a second time. There were no published reports of Arnold having shopped for the intended dress. By the early evening, Arnold had failed to return home for dinner. As she never missed meals without informing her family, the Arnolds became worried. They began calling Arnold's friends to find her whereabouts but no one had seen her. Shortly after midnight on December 13, Elsie Henry, one of Arnold's friends, phoned the family home to see if Dorothy had returned. Henry later said Arnold's mother Mary answered the telephone and told her that Dorothy had returned home. When Henry asked to speak to Arnold, Mary hesitated and told Henry that Dorothy had gone to bed with a headache. Investigation Fearing that their daughter's disappearance would draw unwanted media attention and could become socially embarrassing, the Arnold family didn't report Dorothy's disappearance to the police for weeks. It is speculated that the family was influenced by the 1909 disappearance of Adele Boas, a 13 year old girl who was reported missing from Central Park and later found to have run away to Boston. She later returned home. The Boas family, also prominent Upper East Siders, were scandalized and shamed in the newspapers after the incident. In an attempt to keep the incident out of the press, the Arnold family quietly contacted John S. Keith, a family friend and lawyer, the morning following Dorothy's disappearance. Keith arrived at the family home and searched Arnold's bedroom. He discovered that except for the outfit she was wearing, all of Arnold's clothes and other personal belongings were in her room. Keith also found personal letters with foreign postmarks in her desk, two folders for transatlantic ocean liners on the desk, and burned papers in the fireplace. The burned papers were presumed to be the rejected manuscripts Arnold submitted to McClure's magazine. Over the following weeks, Keith visited jails, hospitals and morgues in New York City, Philadelphia and Boston, but did not find any sign of Arnold. After Keith's search proved fruitless, he suggested that the Arnold family hire Pinkerton detectives to investigate. Pinkerton investigators searched area hospitals and other places that Arnold was known to frequent but found no trace of her. They also questioned Arnold's friends and former college classmates about her whereabouts, but none had seen her. As Keith had found literature for transatlantic ocean liners in Arnold's room the day after she disappeared, Pinkerton