Our Mutual Girl, No. 32
The finding of the thief who stole Margaret's cameo necklace is bound up with the honor of a character whom we have grown to think a great deal of in the film, and whom Our Mutual Girl has not been unwilling to regard as a possible suitor for her hand. So it is evident, that as the mystery begins to unravel, still intenser emotions are evoked in the nature of the dramatic situation. Dunbar, in the role of volunteer detective, the only person who has the inside knowledge which would lead to the arrest of the real thief, is himself under suspicion. The least misstep will cause his arrest. He even fears that his efforts to recover her necklace for Our Mutual Girl may cost him his life. Margaret, meanwhile, is trying to forget her loss in shopping tours and a visit to the studio of James Montgomery Flagg. Mrs. Knickerbocker is determined to do all she can to divert the poor child in her trouble. Visiting Spaulding's Fifth Avenue shop, Margaret is outfitted in the very latest clothes for sporting wear. The loose sweaters of soft-hued Shetland wool, the breezy Panamas and Norfolk top coats are peculiarly becoming to her youthful face and figure. She insists upon wearing one of the costumes to Mr. Flagg's studio, and although to Auntie it seems just a trifle unconventional for a girl to appear in a white serge suit, cut distinctly on sporting lines, in the city, she consents. Mr. Flagg evidently approves of the effect, however, as he begins a drawing of Margaret the moment after he is introduced to her. All this time Dunbar is spending far from a happy day. He has borrowed the white satin jewel case from Margaret to study the thumb print of the burglar, and as he compares it with the print on a police card which he takes from a locked cabinet in his rooms, his suspicions are confirmed. Then he goes to the phone and calls up a number in the poor district on the lower west side. When his visitor enters, it is with a shock that we seem to see Dunbar, himself, in duplicate. Yet on closer inspection, there is an obvious difference. The thrilling denouement of his relation to his mysterious double; how Dunbar traces him to his lodgings with the help of Annie, the four-footed crook ; and how the thief manages to conceal the necklace, makes the thirty-second installment one of the most intensely interesting of all that have so far been produced.
