Missing person

“ But we understand that the police are making active inquiries for any missing man who has lost the third finger of his left hand, and if any of our readers know of such a person, they are earnestly requested to communicate at once, either with us or with the authorities. ”

“ Rumors regarding this unfortunate young lady, by no means favorable to the character of her relatives as persons of humanity, had previously reached Lady Compton's ears; and she determined to avail herself, if possible, of the present opportunity to obtain a personal interview with the real or supposed lunatic. The men who had been questioned were informed that only the castle servants could be allowed to search for the missing person, either in the park or shrubberies ”

“ THEORIES ABOUT LOST PEOPLE. Over seven hundred people have been reported as missing to police headquarters during the past twelve months. Of this number, a majority have been found, it is believed, as no record can be kept of those who are not reported when found, by their relatives or friends, to headquarters. Occasionally, a person who reports some one missing, belonging to them, will give all the details about him—but, if found, will fail to notify the authorities, from a sense of shame, where domestic difficulties have occurred in families, or from laziness, or a sense of forgetfulness. ”

“ Three plainclothes men got out, displaying their badges for identification.
“We want the whole story,” they said. “So far we know nothing—except that Mary Louise Gay, of Riverside and Shady Nook, is missing.”
“We don’t know much more ourselves,” sighed Mrs. Gay. Then she proceeded to tell the story of the girl’s disappearance the preceding afternoon.
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“As far as we know, the last person who saw her alive is Rebecca Adams, a feeble-minded woman who lives over at a farm where we know that Mary Louise started to go. Nobody saw her after that.” ”

“ Even the police records showed upward of a thousand missing young girls, ranging in age from fourteen to twenty-one years and I knew that the police lists scarcely approximated the total number of missing persons in the great city, especially in those cases where a hesitancy on the part of parents and relatives often concealed the loss from public records. ”

“ Dora laughed. "That is one of your strange notions, Amy. I believe you think, that what you call being good is to make a person everything—rich, and happy, and ladylike, and beautiful."
"No, not beautiful," replied Amy; "and yet," she added, "I remember once going with mamma to see a poor woman who was very ill; and she was almost ugly, till she began to talk, and thank mamma for being kind to her, and then her face quite changed; and mamma told me it was her being so grateful and contented that made her look so nice."
"I do think, Amy, you will go out of your senses some day," said
Margaret. ”

“ Margaret's lip curled, and, in a short, contemptuous tone, she said, "There is no accounting for taste. To be sure, you have not seen many people in your life; but, for my part, I can't say I like such black beauties."
"Nor white ones either," said Dora. "I never heard you praise a pretty person yet. I don't think Emily Morton such an angel as most people do; but she is twenty times prettier than you are, Margaret, or ever will be."
"That is as others think," said Margaret, casting a self-satisfied look at herself in the glass. "We must go and prepare for dinner now." ”

“ Elegance is a gift as much as beauty."
A conscious smile passed over Margaret's countenance; she felt that one gift at least she possessed, and the sight of Miss Cunningham's plain face was more agreeable to her than ever; she was sure it must be such a contrast to her own.
"Then," said Mary Warner, "you would not advise any person to imitate the manners of another?"
"No," replied Emily; "because persons' manners ought to suit with their minds; and as all persons have different minds, so they must, to a certain degree, have different manners. ”

“ Margaret and Dora did not appear to think anything about her for some time."
"And do they now?" asked Colonel Herbert.
"I am not quite sure as to Margaret," replied Amy; "but I think Dora does, though she will not acknowledge it; and, by and by, I dare say, she will love her as I do, and then Miss Morton will be happier; for it must be very dreadful, papa, to live all by one's self, without any person to care for one."
"Who does live so, Amy? Not Miss Morton, I am sure, from your account of her."
"Yes, but indeed she does live alone very much. ”

“ And it will remain there, my dear, till the first misery of your feelings has worn off, and you can see things in a truer light. It is impossible to argue against it; or rather, no arguments which any person can use will entirely satisfy you; but you must, indeed, force yourself to turn away from it, or it will grow into a certainty, and then the whole energy of your mind will be destroyed. If we once allow ourselves to dwell too much upon the consequences even of our slightest actions, we shall be quite unfitted for the duties of life. ”

“ And thus quite unconsciously, Amy was exercising an influence for good, over the mind of a person older and cleverer than herself, merely by the quiet, unobtrusive manner in which she performed her daily duties. But as yet this made no difference in Dora's manner; she was still proud and irritable, and often most unkind at the very moment she was feeling the greatest respect, and Amy's chief pleasure at Emmerton soon arose from being with Emily Morton and little Rose. Rose, indeed, was not much of a companion ”

“ The short man had been his guard. He thought there was a third man who was bringing in reports.
There were just two dimly promising lines of investigation. First, it would surely be possible to find the house in which the boy had been held captive, for Omaha was not so large that there were many empty houses to suit the description furnished by the boy. Besides, the time at which any such house had been rented would offer evidence. It might be possible to get a clew to the identity of the kidnappers through the description of the person or persons who had done the renting. ”

“ You know what is meant by being an heir—having a right to certain property or money, which is to be received at some future period. Now, it is more than probable that your uncle with all his riches, and that poor woman in the midst of her sufferings, have both the same expectations for the future."
"Not on earth, mamma!" observed Amy.
"No, my love," replied Mrs Herbert; "but a person is not the less an heir because he will not receive his inheritance until he is admitted to heaven. ”

“ Miss Morton smiled. "I hope," she said, "you are not growing too proud to be amused; why should such a notion enter your head?"
"Miss Cunningham thinks them so," replied Amy.
"If Miss Cunningham were to exhibit them herself to any people that might choose to come and look at them," answered Miss Morton, "I should have reason to think her vulgar; but the poor conjurer is a common person who gains his livelihood by his ingenuity. There can be nothing more vulgar in his exhibition of tricks (if they are proper ones, I mean) , than in a carpenter's making a table, or a tailor's making a coat." ”

