governing the ordinary disappearance case. It is full of the elements
which make for mystery and bafflement, and it may be set down at once
as an enigma of the most arresting and irritating type, upon whose
darknesses not the slightest light has ever been shed.
So far as can be learned, Small had no enemies and felt no
apprehensions. He was totally immersed for some months before his
disappearance in the negotiations for the sale of his interests to the
Trans-Canada Company, and apparently he devoted all his energies to
this project. He had anticipated a favorable conclusion for some time
and looked upon the signing of the agreements and writing of the check
on December 2 as nothing more than a formality.
Late in the morning of the day in question, Small met his attorney
and the representatives of the Trans-Canada Company in his offices,
and the formalities were concluded. Some time after noon he deposited
the check in the Dominion Bank and then took Mrs. Small to luncheon.
Afterward he visited a Catholic children’s institution with her and
left her at about three o’clock to return to his desk in the Grand
Theater, where he had sat for many years, spinning his plans and piling
up his fortune.
There seems to be not the slightest question that Small went directly
to his office and spent the remainder of the afternoon there. Not only
his secretary, John Doughty, who had been Small’s confidential man for
nineteen years, and later played a dramatic and mysterious part in the
disappearance drama, but several other employees of the Grand Theater
saw their retiring master at his usual post that afternoon. Small not
only talked with these workers, but he called business associates on
the telephone and made at least two appointments for the following day.
He also was in conference with his solicitor as late as five o’clock.
According to Doughty, his employer left the Grand Theater at about five
thirty o’clock and this time of departure coincided perfectly with what
is known of Small’s engagements. He had promised his wife to be at home
for dinner at six thirty o’clock.
There is also confirmation at this point. For years Small had been in
the habit of dropping into Lamb’s Hotel, next door to his theater,
before going home in the evening. He was intimately acquainted there,
often met his friends in the hotel lobby or bar, and generally chatted
a few minutes before leaving for his residence. The proprietor of the
hotel came forward after Small’s disappearance and recalled that he had
seen the theater man in his hotel a little after five thirty o’clock.
He was also under the impression that Small had stayed for some
time, but he could not be sure.
[Illustration: ~~ AMBROSE J. SMALL ~~]
The next and final point of time that can be fixed is seven fifteen
o’clock. At that time Small approached the newsboy in Adelaide Street,
who knew the magnate well, and bought his usual evening papers. The
boy believed that Small had come from the theater, but was not sure he
had not stepped out of the hotel adjoining. Small said nothing but the
usual things, seemed in no way different from his ordinary mood, and
tarried only long enough to glance at the headlines under the arc lamps.
Probably there is something significant about the fact that Small did
not leave the vicinity of his office until seven fifteen o’clock, when
he was due at home by half past six. What happened to him after he had
left his theater in plenty of time to keep the appointment with his
wife? That something turned up to change his plan is obvious. Whether
he merely encountered some one and talked longer than he realized,
or whether something arrested him that had a definite bearing on
his disappearance is not to be said; but the latter seems to be the
reasonable assumption. Small was not the kind of man lightly to neglect
his agreements, particularly those of a domestic kind.
Mrs. Small, waiting at home, did not get excited when her husband
failed to appear at the fixed time. She knew he had been going through
a busy day, and she reasoned that probably something pressing had come
up to detain him. At half past seven, however, she got impatient and
telephoned his office, getting no response. She waited two hours longer
before she telephoned to the home of John Doughty’s sister. She found
her husband’s secretary there and was assured that Doughty had been
there all evening, which seems to have been the fact. Doughty said his
employer had left the theater at five thirty o’clock, and that he knew
no more. He could not explain Small’s absence from home, but took the
matter lightly. No doubt Small would be along when he got ready.
At midnight Mrs. Small sent telegrams to Small’s various theaters in
eastern Canada, asking for her husband. In the course of the next
twenty-four hours she got responses from all of them. No one had seen
Small or knew anything about his movements.
Now there followed two weeks of silence and waiting. Mrs. Small did
not go to the police; neither did she employ private detectives until
later. For two weeks she evidently waited, believing that her husband
had gone off on a trip, and that he would return soon. Those of his
intimates in Toronto who could not be kept out of the secret of his
absence took the same attitude. It was explained later that there was
nothing unprecedented about Small’s having simply gone off on a jaunt
for some days or even several weeks. He was a moody and self-centered
individual. He had gone off before in this way and come back when he
got ready. He might have gone to New York suddenly on some business.
Probably he had not been alone. Mrs. Small evidently shared this view,
and her reasons for so doing developed a good deal later. In fact, she
refused for months to believe that anything had befallen her husband,
and it was only when there was no remaining alternative that she
changed her position.
