CHAPTER X
THE MINGEY MYSTERY
"The disappearance of Miss Mingey" occupied a large portion of the papers. Every possible and impossible hypothesis was suggested to account for it. Mr Mingey was interviewed; Mrs Mingey was interviewed; pictures of the Mingey home were reproduced in the press. A verse, not altogether in the best taste, was sung at one of the musical comedy theatres. One enterprising journal offered a prize of a life's subscription to that journal for the most probable solution sent in by one of its readers on a detachable coupon.
The police also helped the press to elucidate the mystery. Everybody talked about the matter. Some people even went so far as to buy Mingey postcards embellished with the portrait of "The latest vanishing lady."
From the details furnished with regard to the inner life of the Mingey home there were those who maintained that in all probability the unfortunate Sarah, bored to death by her dull, drab surroundings, her funereal father, her entirely uninteresting mother, and the pseudo-religious atmosphere in which she lived, had committed suicide. Several men, pre-
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