Kiss Me Hard. Thomas B. Dewey

newsprint, ragged along the edges, the print barely legible in the folds. It had been clipped from a Los Angeles daily. A part of the name of the paper ran vertically alongside the news story in the margin. Although it was datelined less than a year before, the paper was already beginning to yellow.

      I held it carefully and read it. There was a fourteen-point, two-line head:

      JORDAN ESTATE FINALLY SETTLED

      Los Angeles, Calif., August 9, 1951.—Executors for the estate of Philip M. Jordan, millionaire oil man and financier, announced today that a final settlement has been made of the estate after nearly eight years of investigation and delay.

      Bulk of the fortune goes to Jordan’s older daughter, Jean. A younger daughter, Constance, was kidnapped at the age of thirteen, on March 28, 1943. Final settlement of the estate was made possible by a recent decision in local courts declaring Constance legally dead.

      Believed to have been seized in the street while she was returning home from school, Constance Jordan was never found. A telephoned demand for ransom of fifty thousand dollars was met and Philip Jordan, personally and alone, kept the rendezvous at which the money was to be delivered and the girl returned unharmed. He was met, as he stated afterward, by a man and woman. When he demanded to see his daughter before turning over the money, the man slugged him unconscious. A three-year search by police and the F.B.I. failed to locate the girl. Jordan was unable positively to identify the man and woman who met him from hundreds of police photos shown him. He died within three months of the kidnapping.

      Under the provisions of Jordan’s will, the two sisters were to divide the estate equally between them when they came of age. With the younger daughter declared dead, the older girl receives the entire legacy. Many girls have come forward during the past seven years claiming to be the missing Constance Jordan. But although exhaustive investigation was made in every case, each claim was found to be fraudulent. Identification of Constance hinged on certain bodily markings the nature of which, “for obvious reasons,” was never made public. She had never been fingerprinted.

      I handed the fragile clipping back to her. I remembered more about it now. I had been in Los Angeles at the time of the kidnapping of the Jordan girl. I remembered the tense headlines during the first days and the photos of the stricken father. I remembered how the story had died out as news and how it was revived every few weeks, as another girl stepped up to claim the fortune.

      The girl beside me had put the clipping away somewhere in the folds of the slicker. She didn’t look at me anymore. She sat with her arms around her drawn-up knees, staring toward the river.

      “What makes you think you’ll have any more luck than those other girls who tried it?” I said.

      Her answer was simple and direct.

      “Because I am Constance Jordan,” she said.

      When I didn’t answer, she turned slowly and looked at me, her eyes alive again, pleading, intense.

      “Will you help me some more?” she said. “I’ve got to get back. If you’ll help me, I can pay you when we get there.”

      Something in my face must have told her I thought she was dreaming, because her eyes went flat and hopeless again.

      “You don’t believe it,” she said. “But I’m Constance Jordan. I remember everything that happened. I remember that day, coming home from school. And everything after that. I remember!”

      Her desperate hunger to be believed took hold of me. I couldn’t believe it yet. But she was getting under my skin.

      I got to my feet.

      “We’d better find a town,” I said.

      She looked up at me for a long time, her eyes doubtful, still hopeless. Then she reached for her flimsy dress, pulled it over her head, stood up and straightened it over her hips. She wadded the slicker up into a bundle and tucked it under her arm. We started off.