Word: valsa
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Dates: during 1944-1944
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...elevator signal buzzed in International House, the massive 13-story lodging place built by John D. Rockefeller Jr. for foreign students. The elevator man had a blind right eye, but as he stopped the car he turned to look at his lone passenger. She was Valsa Anna Matthai, 21, a pretty Indian girl from Bombay, a Columbia University student. She was not wearing the Indian sari pulled over her hair, but a bright kerchief; and as she walked out of the empty, lighted lobby, the operator noticed she wore a tan polo coat, dark slacks, and sport shoes...
...Valsa Matthai did not return. Last week her disappearance was still a mystery to the scientifically thorough (and 99.2% successful) Missing Persons Bureau of the New York police. It had stumped private investigators hired by the Manhattan office of Tata Iron & Steel Co., Ltd., branch of the rich House of Tata which controls much of India's heavy industry...
...Valsa's disappearance was big news in Bombay, where her father, Dr. John Matthai, is managing director of a new Tata enterprise, a $5,000,000 chemical plant. Dr. Matthai, a Christian, educated at the London School of Economics and Oxford's Balliol College, distinguished himself as an official of the Indian Government before joining Tata in 1940. A believer in freedom for women, he sent his only daughter to convent schools in Calcutta and Bombay, and finally...
...International House Valsa was not missed for more than 24 hours. Then Pritha Kumarappa, an Indian, and Salma Bishlawy, an Egyptian, Valsa's two closest girl friends, went to her room. The key was in the outside lock. The bed was turned down neatly. It had not been slept in. Her room and her clothes were in order; even her purse was there, with lipstick, identification cards and $17 in cash...
...tanks on the roof, another 5,000-gallon tank in a 13th-floor engine room. They shoveled and sifted their way through 150 tons of pea coal in basement bins. They searched the building's 550 rooms, foot by foot. They found no trace of her: Where had Valsa been going, in the snow, before dawn? She had only an amateur interest in Indian political affairs. If she was dead, where was her body? If she was alive, who had seen...