2. Who Was Rudolph Fentz?
Times Square, New York, 1950: a man dressed in Victoria-era clothes and mutton-chop sideburns suddenly appears out of nowhere, looking startled. Before anybody can speak to him, he is hit by a car and instantly killed. In his pockets, he carried mint condition currency from the 1870s, a business card for an address on Fifth Avenue, a copper beer token and a letter dated June 1876. None of the documents had aged. His name was Rudolph Fentz, but who on earth was he?
His name wasn’t listed in any address books and the owners of the business at Fifth Avenue had never heard of him. His fingerprints weren’t on record. Puzzled, the NYPD Missing Persons Department finally managed to trace a Rudolph Fentz Jr, who worked in a local bank. The man, who was in his 60’s when he retired from the bank many years previously, had died five years since but his widow lived in Florida. The determined MPD tracked down the widow, who told them that her husband’s father had left his home for an evening stroll in 1876, aged 29. He was never seen again – it was, said the widow, as if he had simply disappeared into thin air.
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