Finally, a little more than two weeks after Small’s disappearance,
his wife and attorneys went to the Dominion police and laid the case
before them. Even then the quest was undertaken in a cautious and
skeptical way. This attitude was natural. The police could find not
the least hint of any attack on Small. The idea that such a man had
been kidnapped seemed preposterous. Besides, what could have been
the object? There had been no demand for his ransom. No doubt Small
had gone away for reasons sufficient unto himself. Probably his wife
understood these impulsions better than she would say. There were
rumors of infelicity in the Small home, and these proved later to be
well grounded. The police simply felt that they would not be made
ridiculous. Neither did they want to stir up a sensation, only to have
Small return and spill his wrath upon their innocent heads.
But the days spun out, and still there was no news of the missing man.
Many began to turn from their original attitude of knowing skepticism.
Other rumors began to fly about. Gradually the conviction gained ground
that something sinister had befallen the master of theaters. Could it
not be possible that Small had been entrapped in some blackmailing plot
and perhaps killed when he resisted? It seemed almost incredible, but
such things did happen. How about his finances? Was his money intact
in the bank? Had he drawn any checks against his account? It was soon
discovered that no funds had been withdrawn either on December 2 or
subsequently, and it seemed likely that Small had only a few dollars
in his pockets when he vanished, unless, as was suggested, he kept a
secret cache of ready money.
Attention was now directed toward every one who had been close to the
theater owner. One of the most obvious marks for this kind of inquiry
was John Doughty, the veteran secretary. Doughty had, as already
remarked, been Small’s right-hand man for nearly two decades. He knew
his employer’s secrets, was close to all his business affairs, and
was even known to have been Small’s companion on occasional drinking
bouts. At the same time Small had treated Doughty in a niggardly way
as regards pay. The secretary had been receiving forty-five dollars a
week for years, never more. At the same time, probably through other
bits of income which his position brought him, Doughty had saved some
money, bought property in Toronto, and established himself with a small
competence.
That Small regarded this faithful servant kindly and was careful to
provide for him, is shown by the fact that Small had got Doughty a new
and better place as manager of one of the Small theaters in Montreal,
which had been taken over by the syndicate. In his new job Doughty
received seventy-five dollars a week. He had left to assume his new
duties a day or two after the consolidation of the interests, which is
to say a day or two after Small vanished.
Doughty had, of course, been questioned, but it seemed obvious that
this time he knew nothing of his old employer’s movements. He had
accordingly stayed on in Montreal, attending to his new duties and
paying very little attention to Small’s absence. Less than three weeks
after Small had gone, and one week after the case had been taken to the
police, however, new attention began to be paid to Doughty, and there
were some unpleasant whisperings.
On Monday morning, December 23, just three weeks after Small had walked
off into the void, came the dramatic break. Doughty, as was his habit,
left Montreal the preceding Saturday evening to spend Sunday in Toronto
with his relatives and friends. On Monday morning, instead of appearing
at his desk, he telephoned from Toronto that he was ill and might not
be at work for some days. His employers took him at his word and paid
no further attention until, three days having elapsed, they telephoned
to the home of Doughty’s sister. She had not seen him since Monday. The
man was gone!
If the Small disappearance case had heretofore been considered a
somewhat dubious jest, it now became a genuine sensation. For the first
time the Canadian and American newspapers began to treat the matter
under scare headlines, and now at last the Dominion police began to
move with force and alacrity.
An investigation of the safe-deposit vaults, where Small was now
said to have kept a large total of securities, showed that Doughty
had visited this place twice on December 2, the day of Small’s
disappearance, and he had on each occasion either put in, or taken
away, some bonds. A hasty count of the securities was said to have
revealed a shortage of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Even this discovery did not change the minds of the skeptics, in whose
ranks the missing magnate’s wife still remained. It was now believed
that Doughty had received a secret summons from Small, and that he
had taken the bonds, which had previously been put aside, at Small’s
instruction, and gone to join his chief in some hidden retreat. A good
part of Toronto believed that Small had gone on a protracted “party,”
or that he had seized the opportunity offered by the closing out of his
business to quit a wife with whom he had long been in disagreement.
When neither Small nor Doughty reappeared, opinion gradually veered
about to the opposite side. After all, it was possible that Small had
not gone away voluntarily, that he was the victim of some criminal
conspiracy, and that Doughty had fled when he felt suspicion turning
its face toward him. The absence of the supposed one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars in bonds provided sufficient motivation to fit almost
any criminal hypothesis.
