Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

Constable Fortune met the Canadian officer at the train and told him his story. He had seen one of the circulars a few months earlier and had carried the images of Small and Doughty in his mind. One day he had observed a strange laborer working in a local paper mill, and he had been struck by his likeness to Doughty. The man had been there for some time and risen from the meanest work to the position of foreman in one of the shops. Fortune dared not approach the suspect even indirectly, and he failed on various occasions to get a view of the worker without his hat on. Because the picture on the circular showed Doughty bare-headed, the constable had been forced to wait until the suspected man inadvertently removed his hat. Then Fortune had sent his telegram.

Detective Mitchell listened patiently and dubiously. He had made a hundred trips of the same sort, he said. Probably there was another mistake. But Constable Fortune seemed certain of his game, and he was right.

Shortly after dusk the local officer led the detective to a modest house, where some of the mill workers boarded. They entered, and Mitchell was immediately confronted with Doughty, whom he had known intimately in Toronto.

“Jack!” said the officer, almost as much surprised as the fugitive. “How could you do it?”

In this undramatic fashion one part of the great quest came to an end.

Doughty submitted quietly to arrest and gave the officer a voluntary statement. He admitted without reservation that he had taken Canadian Victory bonds to a total of one hundred and five thousand dollars from Small’s vault, but insisted that this had been done after the millionaire had disappeared. He denied absolutely and firmly any knowledge of Small’s whereabouts; pleaded that he had never had any knowledge of or part in a kidnapping plot, and he insisted that he had not seen Small nor heard from him since half past five on the evening of the disappearance. To this account he adhered doggedly and unswervingly. Doughty was returned to Toronto on November 29, and the next day he retrieved the stolen bonds from the attic of his sister’s house, where he had made his home with his two small sons, since the death of his wife several years before.

In April of the following year Doughty was brought to trial on a charge of having stolen the bonds, a second indictment for complicity in the kidnapping remaining for future disposal. The trial was a formal and, in some ways, a peculiar affair. All mention of kidnapping and all hints which might have indicated the direction of Doughty’s ideas on the central mystery were rigorously avoided. Only one new fact and one correction of accepted statements came out. It was revealed that Small had given his wife a hundred thousand dollars in bonds to be used for charitable purposes on the day before his disappearance. This fact had not been hinted before, and some interpreted the testimony as a concealed way of stating the fact that Small had made some kind of settlement with his wife on the first of December.

Doughty in his testimony corrected the statement that he had taken the bonds after Small’s disappearance. He testified that he had been sent to the vault on the second of December, and that he had then extracted the hundred and five thousand dollars’ worth of bonds. He had not, he swore, intended to steal them, and he had no notion that Small would disappear. He explained his act by saying that Small had long promised him some reward for his many years of service, and had repeatedly stated that he would arrange the matter when the deal with the Trans-Canada Company had been concluded. Knowing that the papers had been signed that morning, and the million-dollar check turned over, Doughty had planned to go to his chief with the bonds in his hands and suggest that these might serve as a fitting reward for his contribution to the success of the Small enterprises. He later saw the folly of this action and fled.

The prosecution naturally attacked this story on the ground that it was incredible, but nothing was brought out to show what opposing theory might fit the facts. Doughty was convicted of larceny and sentenced to serve six years in prison. The kidnapping charge was never brought to trial. Instead, the police let it be known that they believed Doughty had not played any part in the “actual murder” of Amby Small, and that he had revealed all he knew. Incidentally, it was admitted that the police believed Small to be dead. That was the only point on which any information was given, and even here not the first detail was supplied. Obviously the hunt for nameless persons suspected of having kidnapped and killed Small was in progress, and the officials were being careful to reveal nothing of their information or intentions.

Doughty took an appeal from the verdict against him, but abandoned the fight later in the spring of 1921, and was sent to prison. Here the unravelling of the Small mystery came to an abrupt end. A year passed, then two years. Still nothing more developed. Doughty was in prison, the police were silent and seemed inactive. Perhaps they had abandoned the hunt. Possibly they knew what had befallen the theater owner and were refraining from making revelations for reasons of public policy. Perhaps, as was hinted in the newspapers, there were persons of influence involved in the mess, persons powerful enough to hush the officials.