At the age of sixteen the friends had written a book together. ‘A Death on the El,’ they had called it. They had finished it during the Christmas holiday and tossed a coin to see which of them would take the manuscript to New York to get it published. Spangler, who had won the toss, tucked the manuscript under his sweater and started immediately for New York. It took him three days, hitchhiking, to get there. Meanwhile Corde, covering for Dewey, had lied to his weeping mother. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Spangler, he didn’t say where he was going.’ Uncle Harold Corde, who was living upstairs at the time, talked with Dewey’s mother and took a hand in the matter. Together they forced Corde to go to the police headquarters with them. They went there by streetcar. But even the Missing Persons Bureau was unable to break Albert down. He was already receiving letters from Dewey in New York. Dewey wrote, ‘The reader at Harcourt loves my part of the book, but he says that you should go into the hotel business with your dad. Uncle Harold, forcing open the locked drawer of Corde’s dresser, called everyone together and read Dewey’s letters to the gathered family. Corde’s mother was then dying.