Project Gutenberg 2025-07-11 Public domain in the USA. 270 Starrett, Vincent 1886 1974 Missing men $aNew York :$bDoubleday, Page & Co., $c1925. Produced from the April 25, 1925 issue of Short Stories magazine. Roger Frank and Sue Clark "Missing men by Vincent Starrett" is a detective short story written in the early 20th century. It follows the cool-headed sleuth Lavender as he probes a spate of puzzling disappearances in Chicago. The likely topic is a web of vanishing men tied to the theatre, stage identities, and a family secret that has been carefully hidden. When a picture broker named Peter Vanderdonck, a popular comedian named Charles Merritt, and finally the wealthy Cyril Minor all seem to vanish, Lavender pieces together odd clues: a nearly unused office, greasepaint traces at a washstand, a safe, and a newspaper note about actress Sidney Kane. He deduces that Merritt and Vanderdonck are the same person—and then that Minor is both of them, living a double (and triple) life to avoid publicity while secretly reunited with his former wife, Sidney Kane. A suspicious telegram signed “Father” instead of “Dad” sends Lavender and Minor’s daughter, Shirley, to Kane’s suburban home, where the truth emerges: Kane is Shirley’s mother; she and Minor have remarried, and Minor—struck ill—has been convalescing there under the cover story of an “invalid brother.” The disappearances are thus revealed as a theatrical masquerade rather than crime, ending in a family reconciliation. (This is an automatically generated summary.) 20250623200735starrett 1925 US Reading ease score: 84.5 (6th grade). Easy to read. en Detective and mystery stories Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction Missing persons -- Investigation -- Fiction Lavender, Jimmie (Fictitious character) -- Fiction PS Text Category: Short Stories Category: Crime, Thrillers and Mystery Category: American Literature 87852 2025-07-30T08:21:30.551327 text/html 63291 2025-07-10T22:39:58 text/html 377449 2025-07-30T08:21:34.163293 application/epub+zip 377867 2025-07-30T08:21:31.778309 application/epub+zip 170505 2025-07-30T08:21:30.932357 application/epub+zip 952375 2025-07-30T08:21:35.798307 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 945413 2025-07-30T08:21:33.410302 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 78877 2025-07-30T08:21:30.364321 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 59185 2025-07-10T22:39:58 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 14438 2025-07-30T08:21:35.946292 application/rdf+xml 26335 2025-07-30T08:21:31.163320 image/jpeg 4576 2025-07-30T08:21:31.051322 image/jpeg 396019 2025-07-30T08:21:30.579322 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia