by Mabel Seeley
Sixteen, wondering what life had for her.
That was when the Liberry case stopped being something dead, something past. It wasn’t dead, couldn’t be dead; this wasn’t a girl who could die foully and no ripples remain, no anger be held, no deep hatred stirred. This girl’s death would leave grief; the manner of her death would leave bitter hate.
Excitement quickened me; my eyes leaped to the day’s report.
PARENTS BELIEVE GIRL KIDNAPPED
Father Arrives to Hunt Missing Rose Liberry
Girl Leaves Aunt’s Home May 23; No Clues Found
The theory that his daughter had been kidnapped was offered to reporters today by John G. Liberry, of Cincinnati, who arrived in Gilling City today to direct the hunt for his missing daughter, Miss Rose Liberry. Miss Liberry, 16, disappeared on the afternoon of May 23 from the home of her aunt, Miss Rachel Staines, 1128 Cleveland Avenue.
Mr. Liberry, who is a prominent Cincinnati accountant, is hourly expecting that the kidnappers will approach him for ransom payments, he said today. Police Chief Hartigan counters this theory with a belief that the girl left of her own accord; has perhaps married and left the city.
Anxiety over the girl’s absence was first aroused when . . .
There was a long recapitulation of the previous facts; the account ended with a description of the missing girl, and asked anyone seeing her to call police.
On May twenty-seventh the Liberry case took up even more of page one. A two-decked headline flared across the page:
GIRL IN HANDS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKERS? AUNT ASKS
The middle columns were filled with photographs. Pictures of Rose Liberry at fifteen, at eleven, at three; Rose Liberry, dark eyed and serious at three as she was at sixteen. Pictures of the girl’s father and mother, snapped leaving Chief Hartigan’s office, the mother short, plump, shielding her face with her handbag; the father short, slight, staring straight at the camera with ravaged eyes.
A picture of Chief Hartigan was captioned “Girl Will Turn Up, Says Police Chief Hartigan.”
Chief Hartigan, well-fed, thinking more of his dinner; it wasn’t his daughter.
A picture, a camera study, of Miss Rachel Staines, forty, blonde and fairly worldly. Captioned “Aunt Fears Human Traffickers.”
Father, mother, aunt. I looked at the pictured faces carefully. I thought over the people concerned in Mrs. Garr’s death. I couldn’t see any trace of resemblance anywhere. But 1919 was eighteen years ago; a face could change with age and grief by that time. Father, mother, aunt—was one of them living in Mrs. Garr’s house now—a murderer?
The story had two columns on the right.
ROSE LIBERRY NOW MISSING FOUR DAYS
Mother in State of Collapse;
Father Pushes Hunt for Daughter; Attacks Police
Miss Rachel Staines, 1128 Cleveland Avenue, aunt of the missing Rose Liberry, created a sensation in Police Chief Hartigan’s office today when, in ringing tones, she stated her belief that her niece was being held in some house of vice for immoral purposes.
Chief Hartigan, holding to his theory that the girl left her aunt’s residence for purposes of her own, pointed out the greater likelihood of his elopement theory.
“Gilling City is a clean city,” Chief Hartigan declared to reporters during the interview. “Statistics show that a certain number of girls are always reported missing each year. Great numbers of those girls are quietly found. Usually it is discovered that some man is involved. Miss Liberry is sixteen, a romantic age, and I think it will be found the usual thing has happened.”
On hearing this statement, John G. Liberry, father of the missing girl, appeared greatly enraged. “It is like Chief Hartigan to cast reflections on my daughter’s character,” he said. “I have found the police of this city not only incompetent but curiously unwilling to make any but the most routine search. The police force of this city is rotten from the heart out, and you’re the heart, Chief Hartigan.”
Chief Replies to Attack
Chief Hartigan greeted Mr. Liberry’s attack with a tolerant laugh. “Just like a father,” he said. “Parents always know their own children less than anyone else. I can’t stand having my administration maligned; every citizen of this city knows how well-policed Gilling City has been under my rule. I respect order, but I also respect liberty. In Gilling we have both. You may quote me.”
“Uh-huh. Exactly as I thought!” A voice, a living voice, said loudly in my ear.
I jumped and turned.
Hodge Kistler.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked stupidly, still in the past. I would rather have expected Chief Hartigan to appear beside me than Hodge Kistler.
“Me? I’m the Good Samaritan; you just don’t recognize me in this snappy American getup. Have you, might I ask, had enough regard for your own well-being to get yourself a little lunch?”
“Lunch? My goodness, it isn’t—”
“Just as I thought again. It is one thirty. Perhaps a bit after. You come with me.”
“But she’s lost. Rose Liberry’s missing, and I haven’t found out yet what—”
“She’ll keep. Come on along.”
I went, resisting, my mind still hitched to the past.
“You’re too dirty to eat with me or anyone else. Here, go in here and wash up. I’ll wait.”
I was turned neatly into a washroom. Even the washroom was inky, I noticed, beginning to become perceptive again, under the influence of water and soap.
“You certainly know your way around!” I commented, rejoining Mr. Kistler in the corridor outside.
“Didn’t I serve my term of purgatory in this joint? Let’s go to the Dutch Moon.”
