“I know what I’m going to do. Go back to those newspaper accounts. And if there’s anything in ’em to find, I’ll find it!”
“Like any help?”
“No, thanks. I work faster and better alone.”
He took me back to the Comet building.
20
IN THE COMET LIBRARY, I found, as I should have known, that my book had disappeared. I had to hunt for it all over again. I found it, finally, on a chair under a pile of papers. The librarian was so startled by my finding it again that he stood blinking at me in admiration for as long as I noticed him.
I went back to where I’d left off: May twenty-eighth. So far, the news accounts had been burgeoning; now they shrank.
The May twenty-eighth Comet relegated the story to column one on the left, though it was still a big story.
MOTHER FEARS MISSING GIRL DEAD
Rose Liberry Now Missing Five Days; Hunt Continues
The account below was one of continued, hopeless searching, the parents anguished, the police indifferent, but taking all the publicity they could get.
The story stayed that way. For two entire weeks the Liberry missing girl mystery held a place, slipping from column one to the middle of page one; going back to column one again after a false report that the girl had been found in a carnival. Then it slipped to page two, to page five. Like all mysteries, the accounts became more and more meager, the refrain left unchanging: Rose Liberry still missing.
The Comet for June twenty-first was the first one to hold no news of the story. During that whole ensuing week the paper was bare of the references I sought.
I stood up to ease the cricks in my back. Ruefully I looked at my hands; they were blacker than ever. The librarian behind me wandered aimlessly to and fro; occasionally a lanky boy came in with a pile of pictures or clippings.
But I was too hungry for what I sought to pay attention to the workings of the library. Quickly I thumbed through the papers for the remaining days of June 1919. My excitement grew as I took up the paper for July 1, 1919.
July. That was the month Mr. Waller’s note was dated for. The date that had aroused Lieutenant Strom. Swiftly but carefully I went over the pages. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. One complete paper after another. Daily editions. Sunday editions with the same comics as today.
Then, at the bottom of a column on a first page, my eye caught a tiny item.
GIRL KILLS SELF
Miss Ethel Smith, residing at 417 St. Simon Street, was found dead in her room this morning by a fellow lodger. It was reported to police that Miss Smith had committed suicide by hanging.
Was that nothing, too? I looked to the date at the top of the page.
July 8, 1919. The day for which Mr. Waller’s note was dated!
Hands trembling, I lifted over that entire paper to expose the Comet for July ninth.
I’d been expecting it; I’d known it. But even then, it came at me with some of the sick shock the residents of Gilling City, the state, and the whole country must have felt eighteen years ago, when that story broke. Again Rose Liberry’s grave face looked out at me from the page; the picture was thrice the size it had been in the Comet of May twenty-sixth. The headline flared, black and heavy:
FATHER IDENTIFIES SUICIDE AS MISSING ROSE LIBERRY
Girl Dead Under Mysterious Circumstances
Police Push Investigation
Mr. John G. Liberry, of Cincinnati, has found his daughter Rose, for whom he has been searching ever since she disappeared on May 23.
He found her this morning in the city morgue.
She was dead. A suicide.
Ever since that fateful day when she disappeared seven weeks ago, Mr. Liberry has sought her relentlessly. Every day he has visited the hospitals, the jails, the hotels, the morgue.
Detectives in his pay have fine-combed the city.
This morning word came to him that the body of a dark-haired young girl had been brought into the morgue. In pursuance of his search, now a hopeless routine, he went to see her face.
It was his Rose at last. His long-lost Rose.
Dead.
A suicide.
Father Breaks Down
For the first time since her disappearance, the father broke. He was seen by reporters in the morgue office, sobbing incoherently, crying for his Rose.
Word was immediately taken to Miss Rachel Staines, aunt of the unfortunate girl. She appeared stunned. It was from her home, 1128 Cleveland Avenue, that the girl disappeared.
It was not possible to inform the mother, who has been confined to a hospital for the past three weeks as a result of the prolonged anxiety over her missing daughter. Hospital attendants say the mother’s condition is serious.
Hartigan Tenders Sympathy
Upon being informed of the identification, Chief of Police Hartigan expressed his great surprise at the turn events have taken. “My sympathy goes out to the grief-stricken father and mother of Rose Liberry,” he said. “I realize what a heavy additional grief the manner and circumstances of her death must be to them.”
Investigation Promised
Chief Hartigan then outlined plans for investigating the suicide. “Every effort will be made,” he said, “and you may quote my exact words, to find out if Miss Liberry committed suicide of her own free will, or whether any person or circumstances induced her to do so. An investigation will be made of the lodgings at 417 St. Simon Street, in which Miss Liberry’s body was found. I understand Miss Liberry has been living there as Miss Ethel Smith, though her reason for taking the alias is not known. I understand the proprietress of this lodging house is a Mrs. Garr. You may rest assured charges will be brought against anyone whom we find culpable in the matter.”
Reporter Visits Suicide Scene
With only thirty minutes to go before press time, a Comet reporter was hurried to 417 St. Simon Street. There he
