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Newspaper Page Text
WHITBECK'S DILEMMA By Alice E. Ives Whitbeck had just experienced two shocks. He sat back in his office a trifle paralyzed from the effects and endeavored to collect himself in or der to meet the situation. Mary "War ren, his stenographer, the most relia ble, painstaking and capable one he had ever had, was not at her post. In stead he found a letter mailed the night before, in which she regretted she had been obliged to leave at such short notice, but she had unexpec tedly been called out of town, and would he engage some one else, as she might not return He looked at the pile of unopened letters to which she had been wont to attend with such businesslike dis patch and sighed. Then he found he was thinking of the pretty brown head of shining hair, the white neck and neat blouse that were always bent over those letters. In fact, all the correspondence on that desk seemed to have faded into nothing ness in comparison to the awful void left there by the vanished figure who had sat there, Somehow her presence had lifted the office out of the sordid commonplace into which it now relapsed. It was at this point that Whitbeck experienced his second shock. Why was he letting such thoughts take possession of him unless great heavens! He had never suspected it! But it was true! He loved her! He wanted her! He was going to bring her back if he could. He set the tel ephone going; but no one at the rooming house where she had lived knew where she had gone. She had left no address; Whitbeck remembered Miss War rn had a brother in New York. But i vs like looking for the prover bial ii-dle in the hay mow. Never theless he tried inserting "personals" in the metropolitan papers, which mt wil4.BQ response. Then Whit beck set to wondering why the girl had so mysteriously disappeared. No matter how he fought against it, he had finally to force himself to believe there must have been a man in the case, one whom she loved, or held lover her some power which she could not resist. It was either that or but that she had gone any evil way was unthinkable. Gradully he II ri flip p They Were Mostly Letters. ' was effacing her from his mind." The new stenographer's slight attempts at being flirtatious were frowned upon and J. P. Whitbeck, attorney, attended strictly to business. One day in tne GFand Central sta tion in New York, where he had just left his train, he set down his valise in a crowd near a news stand while he bought a paper. Hurriedly picking up the valise he rushed through the jostling crowd to catch a subway train to Brooklyn. He had business there which would keep him several iiMiimitiaimmmM tiiitttifiiuudk