Miss Elizabeth Baxter was the only daughter of D. B. Baxter, who was vaguely described as a “well-known Wall Street man.” She had left her father’s apartment in the Antonia one morning, to go to her dressmaker; and she had telephoned to her maid, two hours later, that she would not be home for luncheon. She had not returned for dinner either. Nor for the night. Next morning, private detectives, secretly employed by her father and her fiancé, had started on her trail, and by the end of two weeks they had found that she had been to her dressmaker’s at ten o’clock in the morning; that she had bought a novel in a Fifth Avenue bookshop at half-past eleven; that she had telephoned at a quarter to twelve from a candy store where she had bought a box of chocolates; that when she left the candy store, she disappeared “as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed her.” No trace of her had been found. No word had come from her. At the end of two weeks, her frightened parent appealed to the police, and the police
