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Daily News from New York, New York • 11

Publication:
Daily Newsi
Location:
New York, New York
Issue Date:
Page:
11
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

SUNDAY NEWS, MARCH 27, 1932 WMA 10 T-TA -LLJJLX li TO 1LJX NI week-end, as she had intended, the mailed seventy-five invitations The Bates family fully expected1 young woman said. "I didn't in Miss Arnold to remain with- them over the holidays that is, until Sunday night, at least. But the very next morning she walked into the living room fully dressed, with her suitcase in her and announced she was going home. They looked at her in amazement. "But you were going to atay the coming-out party for her Eis-ter, Marjorie, which was to take place on the 16th.

On the 9th she went to the bank and withdrew all the money she had there $36. She -shopped along 5th Ave. and that evening went to an art exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. The next morning the told her tend to stay more than one day. You're mistaken, mother." The explanation of this strange behavior may possibly be seen in a long letter she wrote the next day, Saturday, to George Griscom.

According to John S. Keith, personal attorney for the Arnold family, the letter was mostly girlish From a New York Sidewalk She Stepped Into Oblivion And Mystery Still Persists By PETER LEVINS. WHAT happened to Dorothy Arnold? She was a healthy, intelligent, popular girl, with everything to live for it is hard to believe that she killed herself. And if she was abducted (this is the theory most generally held) and remained alive, surely she would have re-appeared. Murder? If that's the answer, then nobody knows why or how or where the dreadful deed was done.

Not the faintest trace of her, so far as the public knows, was ever unearthed from the moment she was last seen on a crowded Manhattan street. -1 The long misting Dorothy Arnold as she looked when last teen. nold family did not take Dorothy's ambitions and talent if she had any very seriously. In the Autumn of that year she went to the general post office downtown and, using her own name, rented a box. Here she subsequently received rejected manuscripts and, in some instances, personal mail.

She never told her family that she had rented this box. Very possibly she had the usual timidity of struggling novices and shrank from the family curiosity regarding her "writing." Now we record some rather extraordinary incidents. On September 16, 1910, while the young woman was at York Harbor, with her parents, Griscom at the Hotel Essex in Boston and three days later engaged a room for Miss Arnold in another Boston hotel, the Lenox. Dorothy, who told her family that she was going to visit a former classmate, Theodora Bates, in Cambridge, joined Griscom in Boston and for five days they were seen together constantly. This was later reported to the Boston police by friends of Sonny beg pardonJunior Griscom.

The latter, incidentally, was well known at the Hotel Essex. On the 23d of September the secretive Miss Arnold went to a pawn shop in Boston and hocked her gold watch and chain, two bracelets, and two diamond rings. She got $60 on the lot and gave her own name and address. The following day Griscom and Miss Arnold checked out of their She returned to York Harbor. Visits Miss Bates In Washington.

Meanwhile the young woman had been working on another short story, called "Poinsettia of the Flame," which she dispatched to McClure's upon her return to New York. She gave her secret post-office box as her return address. Next event her visit to Theodora Bates in Washington, D. where Miss Bates was teaching. She left Nov.

23, taking a suit-ease, and giving 1000 Mintwood PL, Washington, where Miss Bates lived with her mother and sister, as her forwarding address. She arrived in Washington and spent that night at the Bates apartment. The next morning. Thanksgiving morning, when Dorothy did not get up, her friend went in and learned that she did not feel well. According to Miss Bates testimony later, the illness was the common female indisposition.

(This was brought out to prove that Dorothy Arnold was not with child at the time she disappeared.) While Dorothy was still in bed a large envelope, which had been forwarded from New York, wae delivered to the house and Miss Bates brought it np to her friend. Dorothy glanced at it and said nothing. From time to time the report ha cropped up that the police know the answer to the Arnold riddle and for reasons of their own or for reasons of the Arnold family have kept it secret. Maybe. The same reports spring up periodically in connection with all our more sensational mysteries the Elwell murder, the William Desmond Taylor case, the Hall-Mills enigma.

Still, it may be true. One wonders Incidentally, the Arnold ease offers a striking contrast to the Lindbergh kidnaping, for whereas the latter case received the fullest possible publicity immediately, there was no public announcement of the disappearance of Dorjithy Arnold for more than, six Four Men Quizzed After She Vanished! Miss Arnold was 25 years Id when she dropped from sight. She was the second of four children bora to Francis R. Arnold, millionaire head of a perfumery and cosmetics concern, and the former Mary Martha Parks of Montreal. Dorothy was graduated from Bryn Mawr in 905 and thereafter lived the life of the usual New York society girl teas, musicals, amateur theatricals, dances, bridge parties.

In between times she wrote short stories and tried to sell them to magazines. No one knows outside her family, at any rate whether she ever fell seriously in love. Four men were questioned after she vanished and only one ot them. George S. Griscom Jr, 40-year-old bachelor of Pittsburgh, figured at all prominently in the ease.

Matter of fact, he was the only one of her male friends whose name was even allowed to become public. The young woman had known Griscom, an unobstrusive sort of person who was if you can believe it still called "Junior" by his family, for several years. How well, exactly, we do not know. The Arnold family never liked to talk about that. Gris" himself said that he and Dorothy had been in Lve and engaged but the Arnolds rigorously denied it, though one would think he should know, if anybody should.

Miss Arnold disappeared Monday, Dec. 1-, 1910-but before we come to that we must set down a series of known events which may or may not have had something to do with the disappearance. Pome of them seem quite inexplicable. As we have stated, the young woman had ambitions of becoming a writer certainly not an unusual urge. In the early Summer of 1910 she wrote a short story and submitted it to McClure's Magaiine.

The magaiine rejected it, but whether or not the girl was greatly depressed by the matter we do not know. She decided she would like to rent a studio in Greenwich Village the family lived on East 79th St. -but her father put his foot down on that idea. The impression ne gets, in tudying the case, is that the Ar I' I I 1 i Z- Bit mother she was going shopping again. "If I find a dress I like I'll telephone you," she said.

That afternoon she attended a matinee of "The Garden -of Allah," with Elsie Henry, daughter of a Wall Street broker, and then went to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for tea. Miss Arnold had invited her friend, who was another former classmate, and paid for the theatre tickets and the refreshments at Ftynn, John Three tleutht who' hunted missing heiress left to right, William H. Arret and George S. Dougherty. gossip, but near the end she wrote over the week-end! exclaimed Miss Bates.

the following: "Well, it has come back. Mc "No," said Dorothy. "I only came to spend the holiday." the Waldorf. As they were parting they made an engagement to meet the following Monday. On Sunday, the 11th, Miss Arnold telephoned Elsie and broke the date, saying she might be all Monday finding the dress for Mar-jorie's coming-out party.

"I'll call you later," she said. We corae now to the last day, Monday, Dec. 12, 1910. Dorothy -Arnold left the house about 11:15 A. telling her mother she planned to shop around Clure's has turned me down.

Failure, stares me in he face; All I see ahead is" a long road with no turning. Mother will always think an accident has happened." In view of what happened later, this sounded ominous. Two weeks passed her parents said that nothing of any moment occurred in the girl's life, so far as they knew. On Dec. 8, Dorothy Dorothy, you certainly were going to stay until Sunday night, at least!" insisted Theodora.

"What has happened?" "Nothing has happened." She left and returned to New York. There her family also- expressed amazement at her sudden return. IVhen Mrs. Arnold asked why she hadn't remained over the.

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