As this attitude became general, Toronto came to examine the
relationship between Small and Doughty. It was recalled that
the secretary had, on more than one occasion when he was in his
cups, spoken bitterly of Small’s exaggerated wealth and his cold
niggardliness. Doughty had also uttered various radical sentiments,
and it was even said that he had once spoken of the possibility
of kidnapping Small for ransom; though the man who reported this
conversation admitted Doughty had seemed to be joking. The conclusion
reached by the police was not clear. Doughty, they found, had been
faithful, devoted, and long-suffering. They had to conclude that he
was careful and substantial, and they could not discover that he had
ever had the slightest connection with the underworld or with suspect
characters. At the same time they decided that the man was unstable,
emotional, imaginative, and probably not hard to mislead. In short,
they came to the definite suspicion that Doughty had figured as the
tool of conspirators, in the disappearance of Small. They soon brought
Mrs. Small around to this view. Now the hunt began.
A reward of five hundred dollars, which had been perfunctorily
offered as payment for information concerning Small’s whereabouts,
was withdrawn, and three new rewards were offered by the wife--fifty
thousand dollars for the discovery and return of Small; fifteen
thousand dollars for his identified body, and five thousand dollars for
the capture of Doughty.
The Toronto chief constable immediately assigned a squad of detectives
to the case, and Mrs. Small employed a firm of Canadian private
detectives to pursue a line of investigation which she outlined. Later
on she employed four more widely known investigating firms in the
United States to continue the quest. Small’s sisters also summoned
American officers to carry out their special inquiries. Thus there were
no fewer than seven distinct bodies of police working at the mystery.
Circulars containing pictures of Small and Doughty, with their
descriptions, and announcement of the rewards, were circulated
throughout Canada and the United States; then from Scotland Yard
they were sent to all the police offices in the British Empire, and,
finally, from the American, Canadian, and British capitals to every
known postmaster and police head on earth. More than half a million
copies of the circulars were printed, it is said, and translations
into more than twenty languages were distributed. I am told by
eminent police authorities that this campaign, supported as it was by
advertisements and news items in the press of almost every nation,
some of them containing pictures of the missing millionaire, has never
been approached in any other absent person case. Mrs. Small and her
advisers set out to satisfy themselves that news of the disappearance
and the rewards should reach to the most remote places, and they spent
a small fortune for printing bills and postage. Even the quest for the
lost Archduke John Salvator, to which the Pope contributed a special
letter addressed to all priests, missionaries and other representatives
of the Roman Catholic Church in every part of the world, seems to have
been less far-reaching.
Rumors concerning Small and Doughty began to come in soon after the
first alarms. Small and Doughty were reported seen in Paris, on the
Italian Riviera, at the Lido, in Florida, in Hawaii, in London, at
Calcutta, aboard a boat on the way to India, in Honduras, at Zanzibar,
and where not? A skeleton was found in a ravine not far from Toronto,
and for a time the fate of Small was believed to be understood. But
physicians and anatomists soon determined that the bones could not have
been those of the theatrical man for a variety of conclusive reasons.
So the hunt began again.
Gradually, as time went on, as expense mounted, and results failed
to show themselves, the private detective firms were dismissed, one
after the other, and the task of running down rumors in this clewless
case was left to the Toronto police. The usual sums of money and of
time were wasted in following blind leads. The usual failures and
absurdities were recorded. One Canadian officer, however, Detective
Austin R. Mitchell, began to develop a theory of the case and was
allowed to follow his ideas logically toward their conclusion.
Working in silence, when the public had long come to believe that
the search had been abandoned as bootless, Mitchell plugged away,
month after month, without definite accomplishment. He was not able
to get more than an occasional scrap of information which seemed to
bear out his theory of the case. He made scores of trips, hundreds of
investigations. They were all inconclusive. Nevertheless, the Toronto
authorities permitted him to go on with his work, and he is probably
still occupied at times with the Small mystery.
Detective Mitchell was actively following his course toward the end
of November, 1920, eleven months after the flight of Doughty, when a
telegram arrived at police headquarters in Toronto from Edward Fortune,
a constable of Oregon City, Oregon, a small town far out near the
Pacific. Once more the weary detective took a train West, arriving in
Oregon City on the evening of November 22.
Constable Fortune met the Canadian officer at the train and told him
his story. He had seen one of the circulars a few months earlier and
had carried the images of Small and Doughty in his mind. One day he had
observed a strange laborer working in a local paper mill, and he had
been struck by his likeness to Doughty. The man had been there for some
time and risen from the meanest work to the position of foreman in one
of the shops. Fortune dared not approach the suspect even indirectly,
and he failed on various occasions to get a view of the worker without
his hat on. Because the picture on the circular showed Doughty
bare-headed, the constable had been forced to wait until the suspected
man inadvertently removed his hat. Then Fortune had sent his telegram.
Detective Mitchell listened patiently and dubiously. He had made a
hundred trips of the same sort, he said. Probably there was another
mistake. But Constable Fortune seemed certain of his game, and he was
right.
Shortly after dusk the local officer led the detective to a modest
house, where some of the mill workers boarded. They entered, and
Mitchell was immediately confronted with Doughty, whom he had known
intimately in Toronto.
