“Tell me all you know,” I said.
“As I’ve said, Corla was employed as secretary to one of the executives in the Randolf Aircraft Company. She lived with another girl in an apartment. On the day of her disappearance, she seemed moody and distraught. The girl with whom she was living tried to find out what was the matter. Corla said everything was all right.
“About ten minutes past eight, on the morning of the tenth, she started for work. She showed up on the job. Her employer said she seemed the same as usual, except she was very quiet. She’d already given notice that she was going to leave as soon as they could find someone to take her place. She and Philip were going to defer their honeymoon until later. Corla was exceedingly efficient as a secretary, and her employer had tried on several occasions to get her to remain on the job. I’m mentioning this because I want you to understand how thoroughly conscientious she was in regard to her work. Even if something had happened to make her take a run-out on Philip, she wouldn’t have left her employer in the lurch.”
“Go ahead,” Bertha said.
“She took dictation until about ten o’clock, then she started transcribing. Among the letters she had taken was a very important and confidential communication, dealing with a new model plane. Also there were some interoffice memos which were important and confidential.
“Her boss stepped out of the office after he’d finished his dictation to have a brief conference with one of the other executives. The conference lasted about twenty minutes. When he returned, he noticed that Corla was not at her desk. A sheet of paper was in the typewriter. She’d started to write the first letter, but had only transcribed a few words. She’d stopped typing in the middle of a sentence.
“Her employer thought she’d gone to the restroom. He went on into his office, sat down at his desk, and started work. About fifteen minutes later, he thought of another Letter that had to go out, and pressed the buzzer for Corla. When she didn’t show up, he went out to the outer office and found things just as they were when he had come in.
“About ten or fifteen minutes later, he summoned one of the other secretaries and sent her into the restroom to see if Corla was ill. Corla wasn’t there. They’ve never found a trace of her from that time on. Her handbag was lying on her desk. There were fifty-odd dollars in it in currency, every cent the girl had in the world. She didn’t have a bank account. Her lipstick, powder, rouge, keys, everything, were in that bag.”
“The police were notified?” I asked.
“Yes. They didn’t do anything.”