poe. Pleased to have served his purpose, Chudnowsky was shocked and perhaps anxious when Shaw and a police officer came through the door. It was news to him, but he had been working for the NYPL and the police all along. Thanks to his part in this operation, Ben Harris was paroled in December 1933.
At long last, Bergquist and company had Al Aaraaf. But they did not yet have Gold. Moments after seeing Chudnowsky out the door, the inveterate crook closed shop and went right home, sensing that a storm was on the horizon. He stayed away for another four days, and when he finally came back, Bergquist was waiting. The special investigator quizzed the dealer about Al Aaraaf, and Gold played dumb, even denying any recollection of that Canadian, Mr. Smith, with the broad A’s.
Nice try—a grand jury indicted him on September 8. Gold lawyered up, perfectly aware that he would need a a top-dog attorney to secure an acquittal. He faced two charges: first, grand larceny and second, that he “feloniously did buy, receive, conceal, withhold and aid in concealing and withholding, the said defendant then and there well knowing the said goods, deeds and personal property to have been feloniously stolen.” The prosecution paid little attention to the first charge and concentrated instead on the second. The trial took a week—longer than most expected, considering Gold’s overwhelming guilt—but ended with a victory for the people of New York and the NYPL. Gold was convicted of the one charge and was sentenced to between two and four years at Sing Sing. Slippery as ever, though, Gold appealed on a technicality, arguing in part that the prosecution had failed to prove that he knew the Poe had been stolen when he bought it. Re-examining the case, the court of appeals shared his view, and just six months into his stint in prison, Gold went free. Bergquist, Metcalf, and all their allies who had worked so hard to hold Gold to account were outraged.
Outraged, but not finished. Prosecutors sought a retrial. These proceedings amounted to almost an exact repeat of the first trial—with at least one essential exception. The prosecution could now establish that Gold had known he was selling stolen goods. Remember Samuel Raynor Dupree, the twenty-something southerner who had taken part in the Al Aaraaf caper? Well, he hadn’t changed much since we last saw him. In fact, right about the time an appellate court was ruling in Gold’s favor, Dupree was getting arrested for book theft at the Madison Book Store. (Dupree had expressed remorse about aiding in the Al Aaraaf heist shortly after it happened, but he had evidently overcome any misgivings he had about stealing.) Dupree had already served time by this point, and he, like most people, did not have taste for incarceration. He was more than happy to play the jailhouse snitch and testify against Gold if it would keep him out of prison. Prosecutors agreed, and before Gold knew it, a jury had convicted him on June 27, 1934. Based on the time that Gold had already served in Sing Sing, the judge sentenced him to between one and two additional years in prison.
Sadly, Gold hardly broke a sweat outrunning his prison conviction. As soon as he completed his sentence, he went right back to 95 Fourth Avenue and kept selling ill-gotten goods at the Aberdeen Book Company. Business was stellar, better than before. He stayed on Book Row for more than two decades, changing locations every now and again. In 1961, he transitioned northward to a four-story building that was ten blocks south of the NYPL, a sizable property that only a prosperous businessman could have afforded. In the mid-1970s, he left New York for North Carolina, where he passed away in 1990.
Bergquist, meanwhile, fought the good fight at the NYPL for the better part of three decades, hunting down thieves and training his protégé, William Mahoney, himself a reformed book thief. Bergquist died of a heart condition in 1967.
Al Aaraaf outlived both Gold and Bergquist. When it finally went home to the NYPL, almost three-and-a-half years after the heist, it had sustained minor damages. In October 1934, the library arranged for repairs, including a trip to the NYPL bindery, whence it returned with a comely, dark-blue, goatskin binding. Once reshelved, Al Aaraaf was not to leave anytime soon. It still resides in the rare books collection of the NYPL’s flagship location, where you can read it to this very day. And rest assured: a librarian will be watching.
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