Munsey's Magazine, September 1926

# "Blotted Out" by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

This serialized mystery opens aboard the S.S. Farragut arriving in New York. James Ross, a dark, taciturn young man returning from eight years in Manila, deliberately avoids two ship passengers: the formidable Mrs. Barron and her gentle daughter Phyllis, despite mutual attraction. Upon disembarking, Ross receives a cryptic note from an unknown cousin, Amy Ross Sotway, claiming terrible trouble and urgently requesting he pose as a chauffeur applicant at her estate near Stamford. Despite his instinct to reject it, Ross keeps the note. He settles at a modest Manhattan hotel, carrying both the mysterious letter and the memory of Phyllis Barron's quiet dignity, his carefully constructed solitude already tested by human connection he claims to neither want nor need.