reporter on the Star while he was a judge of an inferior court.
Our acquaintance had grown through several political campaigns in
which I had had assignments that brought me into contact with him.
More recently some special writing had led me across his trail
again in telling the story of his clean-up of graft in the city.
At present his weariness was easily accounted for. He was in the
midst of the fight of his life for re-election against the so-
called "System," headed by Boss Dorgan, in which he had gone far
in exposing evils that ranged all the way from vice and the drug
traffic to bald election frauds.

"I expect a Mrs. Blackwell here in a few minutes," he remarked,
glancing again at his watch. His eye caught the headline of the
news story I had been reading and he added quickly, "What do the
boys on the Star think of that Blackwell case, anyhow?"

It was, I may say, a case deeply shrouded in mystery--the
disappearance without warning of a beautiful young girl, Betty
Blackwell, barely eighteen. Her family, the police, and now the
District Attorney had sought to solve it in vain. Some had thought
it a kidnaping, others a suicide, and others had even hinted at
murder. All sorts of theories had been advanced without in the
least changing the original dominant note of mystery. Photographs
of the young woman had been published broadcast, I knew, without
eliciting a word in reply. Young men whom she had known and girls
with whom she had been intimate had been questioned without so
much as a clue being obtained. Reports that she had been seen had
come in from all over the country, as they always do in such
cases. All had been investigated and had turned out to be based on
nothing more than imagination. The mystery remained unsolved.