Out of a Labyrinth

by Lawrence L. Lynch

"I will tell you how I have reasoned thus far. Experience and statistics have proved that, of all the missing people, male and female, whose dead bodies are never found, or whose deaths are never satisfactorily proven, more than three-fourths have eventually turned up alive, or it is found they have lived many years after they were numbered among the missing. In the majority of cases, say four to one, where missing persons, supposed to have been dead, are proved to be alive, it is also proved that they have 'disappeared' of their own free will. In the list of missing young girls, the police records show that two-thirds of those supposed to have been murdered or abducted, have eloped or forsaken their friends of their own free will. Let us keep in mind these statistics and begin with Nellie Ewing. Was she murdered? Was she forcibly abducted? Did she run away?"

"Umph! If she were a man I might venture an opinion," broke in Carnes.

"Let us see. She left her house at sunset, riding a brown pony, and intent, or seeming so, upon visiting her friend, Grace Ballou."

"Grace Ballou—oh!" Carnes lifts his head, then drops it again, quickly.

I note the gesture and the ejaculation, and smile as I proceed.

"She had announced her intention of spending the night with her friend Grace, but instead of so doing, she is suddenly afflicted with a headache, and, at dusk, or perhaps even later, she sets out, on her brown pony, for home, a distance of about four miles."

"Um—ah!" from Carnes.

"She is not seen after that. Neither is the brown pony. Was she murdered? If so, no trace of her body, no clue to her murderer, no motive for the deed, has been discovered. And the horse; if she was murdered, was the horse slaughtered also? And were they both buried in one grave? She was riding alone, after nightfall, over a country road. She might have been assailed by tramps or stragglers of some sort, but the first investigation proved that nothing in the form of tramp, or stranger of any sort, had been seen about Groveland, neither on that day nor for many days previous. And again, a tramp who might have killed her to secure the horse, would hardly have tarried to conceal the body so effectually that the most thorough search could not bring it to light. Nor would he have carried it with him beyond the reach of search. Was she murdered for revenge, or from motives of jealousy? Then, in all probability, the brown horse would have been found wandering somewhere at large."