"My mother died when I was a baby," he said. "I do not remember her.
My father and I lived alone with servants who were always changing. We
did not seem to catch on with people. I mean, we didn't seem to have
friends like everybody had. I thought this was strange when I was
little. My father was quite an old man, but we got along pretty well.
He was what they called a handwriting expert. He wrote books about
handwriting. Lawyers consulted him, and he gave evidence at trials."
"What was his name?" I asked.
"David Andrus."
Now I remembered the trial of David Andrus, so I was in a position to
check up that part of Ralph's story.
"I was twelve years old," he went on, "when Mrs. Mansfield first began
coming to our apartment. I don't know where or how my father met her,
of course. He knew her pretty well already when I first saw her. At
first she was kind to me, and brought me things, and I was fond of her.
I told myself we had a friend like anybody else now. I used to brag
about her in school.
"Bye and bye I found out, I don't know how, that she was a sham, that
her kindness meant nothing. Little by little I began to hate her,
though I was careful not to let her see it, for I was afraid of her
cold blue eye. Besides my father became more and more crazy about her.
He seemed to lose his good sense as far as she was concerned. She
could make him do anything she wanted. Children see more than they are
supposed to.
"It is three years now since the crash came. I was fourteen then. One
day my father was arrested and taken to the Tombs. Mrs. Mansfield took
me to her house, not the same one she has now. She treated me all
right, but I hated her. Young as I was I held her responsible. I
didn't see much of her. I don't know if you remember the trial----?"
"Something of it," said I.
"The papers were full of it. I was not allowed to attend, but, of
course, I got hold of all the papers. They said that my father had got
hold of blank stock certificates by corrupting young clerks, and had
then forged signatures to them and sold them on the stock market. He
was sentenced to Sing Sing for seven years. They took me to see him
before he was sent away. He had aged twenty years. He wasn't able to
say much to me."
"Mrs. Mansfield told me I must change my name, and sent me to a good
school in Connecticut. She paid the bills. I was pretty happy there,
though this thing was always hanging over my head. In the summers I
was sent away to a boy's camp in the mountains. Mrs. Mansfield told me
nobody was allowed to see my father or to write to him and I believed
her. So it was the same to me as if he had died.
"One day last winter in school I received a letter signed
"Well-Wisher," asking me to meet the writer at a certain spot in the
school woods that afternoon. Naturally I was excited by the mystery
and all that. I was scared, too. But I went. I didn't tell anybody."
"I found a queer customer waiting for me. A man about fifty with
close-cropped hair. He told me right off that he was just out of Sing
Sing. Why hadn't I ever come to see my dad, he asked. He said it was
pitiful the way he pined for me."
"I stammered out that I didn't know anybody could see him. He told me
about the visiting days. 'Anyhow you could have written,' he said."
"'He never wrote to me,' I said.
"'Sure, doesn't he write to you every writing day! He has read me the
letters. Elegant letters."
"'I never got them!' I said."
"'That's why I came,' he said. 'Dave said he thought that woman had
come between you.'"
"The old fellow told me how to address a letter to my father, and he
gave me money to go to Sing Sing when I could. I had an allowance from
Mrs. Mansfield, but not enough for that. I wrote to my father that
night."
"It was Easter before I had the chance to see my father. I made out to
Mrs. Mansfield that the school closed a day later than it did, and I
used that day to go to Sing Sing. My father was in the infirmary. I
scarcely recognised him. They let me stay all day. Even I could see
that he was dying."
"For the first time I heard the truth of the case. It was Mrs.
Mansfield who had got the certificates out of the young clerks, and had
brought them to my father to be filled in. When they were found out
she carried on so, that he took the whole thing on himself. He thought
he might as well, since he had to go to jail anyway, and he knew he
would die there. Besides she promised him to have me educated and
looked after. He had no one else to leave me with. At that time he
still believed in her.
"But in the prison he met men who knew about her of old. My father was
not the first she had been the means of landing in jail. It was then
my father began to be afraid for me, and managed to send me word.
"He died in April. Mrs. Mansfield immediately took me out of school.
She told me my father was dead, and that it was time I went to work. I
think she must have learned by her spies that I had been to see my
father, for she no longer took the trouble to put on a good face. Now
it was, do this or that or it will be the worse for you. When I saw
how all the other men gave in to her, I was afraid to resist. I hated
her, but what could I do? I had no one to go to. I had no experience.
I wasn't sure of myself. The understanding up there is that Lorina
could reach you wherever you went. And if you did anything to cross
her, look out! She has spies everywhere!"
"I wonder why she didn't turn you adrift altogether?" I said.
"I think I am useful to them because I look honest," the boy said
wretchedly. "I run errands for them, but I never know what it's all
about."
"Have you ever heard talk up there of a boss greater than Mrs.
Mansfield?" I asked.