Tucked into a corner booth—Hodge always picks out corners—I found I was trembling with weakness and excitement. Hot soup helped the first; I allayed the second by pouring out the morning’s discoveries.
Mr. Kistler listened soberly.
“One thing you can certainly say for this case,” he said. “The more you look into it, the worse it smells. Well, I have a little incident to relate, myself.”
“Don’t tell me anything more has happened!”
“Nothing much, but I noticed it. Me, you understand, not the detective in the hall. Though of course, what with his being so occupied with you—”
“Don’t meander. What was it?”
“Oh, nothing, really; just a bit more of the same. It seems that, after you, I was the third one up this morning, I having to foregather with the carriers for a few last parting instructions. Mr. B. was in our joint possession, so I toddled down the hall to the bathroom. During my occupancy it strikes me I am slightly dizzy. Looking into the matter, I find I am not dizzy, but the floor is. You know how the floor is—black-and-white tile pattern, half the tiles loose. Probably was saving money when she had it done. I investigate, on my knees, and it is immediately apparent that someone has taken out the loose tiles and then did not put them back in the right pattern. What do you think of that for sleuthing?”
“You’re wonderful.”
“Thank you. The gentleman in the hall below was not so honest, but he whistled and phoned Strom.”
“I wonder if he’s found it now.”
“Oh, sure, he called me to say he’d been out, but couldn’t make anything of it.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Why, Strom. He went out to look at the bathroom—”
“Silly, I wasn’t thinking about him. I mean the prowler. Did he find what he was after under the tiles, do you think?”
“Not if I’m a good guesser. Nothing under ’em but the old worn-out board flooring and crumbly cement.”
“Then he doesn’t have it yet. He’ll still be hunting. Wouldn’t you think, when there’s a detective in the house all the time, that he’d sometime g
et caught at it?”
“God help us every one,” Hodge prayed cheerfully. “I think I’ll petition for a cop in every room.”
“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 was met by Mrs. Harriet Garr, proprietress, who stated that the house was a respectable lodging house, which she had maintained for the past twenty years. She says that the girl came to the house three weeks ago, carrying a small suitcase, and applied for a room, which she rented to her. She said the girl was quiet, kept to her room, went out seldom. When asked if she had not noticed the girl’s resemblance to pictures of Rose Liberry recently appearing in the Comet, Mrs. Garr stated that she had not noticed the girl particularly; she had so many people coming and going. She was completely at sea, she indicated, as to why the girl had taken her life.
At the end of the column were three boldface lines:
Watch Tomorrow’s Comet for New Developments in This Thrilling Real-Life Tragedy!
In the Comet for July tenth, the Rose Liberry case took up every inch of the front page. The three-line headline screamed across the top of the page, in the biggest type any newspaper owns:
LIBERRY ACCUSES POLICE OF PROTECTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING RING IN CITY!
Suicide Scene of Rose Liberry
Found to Be Vice Palace
Governor Takes Hand; Orders Investigation of City Police and Vice Conditions Here
Mr. John G. Liberry, father of the Rose Liberry whose disappearance caused a sensation here seven weeks ago and whose dead body was found at 417 St. Simon Street on July 8 in circumstances suggesting suicide, today went before Governor David Lamson to bring explicit charges of protecting a human trafficking ring in Gilling City.
The charges uncover one of the greatest scandals in the history of Gilling City and of the state, and are based on the work of a Comet reporter, who today gained entrance to the house at 417 St. Simon Street, where the girl’s body was found.
Disguised as a city water-meter repairman, the Comet reporter was adm
itted at the rear entrance of 417 St. Simon Street by a frightened cook and housemaid. From them he wrung the admission that the house, under the proprietorship of a Mrs. Harriet Garr, was being run, wide open, as a palace of vice.
Police Chief Accused of Frequenting Vice Palace
Leaving the servants in the kitchen under promises of silence as to his entry, the Comet reporter proceeded to the second floor, where he succeeded in entering one of the rooms. In this room were two young girls, also badly frightened, who readily admitted the character of the place. The house was crowded with men nightly, the girls declared. Liquor flowed freely. One of the girls stated that many city officials were frequenters of the house, and added particulars of her own intimacy with Chief Hartigan, who visited the house often, she said, and whom she had seen receive money from Mrs. Garr.
Gaming Tables Seen
Dazed and unbelieving, the Comet reporter paid the girls to conduct him to the third floor of the establishment, where he saw with his own eyes a luxurious gambling salon, with tables for roulette, dicing, Canfield, chemin de fer. The entire third story was in one room, richly furnished with deep leather chairs and davenports, oriental rugs, fine tables and lamps; at one end was a complete bar, handsomely appointed.
Liberry Told of Character of House
At the time of the reporter’s visit, Mrs. Garr was absent from the house. It was later learned that she was being interviewed at police headquarters, but was released without charge, the police not knowing at the time the discoveries made by the Comet reporter. Having assembled his evidence, the reporter hastened to 1128 Cleveland Avenue, residence of Miss Rachel Staines, aunt of the unfortunate Rose Liberry. Here, he found the father of the dead girl and informed him of the discoveries. Greatly excited, Mr. Liberry immediately telephoned for an audience with the governor, whose aid he had several times attempted to attain during his search for the missing girl. The governor granted the interview at once.