Editorial: No throttle-bottoms wanted
…
Somerset Maugham’s new novel thoughtful and thought-provoking
Through it all is author’s biting pen
By Maxine Garrison
…
Maj. Eliot suggests plan for preserving peace
Reviewer says book is excellent exposition of world affairs
By John D. Paulus
…
I DARE SAY —
Looking fondly backward to the Age of Innocence – and its idols
By Florence Fisher Parry
…
Films to take major role in the post-war world
…
Lillian Hellman’s new play called ‘hapless mixture’
International and marital affairs are tossed into Searching Wind
By Jack Gaver, United Press drama editor
…
Writers bar professor; he tells ‘em where to go
…
Listeners keep old jokes popular on network shows
Women are better than men as quiz show contestants
By Si Steinhauser
…
Decline cuts $1 billion from stock values
‘Invasion jitters’ hit Wall Street
By Elmer C. Walzer, United Press financial editor
…
Surprise packet –
Giants top Dodgers, 2–1, for fifth straight win
…
‘Keeps boxing going’ –
Dempsey urges union with NBA
…
Völkischer Beobachter (April 24, 1944)
Entsendung neuer Truppen abgelehnt –
Washington will Belohnung für Indienhilfe
…
TIME (April 24, 1944)
NEW YORK: The Invisible Girl
All night the snow fell heavily. Before dawn it lay eight inches deep on the streets of sleeping Manhattan.
At 4:50 a.m. the elevator signal buzzed in International House, the massive 13-story lodging place built by John D. Rockefeller Jr. for foreign students. The elevator man had a blind right eye, but as he stopped the car, he turned to look at his lone passenger. She was Valsa Anna Matthai, 21, a pretty Indian girl from Bombay, a Columbia University student. She was not wearing the Indian sari pulled over her hair, but a bright kerchief; and as she walked out of the empty, lighted lobby, the operator noticed she wore a tan polo coat, dark slacks, and sport shoes. She had no bag. The streetlights along Riverside Drive made pale yellow pools on the drifted snow, but beyond, Grant’s Tomb and the park sloping down to the Hudson River were lost in gloom. That was the morning of March 20.
Valsa Matthai did not return. Last week her disappearance was still a mystery to the scientifically thorough (and 99.2% successful) Missing Persons Bureau of the New York police. It had stumped private investigators hired by the Manhattan office of Tata Iron & Steel Company, Ltd., branch of the rich House of Tata which controls much of India’s heavy industry.
Valsa’s disappearance was big news in Bombay, where her father, Dr. John Matthai, is managing director of a new Tata enterprise, a $5,000,000 chemical plant. Dr. Matthai, a Christian, educated at the London School of Economics and Oxford’s Balliol College, distinguished himself as an official of the Indian government before joining Tata in 1940. A believer in freedom for women, he sent his only daughter to convent schools in Calcutta and Bombay, and finally to the United States.
At International House, Valsa was not missed for more than 24 hours. Then Pritha Kumarappa, an Indian, and Salma Bishlawy, an Egyptian, Valsa’s two closest girlfriends, went to her room. The key was in the outside lock. The bed was turned down neatly. It had not been slept in. Her room and her clothes were in order; even her purse was there, with lipstick, identification cards and $17 in cash.
At first the case seemed routine to detectives from the West 100th Street station. They got her description for the routine form which the police call “DD-13.” For the Missing Persons Bureau, which seeks 9,000 people a year, turns up 8,900 of them, alive or dead, before twelve months are out; and 80% come back by themselves, 50% within 48 hours.
But by week’s end Capt. John J. Cronin, the deceptively delicate-looking commanding officer of the Bureau, was directing a meticulous search which had spread across the whole United States.
Cronin’s men quietly invaded International House. If the girl had met with foul play, they reasoned, she might never have left the building. They drained two 9,000-gallon water tanks on the roof, another 5,000-gallon tank in a 13th-floor engine room. They shoveled and sifted their way through 150 tons of pea coal in basement bins. They searched the building’s 550 rooms, foot by foot. They found no trace of her: Where had Valsa been going, in the snow, before dawn? She had only an amateur interest in Indian political affairs. If she was dead, where was her body? If she was alive, who had seen her?
Restaurant operators, taxi drivers, residents of the area for blocks around were questioned. The charred ruins of a burned-out apartment were combed. Ticket sellers at Hudson River ferry terminals were interviewed. The Hudson was dragged.
Had Valsa planned the disappearance? Usually the people who attempt to vanish are in search of love or money. But Valsa had all the money she wanted: there was $1,400 in her bank account. Love? On the afternoon before her disappearance, Valsa had met a young officer, Lt. Elmer Rigby of the Army Medical Corps, at the Waldorf-Astoria. The two had known each other since New Year’s, had met often. Rigby showed investigators a recent letter from the girl; it was casual, friendly, with no hint of romance.
