Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

When the young woman failed to appear at home for dinner, there was a little irritation, but no concern. Her family decided that she had probably come across friends and forgotten to telephone her intention of dining out. But when midnight came, and there was still no word from the young woman, her father began to feel uneasy and communicated by telephone with the homes of various friends, where his daughter might have been visiting. When he failed to discover her in this way, Mr. Arnold consulted with his personal attorney, and a search was begun.

The reader is asked to note that there was no public announcement of the young woman’s absence for more than six weeks. Just why it was considered wise to proceed discreetly and privately cannot be more than surmised. This action on the part of her family has always been considered suggestive of a well-defined suspicion and a determination to prevent its publication. At any rate, it was not until January 26, that revelation was made to the newspapers, at the strong urging of W. J. Flynn, then in charge of the New York detectives.

In those six weeks, however, there had been no idleness. As soon as it was apparent that the girl could not be merely visiting, private detectives were summoned, and a formal quest begun. Her room and its contents revealed nothing of a positive character. She had left the house in a dark-blue tailored suit, small velvet hat and street shoes, carrying a silver-fox muff and satin bag, probably containing less than thirty dollars in money. Her checkbook had been left behind; nor had there been any recent withdrawals of uncommon amounts. No part of the girl’s clothing had been packed or taken along; none of her more valuable jewelry was missing; no letter had been left, and nothing pointed to preparation of any sort.

A search of her correspondence revealed, however, a packet of letters from a man of a well-known family in another city. When, somewhat later, Mr. Arnold was summoned by the district attorney and asked to produce the letters, he swore that they had been destroyed, but added that they contained nothing of significance.

It developed, too, that, while her parents were in Maine in the preceding autumn, Dorothy Arnold had gone to Boston on the pretext of visiting a school chum, resident in the university suburb of Cambridge; whereas she had actually stopped at a Boston hotel and had pawned about five hundred dollars’ worth of personal jewelry with a local lender, taking no trouble, however to conceal her name or home address. It was shown that the man of the letters was registered at another Boston hotel on the day of Dorothy’s visit; but he denied having seen her or been with her on this occasion, and there was no way of proving to the contrary. The date of this Boston visit was September 23, about two and a half months before Miss Arnold’s disappearance. The police were never able to establish any connection between the Boston visit, the pawning of the jewels, and the subsequent events, so that the reader must rely at this point upon his own conjecture.

Before the public was made acquainted with the vanishment of the young heiress, both her mother and brother and the man of the letters had returned from Europe, and the latter took part in the search for her. He disclaimed, from the beginning, all knowledge of Miss Arnold’s plans, proclaimed that he knew of no reason why she should have left home, announced that he had considered himself engaged to marry her, and he pretended, at least, to believe that she would shortly appear. Needless to say, a close watch was secretly maintained over the young man and all his movements for many months. In the end, however, the police seemed satisfied that he knew no more than any one else of Dorothy Arnold’s possible movements. He dropped out of the case almost as suddenly as he had entered it.

In the six weeks before the public was acquainted with the facts, private detectives, and later the public police, had worked unremittingly on the several possible theories covering the case. There were naturally a number of possibilities: First, that the girl had met with a traffic accident and been taken unconscious to a hospital; second, that she had been run down by some reckless motorist, killed, and carried off by the frightened driver and secretly buried; third, that she had been kidnapped; fourth, that she had eloped; fifth, that she had been seized by an attack of amnesia and was wandering about the country, unable to give any clew to her identity; sixth, that she had quarreled with her parents and chosen this method of bringing them to terms by the pangs of anxiety; seventh, that she had been arrested as a shoplifter and was concealing her identity for shame.

As the weeks went by, all these ideas were exploded. The hospitals and morgues were searched in vain; the records of traffic accidents were scanned with the utmost care; the roadhouses and resorts in all directions from the city were visited, and their owners closely questioned. Cemeteries and lonely farms were inspected, the passenger lists of all departing ships examined, and later sailings observed. The authorities in European and other ports were notified by cable, and the captains of ships at sea were informed by wireless, now for the first time employed in such a quest. The city jails and prisons were visited and every female prisoner noted. Similar precautions were taken in other American cities, where the hospitals, infirmaries, and morgues were also subjected to search. Marriage-license bureaus, offices of physicians, sanitariums, cloisters, boarding schools, and all manner of possible and impossible retreats were made the objects of detective attention—all without result.

The notion that the girl might have been abducted and held for ransom was discarded at the end of a few weeks, when no word had come from possible kidnappers. The thought of a disagreement was dismissed, with the most emphatic denials coming from all the near and distant members of Miss Arnold’s family. The idea of an elopement also had to be discarded after a time, and so also the theory of an aphasic or amnesic attack.

After the police finally insisted on the publication of the facts and the summoning of public aid, and after the various early hypotheses had one and all failed to stand the test of scrutiny and time, various more and more fantastic or improbable conjectures came into currency. One was that the girl might have been carried off to some distant American town or foreign port. Another was that some secret enemy, whose name and grievance her parents were loath to reveal, had made away with the young woman, or was holding her to satisfy his spite. The public excitement was nigh boundless, and ingenious fabulations or diseased imaginings came pouring in upon the harried police and the distracted parents with every mail.