On the Penguin

Both shores of Long Island Sound were stirred and puzzled last week by a nocturnal mystery that hinted piracy, robbery, murder.

A fishing boat entering Oyster Bay after midnight came upon a cabin cruiser adrift without lights. The fishermen thought they heard someone thrashing in the water a few hundred yards away. They called, got no answer. They thought they could see the head and arms of a swimmer heading for the dark boat. Before he reached it, before they could go to his aid, the head and arms disappeared and the Sound was quiet again. They boarded the dark boat, called for the captain. A small voice finally answered: "I'm not the captain. I'm Barbara." There was no one on the boat but a 5-year-old girl, who told them: "My father went in swimming with his clothes on. My mother went in swimming too, My father has lost his job."

After dawn, a fisherman off Cove Neck heard a woman calling for help from a small boat anchored offshore. He rowed to the boat, found it was the Bo Peep, onetime tender of the yacht Resolute, now the launch of Mayor Howard C. Smith of Cove Neck. The woman in it was young, dark, comely. She said she was Mrs. Lillian Chelius Collings, 28, wife of Benjamin P. Collings, an inventor of small appliances who four years before, at 34, had stopped work to live on a modest income. With his wife and daughter Barbara he spent the summers aboard the cruiser Penguin--the boat the fishermen had found adrift the night before. Excited, half hysterical, Mrs. Collings told conflicting stories, finally gave to police the following account:

She and her husband had been sitting in the dark on the Penguin's deck. Barbara was in bed. Two men approached in a canoe, asked to be taken with a wounded companion to South Norwalk, Conn. Mr. Collings demurred. The men boarded the Penguin, started it, ordered Mrs. Collings down into the cabin. Later Mr. Collings went to the cabin, kissed his sleeping daughter, went out without taking his pistol or knife which lay there. After some time the Penguin stopped. Mrs. Collings thought they were now off the Connecticut shore of the Sound. She heard a struggle, a man's voice saying: "Don't tie his hands too tight." She heard her husband cry: "They're putting me overboard!" Looking out. she saw him fall into the water. She threw him an air-cushion, which one of the pirates retrieved. Then the two men put her into their canoe. They paddled for a long time, back across the Sound, she believed. One of them tried to attack her. Finally they put her in the anchored Bo Peep, with several blankets, and paddled away. One was a middle-aged man, the other a youth of about 18. . . .

Police were skeptical of pretty Mrs. Collings' story, but later announced they believed it. A stolen canoe was found. The Sound was searched for the missing man's body, without success. Motive for a crime remained obscure. The two men had stolen nothing, though fearing robbery Mrs. Collings had hidden her rings in small Barbara's shoes. The Collingses led a secluded life, had no enemies, were happy. Mr. Collings' income had dwindled to about $1,000 a year. He had no insurance. The Collingses were avid readers of detective stories. Long Island detectives remained baffled by their case; Inventor Collings remained missing.

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