Larry Dexter - The Great Search

Book 3 in the series: Larry Dexter, ace reporter for the New York Leader newspaper, is sent on a "special assignment," as it is called. He has to find a New York millionaire who has mysteriously disappeared after a passenger ship hit a sand bar and her keel was broken. A rescue operation finds or rescues many of the passengers, but Mr. Potter, a financier involved in steamships disappears. Larry's rival reporter, Peter Manton—from a less scrupulous paper, the Scorcher, tries to steal Larry's stories, but the plucky reporter stays one step ahead.