This last wail being directed to me, the only American in the crowd of about one hundred collected about the entrance of the bake-shop, I asked the Russian woman to tell her about Francisco. On being made to understand she snatched the handful of Bellevue notices from the fingers of her son’s mother-in-law. Though a poor woman with no money in bank, she hurled back at her rival, she would take care of her own flesh and blood, she would go at once for Francisco.
Without the formality of getting either hat or coat she boarded the next surface-car. On returning to Bellevue I learned that Francisco had been turned over to his grandmother. Writing out a history of the case I marked it closed.
Some ten days later, between eight and nine o’clock of an evening, there walked into the reception-room of the social service department a man so thin and pale that but for the blackness of his clothes and the brown of his hair he might have been almost invisible. He asked to see his wife and four children, all in Bellevue.
Had he spoken to the man in the entrance office? Yes, and been sent to the social service department. That meant trouble—the straightening out of some tangle or, perhaps, breaking the news of a death.
Those of us workers in earshot stopped what we had been doing to listen. When the man gave his name, LaCastro, I realized that it was my task, and stepped forward.
Did he know that his mother had taken Francisco home? I asked. A wan smile and a flicker of light in his lustreless eyes as he told me he was glad to hear that. The friend who had gone out from the New York Hospital ahead of him had come back to tell him that his wife and all his children had been taken to Bellevue.
Yes, that was some time ago, soon after he came to himself in the hospital. He wasn’t feeling very well when he left home that morning, and later when he fainted at his work the boss had him taken direct to the New York Hospital. Would I please tell him in which ward he would find his wife and four children.
I read him a part of Francisco’s history, giving the date of each death. After a brief silence he asked if—if he might see them? Would he find them in the morgue? Feeling sure that he would be allowed, I started back to telephone, to find out if he must go around to the Twenty-ninth Street entrance.
He called me back. There was a flicker of the same light in his eyes that had shown when told that his mother had taken Francisco. Where was his baby? His wife was about to be confined. There must be a baby.
That meant going more deeply into the case. After telephoning back and forth I was told: