Potomac Mystery

One night month ago the S. S. District of Columbia, ancient sidewheeler of the Norfolk & Washington Steamboat Co., chuffed down the quiet Potomac on its regular overnight run from Washington to Norfolk. About midnight a ''red-faced'' man stepped up to the deserted refreshment counter and ordered a bottle of beer. Just as he was served, a lean, bespectacled, elderly man, whose grey head was topped with a brown beret, sauntered up beside him. Because they seemed to be total strangers, the clerk was surprised when the red-faced man handed his beer over to the man with the beret, still more surprised when the red-faced man then ordered a bottle of Coca-Cola for himself and walked out with it without speaking a single word to the elderly man. The clerk might have forgotten the incident if the man with the beret had not drunk his gratuitous beer alone and walked away from the bar never again to be seen alive.

All this came out next morning when the cabin which the man in the beret had occupied was found empty, in violent disorder, its washstand and the catwalk outside its open, window bloodstained. On the floor were shattered glasses, a wrist watch, its metal band wrenched and broken, and a nickel. No one could place his red-faced friend, but purser's records identified the missing man as Charles F. Keene. His disappearance was apparently the first drama in Mr. Keene's life. He had lived with his wife in a modest residential hotel in Washington, had a son who had graduated from Annapolis. Once an architect, at 63 he was a not too prosperous real estate broker, bound for Norfolk cheaply by boat presumably to complete an inconsequential real-estate deal.

Last week, all but forgotten, this Potomac mystery became more baffling than ever. A Chesapeake Bay fisherman found Charles F. Keene, quite dead and floating out to sea upside down. What held him so was a brief case whose contents inventoried: a lady's mesh bag, an automobile jack, a mechanic's hammer, two beer can openers, a pen knife, a pocket comb, a silver tea strainer. The brief case was roped to his neck with tight sailor's bowline knots. In Mr. Keene's vest pocket: only a small tin box containing three .32-calibre cartridges and two aspirin tablets. In Mr. Keene's throat, a hole through which a .32-calibre bullet had passed. So far as anyone knew, Mr. Keene did not own a .32-calibre weapon, the brief case or automobile jack. But the mesh bag and the tea strainer were his. He always carried them in sentimental remembrance of his dead sister.

All this was mysterious enough, but it looked as if the man with the red face was the missing link and that with his capture all could be explained. Three days after Keene's body was found, into the police station he walked--and out again, as free as ever. If anything, his story only made the Potomac Mystery more mysterious.

The man with the red face said he was James Starkey, 53, civil engineer with the Resettlement Administration and lifelong friend of Keene. He had not known the latter was going to be on the boat when he took it on Government business, had run into him on deck. He said he found Keene moody, evasive, had worried about him. This apparently accounted for the clerk's difficulty in understanding the relationship. When Keene had disappeared for a few hours and Starkey had questioned him, Starkey quoted his reply: "I've been in my stateroom talking over my deal." With whom? Nobody knew. Starkey had been shocked when he heard of Keene's disappearance the next night, told police he had suspected suicide on account of Keene's behavior, had visited the dead man's son and placed his information "in his hands." They had agreed that it would disturb Mrs. Keene less not to know. But when the body floated up, Starkey hastened to the police.

Still unexplained: the automobile jack, the aspirin, the bowline knots and Charles F. Keene's mysterious death by violence.

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