“Jack!” said the officer, almost as much surprised as the fugitive.
“How could you do it?”
In this undramatic fashion one part of the great quest came to an end.
Doughty submitted quietly to arrest and gave the officer a voluntary
statement. He admitted without reservation that he had taken Canadian
Victory bonds to a total of one hundred and five thousand dollars
from Small’s vault, but insisted that this had been done after the
millionaire had disappeared. He denied absolutely and firmly any
knowledge of Small’s whereabouts; pleaded that he had never had any
knowledge of or part in a kidnapping plot, and he insisted that he
had not seen Small nor heard from him since half past five on the
evening of the disappearance. To this account he adhered doggedly and
unswervingly. Doughty was returned to Toronto on November 29, and the
next day he retrieved the stolen bonds from the attic of his sister’s
house, where he had made his home with his two small sons, since the
death of his wife several years before.
In April of the following year Doughty was brought to trial on a charge
of having stolen the bonds, a second indictment for complicity in the
kidnapping remaining for future disposal. The trial was a formal and,
in some ways, a peculiar affair. All mention of kidnapping and all
hints which might have indicated the direction of Doughty’s ideas on
the central mystery were rigorously avoided. Only one new fact and
one correction of accepted statements came out. It was revealed that
Small had given his wife a hundred thousand dollars in bonds to be
used for charitable purposes on the day before his disappearance. This
fact had not been hinted before, and some interpreted the testimony as
a concealed way of stating the fact that Small had made some kind of
settlement with his wife on the first of December.
Doughty in his testimony corrected the statement that he had taken
the bonds after Small’s disappearance. He testified that he had been
sent to the vault on the second of December, and that he had then
extracted the hundred and five thousand dollars’ worth of bonds. He
had not, he swore, intended to steal them, and he had no notion that
Small would disappear. He explained his act by saying that Small had
long promised him some reward for his many years of service, and had
repeatedly stated that he would arrange the matter when the deal with
the Trans-Canada Company had been concluded. Knowing that the papers
had been signed that morning, and the million-dollar check turned over,
Doughty had planned to go to his chief with the bonds in his hands and
suggest that these might serve as a fitting reward for his contribution
to the success of the Small enterprises. He later saw the folly of this
action and fled.
The prosecution naturally attacked this story on the ground that it
was incredible, but nothing was brought out to show what opposing
theory might fit the facts. Doughty was convicted of larceny and
sentenced to serve six years in prison. The kidnapping charge was
never brought to trial. Instead, the police let it be known that they
believed Doughty had not played any part in the “actual murder” of
Amby Small, and that he had revealed all he knew. Incidentally, it was
admitted that the police believed Small to be dead. That was the only
point on which any information was given, and even here not the first
detail was supplied. Obviously the hunt for nameless persons suspected
of having kidnapped and killed Small was in progress, and the officials
were being careful to reveal nothing of their information or intentions.
Doughty took an appeal from the verdict against him, but abandoned
the fight later in the spring of 1921, and was sent to prison. Here
the unravelling of the Small mystery came to an abrupt end. A year
passed, then two years. Still nothing more developed. Doughty was in
prison, the police were silent and seemed inactive. Perhaps they had
abandoned the hunt. Possibly they knew what had befallen the theater
owner and were refraining from making revelations for reasons of public
policy. Perhaps, as was hinted in the newspapers, there were persons
of influence involved in the mess, persons powerful enough to hush the
officials.
But the matter of Small’s fortune was still in abeyance, and there
were indications of a bitter contest between the wife and Small’s two
sisters, who had apparently been hostile for years. This struggle
promised to bring out further facts and perhaps to reveal to the
public what the family and the officials knew or suspected.
Soon after Small had vanished, Mrs. Small had moved formally to
protect his property by having a measure introduced into the Dominion
Parliament declaring Small an absentee and placing herself and a bank
in control of the estate. This measure was soon taken, with the result
that the Small fortune, amounting to about two million dollars, net,
continued to be profitably administered.
Early in 1923, after Doughty had been two years in prison, and all
rumor of the kidnapping or disappearance mystery had died down, Mrs.
Small appeared in court with a petition to have her husband declared
dead, so that she might offer for probate an informal will made on
September 6, 1903. This document was written on a single small sheet of
paper and devised to Mrs. Small her husband’s entire estate, which was
of modest proportions at the time the will was drawn.
The court refused to declare the missing magnate dead, saying that
insufficient evidence had been presented, and that the police were
apparently not satisfied. Mrs. Small next appealed her case, and the
reviewing court reversed the decision and declared Small legally dead.
Thereupon the widow filed the will of 1903 and was immediately attacked
by Small’s sisters, who declared that they had in their possession a
will made in 1917, which revoked the earlier testament and disinherited
Mrs. Small. This will, if it existed, was never produced.