Mrs. Glass came up to the porch, took one look about, and asked: “Where’s Jimmie?”
Glass looked out into the field, saw its vacancy, and surmised: “Maybe he went up the road after you.”
The road was scanned and then the field. Then the farm hand was called and questioned. He had seen the youngster crawling through a break in the fence a few minutes before, but had paid no attention.
One of the strangest of all hunts for the strangely missing of recent history had begun. This hunt, which extended over years and covered a continent, taking advantage of several modern inventions never before employed in the quest of a human being, started off with alarmed calls on neighbors and visits to the more adjacent woods, gullies, and thickets. In the course of the evening, however, the organized quest began. It is interesting to note some of the confusion that overcame the people most concerned and the little town of a hundred souls. The suspicion of abduction was not slow in forming, and the question as to who might have done the deed immediately followed. Mrs. Glass was sure that no vehicle of any sort had passed on the road going to or coming from the post office. William Losky, the farm hand who was plowing in the field, and Fred Lindloff, who was working on the road, felt sure they had seen a one-seated motor car pass down the road, occupied by one man and one woman who had a plush lap robe pulled up about their knees to protect them from the May breezes.
~~ JIMMIE GLASS ~~
Going a little farther, to the village of Bohemia, three miles down the road, a Mrs. Quick, whose house stands all of seven hundred feet back, saw a one-seated car stop, heard a child screaming, and thought she might be of assistance to some sick travelers. But the people in the car saw her approaching and at once drove off.
Still farther on, at the town of Rowlands, a Mrs. Konwickie noted a one-seated motor car with a sobbing child, a woman and two men inside, the child crouching on the floor against the woman’s knees and being covered with the same black plush lap robe.
All these testimonies came to naught, as we shall see, and I cite them only to show how unreliable is the human mind and how quickly panic and forensic imagination get hold of people and cause them to see the unseen.
On the afternoon of the twelfth a bloodhound was brought from near by—just what kind of bloodhound the record does not show. The dog was given a scent of the child’s clothing. It trailed across the field, out through the break in the fence to the far side of the road, passed a little distance into the woods, and there stopped still, whined, and quit.