on wednesday morning i motored to town and took up my residence in the hotel rotterdam. i hardly knew myself amidst such grandeur. for several days the situation remained in status quo. i learned from english's daily reports that lorina and her gang were still waiting for my first move. i, for my part, was determined to make them move first.

only one of his reports gave me anything to do. i quote from it:

"among all the men who come and go in this den of crooks there is one that has particularly excited my interest and compassion. it is an extremely good-looking boy of eighteen or thereabouts whom i know simply as blondy. he seems so like a normal boy, jolly, frank and mischievous, that i keep wondering how he fell into lorina's clutches. he reminds me of my boy eddie at his age. lorina has him thoroughly intimidated. she is more overbearing with him than the others. he seems not to be trusted very far, but is used as errand boy and spy. his extreme good looks and ingenuous air, make him valuable to them i fancy.

"blondy's instinct seems to have led him to make friends with me, though as far as he knows i am no better than the rest. at any rate we have had a few talks together and feel quite intimate. without any suggestion from me, he has kept this from the others. it is quite touching.

"i would like very much to get the boy out of this before the grand catastrophe. i'm sure he's worth saving. naturally in my position i can't undertake any missionary work. could you with safety arrange for some one to get hold of the boy? he tells me that he lives at the adelphi association house, no. —— west 125th street. apparently it is a semi-philanthropic club or boarding-house for young men. he passes there by the name of ralph manly."

i was in almost as unfavorable a position for undertaking "missionary work" as mr. dunsany. after thinking the matter over i decided to again ask the help of the famous surgeon who had befriended me in the hospital. i called at his office for the ostensible purpose of consulting him as to my health. when i was alone with him in his consulting room i made myself known. being a human kind of man, notwithstanding his eminence, he was interested in the dramatic and mysterious elements of my story. far from abusing me for taking up his valuable time, he expressed himself as very willing to help save the boy.

we consulted a directory of charities in his office, and he found that he was acquainted with several men on the board of managers of the adelphi association. this offered an opening. he promised to proceed with the greatest caution, and promised to write to me at my hotel if he had any luck.

three days later i heard from him as follows:

"i took my friend on the adelphi board partly into my confidence, and between him and the doctor employed by the association to safeguard the health of the boys, the matter was easily arranged. the doctor's regular weekly visit to the institution fell yesterday. he saw the boy, and making believe to be struck by something in his appearance, put him through an examination. he hinted to the boy that he was in rather a bad way, and instructed him to report to my office for advice this morning.

"the young fellow showed up in a very sober state of mind. he is really as sound as a dollar, but for the present i am keeping him anxious without being too explicit. he appears to be quite as attractive a youth as your friend said. i am very much interested, but am not yet prepared to make up my mind about him. he is coming to-morrow at two-thirty. if it is convenient for you to be here, i will arrange a meeting as if by accident."

needless to say, i was at the doctor's office at the time specified. i found the blonde boy already waiting among other patients in the outer office. it was easy to recognise him from mr. dunsany's description. he was better than merely good-looking; he had nice eyes. he was dressed a little too showily as is natural to a boy of that age when he is allowed to consult his own taste exclusively.

there happened to be a vacant chair beside him and i took it. presently i addressed some friendly commonplace to him. he responded naturally. evidently he was accustomed to having people like him. soon we were talking away like old friends. i was more and more taken with him. primarily, it was his good looks, of course, the universal safe-conduct, but in addition to that i was strongly affected by a quality of wistfulness in the boy's glance, of which he himself was quite unconscious. surely, i said to myself, a boy of his age had no business to be carrying around a secret sorrow. the doctor, issuing from his consulting room, saw us hobnobbing together, and allowed us to wait until everybody else had been attended to.

he had me into the consulting room first. "well, what do you think of him?" he asked.

"i am charmed," i said. "there are no two words about it."

"so was i," he said, "but i didn't want to raise your hopes too high in my letter."

after discussing a little what we would do with him, we had the boy in.

