Then the records of my telephone-calls were consulted, and every person whom I had called up in my last two days in the apartment was hounded. My poor mother was driven nearly to desperation. In our telephone-call list was found the name of Dr. Warbasse, who had taken Miss Branch away, and Dr. Warbasse later received a wireless message from Bermuda, as follows:
"Give Branch story to papers."
Shortly afterward the doctor was called up by the "Evening Journal," and was told that the "Journal" had received a wireless message from me, instructing them to call on him for information concerning Miss Branch. I quote from Dr. Warbasse's letter to me:
I believed the only way they could have learned of my connection
with the case was from you, and accordingly gave them a short statement
of the facts, but withheld the location of Miss Branch. They
published very distorted versions of what little I gave them. They
were particularly solicitous for her whereabouts. A few days later
I had another wireless from you, asking me to send you Branch's
address. By this time I had grown suspicious, and sent you my
address instead. I am now wondering whether the wireless messages
were from you or were newspaper fakery. If the latter is the case,
it was well done, believe me, and does great credit to the unscrupulousness
of the press.
Needless to say, I had sent no such message. What is
more significant, I did not receive the message which Dr.
Warbasse sent to me, giving me his address! Is the "Evening
Journal" able to intercept cablegrams? I don't know; but
soon after my arrival in Bermuda I received a letter from my
friend who conducts the school for young ladies, scolding me
for the terrible trouble into which I had got her. The "Journal,"
she said, had become convinced that Miss Branch was hidden
in the school, and it was only by desperate efforts that she had
kept this highly sensational rumor from going out to the
world. I thought, of course, that I was to blame for my
thoughtlessness in having given her telephone number to the
"Evening Journal" on the eve of my departure from New
York, and I wrote abjectly apologizing for this. What was
my consternation to receive a letter assuring me that this was
not what had angered her, but the fact that I had been so
foolish as to send her a wireless message, instructing her to
give the story of Miss Branch to the paper, and had wired
the "Journal" to call upon her for the information!