The detectives on the case, attempting to understand Valsa Matthai, began to experience an exasperated futility. Her friends said she was proud, brilliant, interested in her studies. She smoked cigarettes, and occasionally visited nightclubs, in groups, escorted by an older Indian friend of her family. But as the case dragged on, digging began to change this image of Valsa Matthai. She began to sound less like a reserved visitor from an exotic land, and more like any other glamour-dazzled girl, first seeing Manhattan’s bright lights.
Her interest in nightclubs, it turned out, was far from casual. She was an habitue. She sat at nightspot tables with American girls and young American and British officers night after night. A photograph made by a nightclub photographer showed a Valsa who looked different from the girl in muddy photographs made back in India. Valsa’s hair was not primly tight around her head, but hung in a loose wave. Valsa’s smile and Valsa’s eyes suggested what students at International House reluctantly confirmed. Valsa had hangovers, and missed classes. She was repeating first-semester subjects. Late last winter, some of her friends had remonstrated with her. They had reminded her that she represented India to Americans.
The Missing Persons Bureau checked 85 reports that Valsa Matthai had been seen in New York City. All were erroneous. After one careful three-day check, officers closed in on an indignant Armenian woman.
Newspaper reporters and photographers, following a telephoned tip, burst into a Willard Hotel dining room in Washington, DC. They found an Indian woman, but the embarrassed newsmen soon discovered that she was with her husband, P. A. Menon of the India Supply Mission.
At the end of last week, Capt. Cronin and his men, still toiling, still could not answer the very first question: why did the girl leave her room at 4:50 a.m.?
J. J. Singh, president of the India League of America, guessed why: Valsa had never seen snow, and was so fascinated that she could not resist walking out into it. Capt. Cronin, a far-from-casual student of abnormal psychology, pondered this idea seriously:
We know that sensitive people are sometimes driven to suicide by the depressing sight of rain, snow or bleak landscapes.
Suicide? Could she have been pregnant? A policewoman checked her girlfriends, reported that she was not. Amnesia? But real amnesia, despite fiction, is exceedingly rare. And a woman with amnesia would still need food, and would probably wander the streets.
Cronin, baffled, pondering murder, saw only one really possible answer – his old enemy, the river.
He said:
If she’s in the river, maybe we’ll know. We’re just getting our December bodies up now. But they come up quicker in the springtime – men face down, women face up. If she’s in the river maybe we’ll know in May. If there’s a thunderstorm we’ll know before that. An odd thing, the way thunder will bring them up.
U.S. Navy Department (April 24, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 370
For Immediate Release
April 24, 1944
Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force bombed Moen, Eten and Param in the Truk Atoll before dawn on April 23 (West Longitude Date). Two enemy fighters were in the air but did not attempt interception. Fires were set and explosions observed on airfields.
Ponape Island was bombed on April 22 (West Longitude Date) by 7th Army Air Force Mitchell bombers and a single search plane of Fleet Air Wing Two, and before dawn on April 23 by Liberators of the 7th Army Air Force. Numerous fires were started.
Puluwat Island was bombed before dawn on April 23 by a single 7th Army Air Force Liberator, and Ulul Island was bombed on April 22 by a single search plane of Fleet Air Wing Two.
Remaining enemy positions in the Marshalls were bombed on April 22 by Liberators and Mitchells of the 7th Army Air Force, and Dauntless dive bombers and Corsair fighters of the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing. Gun positions, runways, and storage tanks were bombed and strafed.
CINCPAC Press Release No. 372
For Immediate Release
April 24, 1944
Supplementing POA Communiqué No. 43, the following information is now available concerning operations of Pacific Fleet forces supporting and covering landings by forces of CINCSWPA, at Hollandia, Aitape, and Tanahmerah Bay on April 20 and 21 (West Longitude Date):
Airfields at Hollandia, Wakde Island and Sawar were struck by carrier aircraft on April 20. Thirteen airborne enemy planes were shot down over the target areas. At Hollandia, 67 planes were destroyed on the ground. Fuel storage facilities, ammunition dumps, supply areas and buildings were heavily bombed. Two small cargo ships, and several barges and small craft were sunk.
At Wakde and Sawar, 21 enemy planes were destroyed on the ground and 17 damaged by our aircraft during daylight on April 20. On the night of April 20, cruisers and destroyers bombarded the Wakde‑Sawar airfields. The bombardment was accomplished without effective opposition. No damage was done to our surface ships.
The Pittsburgh Press (April 24, 1944)
YANKS SEIZE 3 GUINEA AIRFIELDS
MacArthur’s forces land near Hollandia
Jump 500 miles toward Philippines
By William B. Dickinson, United Press staff writer
…
3,000 U.S. planes hit Nazis
U.S. fliers roar over South Germany, Romania and Yugoslavia
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
…
Commando Kelly flying here today; city’s welcome set for Wednesday
Hero describes fighting in Italy
By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent
…
Indian officer also welcomed
…
Russia regroups armies for big new offensives
Reinforcements pour to fronts for drives which may be timed with Allied invasion
By M. S. Handler, United Press staff writer
…
Invasion week here, Axis says
Attacks from Britain and south predicted
…