Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

But the matter of Small’s fortune was still in abeyance, and there were indications of a bitter contest between the wife and Small’s two sisters, who had apparently been hostile for years. This struggle promised to bring out further facts and perhaps to reveal to the public what the family and the officials knew or suspected.

Soon after Small had vanished, Mrs. Small had moved formally to protect his property by having a measure introduced into the Dominion Parliament declaring Small an absentee and placing herself and a bank in control of the estate. This measure was soon taken, with the result that the Small fortune, amounting to about two million dollars, net, continued to be profitably administered.

Early in 1923, after Doughty had been two years in prison, and all rumor of the kidnapping or disappearance mystery had died down, Mrs. Small appeared in court with a petition to have her husband declared dead, so that she might offer for probate an informal will made on September 6, 1903. This document was written on a single small sheet of paper and devised to Mrs. Small her husband’s entire estate, which was of modest proportions at the time the will was drawn.

The court refused to declare the missing magnate dead, saying that insufficient evidence had been presented, and that the police were apparently not satisfied. Mrs. Small next appealed her case, and the reviewing court reversed the decision and declared Small legally dead. Thereupon the widow filed the will of 1903 and was immediately attacked by Small’s sisters, who declared that they had in their possession a will made in 1917, which revoked the earlier testament and disinherited Mrs. Small. This will, if it existed, was never produced.

There followed a series of hearings. At one of these, opposing counsel began a line of cross-questioning which suggested that Mrs. Small had been guilty of a liaison with a Canadian officer who appeared in the records merely as Mr. X. The widow, rising dramatically in court, indignantly denied these imputations as well as the induced theory that her misbehavior had led to an estrangement from her husband and, perhaps, to his disappearance. The widow declared that this suspicion was diametrically opposed to the truth, and that if Small were in court he would be the first to reject it. As a matter of fact, she testified, it was Small who had been guilty. He had confessed his fault to her, promised to be done with the woman in the matter, and had been forgiven. There had been a complete reconciliation, she said, and Small had agreed that one half of the million-dollar check which he received on the day of his disappearance should be hers.

To bear out her statements in this matter, Mrs. Small soon after obtained permission of the court to file certain letters which had been found among Small’s effects after his disappearance. In this manner the secret love affair in the theater magnate’s last years came to be spread upon the books. The letters presented by the wife had all come from a certain married woman who, according to the testimony of her own writings and of others who knew of the connection, had been associated with Amby Small since 1915. It appears that Mrs. Small discovered the attachment in 1918 and forced her husband to cause his inamorata to leave Toronto. The letters, which need not be reprinted here, contained only one significant strain.

A letter, which reached Small two or three days before he disappeared, concluded thus: “Write me often, dear heart, for I just live for your letters. God bless you, dearest.”

Three weeks earlier, evidently with reference to the impending close of his big deal and his retirement from active business, the same lady wrote: “I am the most unhappy girl in the world. I want you. Can’t you suggest something after the first of December? You will be free, practically. Let’s beat it away from our troubles.”

And five days later she amended this in another note: “Some day, perhaps, if you want me, we can be together all the time. Let’s pray for that time to come, when we can have each other legitimately.”

Mrs. Small declared that she had found these letters immediately after her husband’s departure, and that they had kept her from turning the case over to the police until two weeks after the disappearance. Meantime the other woman had been summoned, interrogated by the police, and released. She had not seen Small nor had she heard from him either directly or indirectly. It was apparent that, while she had been corresponding with Small up to the very week of his last appearance, he had not gone to see her.