On the Penguin ( Cont'd)

Stark evidence appeared last week further to puzzle investigators seeking to untangle the mystery of Long Island Sound, the Collings Case. From the drifting, lightless cabin cruiser Penguin one night had disappeared a young inventor, Benjamin P. Collings, and his younger, pretty wife, Mrs. Lillian Chelius Collings, leaving their 5-year-old daughter Barbara to be picked up by passing fishermen. Next morning Mrs. Collings was found half-hysterical in the anchored launch of Mayor Howard C. Smith of Cove Neck, L. I. To police she told a strange story of how two mysterious men in a canoe, one about 50, the other about 18, had boarded the Penguin, bound her husband and thrown him overboard, then paddled her to the launch and left her (TIME, Sept. 21).

Lack of clearly defined police jurisdiction caused confusion from the start. District Attorney Elvin N. Edwards of Nassau County announced he believed Mrs. Collings' story; District Attorney Alexander G. Blue of Suffolk County said he did not. Mrs. Collings was questioned and requestioned. Theories of piracy, kidnapping, murder were advanced. On the Penguin were found bloodstains, a broken milk bottle, a broken oar, a revolver and knife which Mr. Collings had not attempted to use. In the boat's tender was an air-cushion which Mrs. Collings said she tried to throw to her husband. The anchor was missing. A canoe in which Mrs. Collings might have been carried off was found. Six days later a Lloyd's Harbor policeman making his routine patrol of the beach on the Marshall Field estate came upon the body of the missing man lying face down on the sand. The hands and feet were tightly bound, the body bruised, the skull horribly beaten in.

Mrs. Collings collapsed. To protect her, her father-in-law hired Lawyer Homer Stille Cummings, onetime Democratic National Committeeman, adviser of President Wilson, counsel for James Joseph ("Gene") Tunney. District Attorney

Blue, his authority now assured by the finding of the body in Suffolk County, pressed the investigation vigorously. Manhattan tabloids boiled over with full-page photographs of the corpse (see p. 52). Some of the papers offered rewards for exclusive information.

The autopsy revealed that Collings had been alive when thrown into the water, although the blow on his head was enough to have caused his death. This substantiated many points of Mrs. Collings' story: There had been a struggle before Collings' hands were bound. He had cried out: "They're putting me overboard!" The fact that his hands and feet were bound started police searching for a second victim. Mrs. Collings had said the two killers told her husband they had a wounded man with them. N. L. Noteman, the fisherman who found Barbara Collings on the drifting boat, had reported seeing a swimmer sink near the Penguin. When it became apparent that Mrs. Collings had been subjected to an abnormal attack before being left in the launch her attorney advanced the theory that the murder was committed by a lunatic, pointing to the brutality toward Collings, the attack on his wife, the solicitude shown her in leaving blankets in the launch as evidences of a paranoiac mind.

But District Attorney Blue was not ready to accept that theory. He wanted to investigate reports that Mrs. Collings had been seen dining with a man about 50, to find out what she meant when she said, in speaking of the attack: ''They would have gone through with their bargain just the same," to substantiate her reported statement that she had been unhappy with her husband. He announced she would not be called at the inquest. He explained: "By calling her now she could not be asked to waive immunity." As the inquest began without her, Prosecutor Blue by his sharp questioning of the policeman to whom she first told her story indicated that he was seeking to build a case against her. But before the inquest was well under way he dramatically halted it, postponed further hearing for a week, departed hastily "to get new evidence."

New evidence awaited him if he could untangle the many and varied clues. The missing anchor had been found, but the rope was not the same size as the rope that had bound Collings. Two suspects had been seen at Norwalk, but they had departed. From the Hotel Charles in Springfield, Mass, had come word that an "F. E. Collingbourne & Wife" of Stamford, Conn, had registered there more than a year ago. A blanket from the Hotel Charles and a pair of large canvas shoes were found in the launch with Mrs. Collings. Fred J. Voos, president of the Bridgeport baseball club, told police he had borrowed a similar blanket early in the summer, that later it had been stolen from his boat with a pair of canvas shoes and a knife. At just that time he had passed a boat with Penguin painted on its stern. Seeking other Penguins, Prosecutor Blue learned that there are at least ten of them in the waters around New York. Thicker grew the Mystery of Long Island Sound.

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