“ The expression of Mr Walton's countenance was cheerful as usual; and Amy, though very quick in perception, was not quite old enough to perceive a trace of thoughtfulness beneath it. She did notice, however, the quick, impatient glances which he cast towards the churchyard gate, and the restlessness of his manner as he paced up and down the little walk leading to it, venting his uneasiness by kicking away the leaves and broken sticks lying in his path. In another person it would not have been remarkable ”

“ The public excitement was nigh boundless, and ingenious fabulations or diseased imaginings came pouring in upon the harried police and the distracted parents with every mail.
Rumors and false alarms multiplied enormously. As the story of the young woman’s disappearance continued to occupy the leading columns of the daily papers, day upon day, the disordered fancy of the unstable elements of the population came into vigorous play. ”

“ She will not have much to do with Margaret and me; and I am nearly sure she will go."
"But not yet—you cannot mean yet?" said Amy. "I daresay it may be when you are quite grown up; but that is so far off."
"I think she will leave us at once," said Dora. "I have often heard mamma say that she had but one very great reason for keeping her; and you know that is all gone."
"Yes," said Amy, thoughtfully; "but she can teach you still."
"Mamma's notions are changed, lately, I think," replied Dora; "she does not like having a person who is a governess and no governess." ”

“ But once in the room of the missing girl, every consideration fled save that of professional pride and curiosity. For almost at first blush, I saw that whether Mrs. Daniels was correct or not in her surmises as to the manner of the girl’s disappearance, the fact that she had disappeared was likely to prove an affair of some importance. ”

“ So a notice was drawn up as follows, and the Advertiser General was instructed to have it printed and posted on all the walls some time that night, however late it might be.
NOTICE! Wereas His Majesty, King Robert the Twenty-first, has mysteriously disappeared and there is no successor to the throne, an
ELECTION OF A SUITABLE KING
will take place to-morrow at the House of Words. Each person to have one vote. Polling papers can be had of the Town Clerk and must be filled up and returned by two o’clock in the afternoon, when the Poll will be closed. ”

“ Hope dies hard; and there was always the chance that the child might make her way home again, or that I might hear of her or from her in some roundabout way; for at least her body had not been found. But after two months of utterly unsuccessful search, almost continuous by day and night, I was pretty desperate now, standing up there on the roof of the building in New York in which I had taken an apartment. ”

“ It was easy enough to understand why a missing man might have been lured away from his dwelling by some false letter or plausible message, and murdered in some secret place where his body lay buried in earth or water, for such crimes were not unfrequent. ”

“ Perhaps, in some year to come, approaching death will open the lips of one or another who knows the secret and has been sealed to silence by the fears and needs of life. But it is just as likely that the words of her dying parent contain as much as can be known of the truth about the missing Dorothy Arnold. ”

“ Motives for disappearance—Was he John Sadleir?—Swallowed up— A tragedy that came to light—How a body can be disposed of— Startling evidence—The ease of a secret burial
EVERY year a certain number of men and women disappear suddenly from their homes, from their accustomed haunts, from the circle of their friends and acquaintances. Without cause, without any reason that can be surmised, they vanish; and the fate of many of them remains an unsolved mystery to the last.
Scarcely a week passes that the newspaper reader does not see the headline "Mysterious disappearance." ”

“ By official action of the Canadian courts, Amby Small, as he was known, is dead, and his fortune has been distributed to his heirs. To the romantic speculation he must still exist, however. And whatever the fact, his case presents one of the strangest stories of mysterious absenteeism to be found upon the books.
Men disappear every day. The police records of any great city and of many smaller places bear almost interminable lists of fellows who have suddenly and curiously dropped out of their grooves and placements. Some are washed up as dead bodies—the slain and self-slain. ”

“ More seasoned officers inclined to the idea that there must have been some man, possibly one whose identity had been successfully concealed by the distraught girl. Again, as is common in such cases, there was the very general feeling that Miss Arnold’s family knew a good deal more than had been revealed either to the police or the public, and there was something about the long delay in reporting the case and the subsequent guarded attitude of the girl’s relatives that seemed to confirm this perhaps idle suspicion. ”

“ If the thousand and one noisome crannies, nooks, and dens of this great city could be exposed to view, day after day, the body of many a missing man and woman might be found festering and rotting, or their bones bleaching, for want of decent burial. ”

“ Similarly, it is a truism that, barring purposeful self-occultation, the departure of an adult human being from so crowded a thoroughfare can be set down only to abduction or to mnemonic aberration. Remembering that a crime must have its motivation, and that cases of amnesia almost always are marked by previous symptoms and by fairly early recovery, the recondite and baffling aspects of this affair become manifest; for there was never the least hint of a ransom demand, and the girl who vanished was conspicuous for rugged physical and mental health. ”

“ The following morning word of the disappearance or kidnapping had been flashed to surrounding towns and many came to aid in the search. A committee was formed of forty men familiar with the surrounding terrain. These men labored all the thirteenth and all the fourteenth. On the fifteenth of May a much larger committee undertook the work and the surrounding mountains were searched foot after foot. This work took several days. Then a cordon was thrown all about, whose members worked slowly inward, covering all the ground as they came to a center at Greeley. ”

“ As is always the case, arrests on suspicion were made of the most unlikely persons in the most impossible situations. Men, women, and children were stopped in the streets, dragged from their rooms, questioned, harried, taken to police stations, and even locked into jails for investigation, while the missing boy and his abductors succeeded in eluding completely the large army of pursuers now in the field. ”