A NEW YORK MYSTERY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 245, 6 March 1913, Page 7

A NEW YORK MYSTERY.

gii;l disappears. More ilia 11 ;i year li:is passed since Miss Dorothy Arnold dropped out of sight. Perhaps the fame of that case has bv this time readied to the remotest corners of the world. Certainly it is doubtful if it lias failed to reach to every city iu Europe, and few indeed uni>t be the Americans who have not heard of it. Never in the police annals of New York lias there been quite such a bafiling problem for the detectives as that presented by the disappearance of this girl. Dorothy Arnold was the. daughter of a wealthy man, who lived in one of the most extensive quarters in New York City in a line house just, oil' first Avenue, east of the .Park. She was a handsome, clever, attractive girl, moving among cultured people, and a graduate of the best girls' college in America. One morning in early winter she went out for a walk down Fifth Avenue, saying she would return in good time for luncheon. So far as is known she was never seen again. No plausible explanation could he advance/l to account for her disappearance, and ,-iircly she was one of the last girls in the world to indulge in any sensational escapade that would bring unpleasant 110toriel v upon herself and her family, ft has often been asserted that the world has become too small for anybody to drop out of sight without leaving any clue behind. Hut, however popular this notion had become in police circles, it was entirely upset by the Arnold all'air. Tt has been shown that in spite of a world-wide search, assisted by the newspapers of every large city in America and Europe, as well as by a large amount of money spent upon private detectives, that it is possible for a girl to drop out of sight, leaving no more of a clue to her whereabouts than a pebble one tosses into-the sea. Surely there is nothing so popular in all the newspaper sensationalism of- the day as a mystery that cannot ibe solved, Fourteen months have passed since Dorothy Arnold walked down the Avenue and out of sight, the hue and cry has subsided somewhat, the police long ago got tired of talking about the all'air. gradually it dropped out, of the columns of the press, yet the public has never grown tired of this amazing story. One still hears it discussed in clubs and at dinners dav after day, and from dozens of places in this country and abroad the police are continually receiving reports that the missing girl has at last been found. A few months ago it was the custom to give such reports serious attention, but as time wore on and they were all found to be without foundation in fact, even the newspapers scorned them. The prevailing opinion is that Dorothy Arnold is dead. Of course, if that is so. the mystery in all probability will never be cleared up.—New York correspondent of Lvttelton Times.