Before the public was made acquainted with the vanishment of the young heiress, both her mother and brother and the man of the letters had returned from Europe, and the latter took part in the search for her. He disclaimed, from the beginning, all knowledge of Miss Arnold’s plans, proclaimed that he knew of no reason why she should have left home, announced that he had considered himself engaged to marry her, and he pretended, at least, to believe that she would shortly appear. Needless to say, a close watch was secretly maintained over the young man and all his movements for many months. In the end, however, the police seemed satisfied that he knew no more than any one else of Dorothy Arnold’s possible movements. He dropped out of the case almost as suddenly as he had entered it. In the six weeks before the public was acquainted with the facts, private detectives, and later the public police, had worked unremittingly on the several possible theories covering the case. There were naturally a number of possibilities: First, that the girl had met with a traffic accident and been taken unconscious to a hospital; second, that she had been run down by some reckless motorist, killed, and carried off by the frightened driver and secretly buried; third, that she had been kidnapped; fourth, that she had eloped; fifth, that she had been seized by an attack of amnesia and was wandering about the country, unable to give any clew to her identity; sixth, that she had quarreled with her parents and chosen this method of bringing them to terms by the pangs of anxiety; seventh, that she had been arrested as a shoplifter and was concealing her identity for shame. As the weeks went by, all these ideas were exploded. The hospitals and morgues were searched in vain; the records of traffic accidents were scanned with the utmost care; the roadhouses and resorts in all directions from the city were visited, and their owners closely questioned. Cemeteries and lonely farms were inspected, the passenger lists of all departing ships examined, and later sailings observed. The authorities in European and other ports were notified by cable, and the captains of ships at sea were informed by wireless, now for the first time employed in such a quest. The city jails and prisons were visited and every female prisoner noted. Similar precautions were taken in other American cities, where the hospitals, infirmaries, and morgues were also subjected to search. Marriage-license bureaus, offices of physicians, sanitariums, cloisters, boarding schools, and all manner of possible and impossible retreats were made the objects of detective attention--all without result.