"ralph, my friend, mr. boardman, wished to be regularly introduced," said the doctor.

boardman was the name i had taken in my present disguise.

the boy shook hands nicely, he was neither too bashful, nor too brash, and some facetious remarks were made all around.

"i tell boardman," said the doctor, "that if he had done his duty by his country and had had half a dozen sons like you he would have no time to be worrying about his appendix now."

"has your father got half a dozen like you?" i asked.

an expression of pain ran across the boy's face. "i have no brothers," he said. "my father is dead."

"well, since you're a fatherless son, and i'm a sonless father—with an appendix, perhaps we can cheer each other up a little," i said. "will you have dinner with me at my hotel to-night?"

boys never see anything suspicious in sudden overtures of friendship. ralph accepted, blushing with pleasure.

the dinner was a great success. i don't know which of us was the better entertained. my young friend's prattle, ingenuous, boastful, lightheaded, renewed my own boyhood. it was rather painful though to see one naturally so frank, obliged to pull up when he found himself approaching dangerous ground. then he would glance at me to see if i had noticed anything.

i had him several times after that. it was a risk, of course, but one must take risks. at the same time i was pretty sure from mr. dunsany's reports that ralph never talked of his outside affairs to any of the gang. at least he never told mr. dunsany anything about his dinners with mr. boardman at the rotterdam, and he was friendly with him.

the dénouement of this incident really belongs a little later in my story, but for the sake of continuity i will give it here.

i soon saw that i would have no difficulty in winning ralph's full confidence. his gratitude for friendliness was very affecting. i could see that he often wished to bare his painful secret. i let him take his own time about it.

it was the doctor's offering him a position in a friend's office that brought matters to a head. ralph refused it with a painful air. he could give no reason for it to the doctor. afterwards when i had him alone with me i saw that it was coming.

"that certainly was decent of dr. ——," he said diffidently. "i don't know why he's so good to me."

"oh, you're not a bad sort of boy," i said lightly.

"you, too," he said shyly. "especially you. i—i never had a man friend before."

i smiled encouragingly.

"i suppose you wonder why i couldn't take the position?" he went on.

"that's your affair."

"but i want to tell you. i—i wouldn't be allowed to take it. i am not a free agent."

"perhaps we could help you to be one," i suggested.

"i don't know. maybe you wouldn't want to have anything more to do with me. oh, there's a lot i want to tell you!" he cried imploringly. "but i don't know how you'll take it."

"try me."

"would you—would you kick me out," he said, agitated and breathless, "if you knew that my dad had committed a forgery, if you knew that he had died in prison?"

"why, no," i said calmly, "i suspect you were not responsible for that."

a sigh of relief escaped him. "you are kind!—but that's only the beginning," he went on. "but i feel i can tell you now. i'm in an awful hole. i suppose you will think i'm a weak character for not trying to get out of it more, and i am weak, but i didn't know what to do!"

"tell me all about it," i said.

and he did; all about lorina and foxy and jumbo as he knew them. they didn't trust him far. he knew nothing of their actual operations, but his honest young heart told him they were crooks. lorina held him under a spell of terror. he had not up to this time been able to conceive of the idea of escaping her. there are those who would blame the boy, i have no doubt, but i am not one of them. i have seen too often that a mind which may afterwards become strong and self-reliant is at ralph's age fatally subservient to older minds. those who would blame him should remember that until he met the doctor and me he had not a disinterested friend in the world. they must grant that he instantly reacted to kindness and decent feelings.

"how did you first get into this mess?" i asked, strongly curious.

"i'd have to tell you my whole life to explain that."

"fire away."

i will give you ralph's story somewhat abridged.

"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.

he nodded. "but only vague talk. i've never seen him."

"does she have you watched?" i asked.

"no. she thinks she has me where she wants me. but if she suspected anything——"

"you mustn't come here again," i said.

his face fell absurdly.

"oh, i'm not kicking you out," i said smiling. "i shall keep in touch with you. would you like to see this woman go to jail?"

"would i?" he cried, jumping up. words failed him. "oh—! oh, just try me, that's all!"

"well, i'm going to put her there," i said. "and you shall help me. but we must be careful."