"I don't think you'd better read it here," she whispered nervously. "It—it is very private and confidential."
"That's all right," said Charlie. "I'll sneak upstairs with it, Angie."
"Well, act as if you are looking out of the window," she said, and when his back was turned she produced the letter from its hiding place inside her blouse.
II — Charlie retired to his room a few minutes later. There he perused the following letter, written on the stationery of Beck, Blossom, Fredericks & Smith, Attorneys-at-law, New York City:
MY DEAR NIECE:
Pardon my delay in replying to your letter of recent date. I have been very busy in court and have not been in a position to devote even a little of my time to your inquiry. Your second letter reached me yesterday, and I now make amends for my previous delinquency by answering it with a promptness most uncommon in lawyers.
The firm of which I am a member appeared in 1912 for the plaintiff in the case of Ritter vs. Thane. Our client was a young woman residing in Brooklyn. The defendant was Courtney Thane, the son of Howard Thane, and no doubt the young man to whom you refer. In any case, he was the grandson of Silas Thane, who lived in your part of the State of Indiana. We were demanding one hundred thousand dollars for our client. Miss Ritter was a trained nurse. Young Thane had been severely injured in an automobile accident. If YOUR Courtney Thane is the same as MINE, he will be walking with a slight limp. His left leg was badly crushed in the accident to which I refer. For several months he was unable to walk. Upon his removal from St. Luke's Hospital to his father's home in Park Avenue, a fortnight after the accident, our client was employed as a nurse on the case. This was early in the spring of 1912. In June the Thane family went to the Berkshires, where they had rented a house for the summer. Our client accompanied them. Prior to their departure, Thane, senior, had settled out of court with the occupants of the automobile with which his son's car had collided in upper Broadway. His son was alone in his car when the accident occurred, but there were a number of witnesses ready to testify that he was driving at a high rate of speed, regardless of traffic or crossings. If my memory serves me correctly, his father paid something like twenty-five thousand dollars to the three persons injured. That, however, is neither here nor there, except to illustrate the young man's disregard for the law.
Miss Ritter had been on the case a very short time before he began to make ardent love to her. She was an extremely pretty girl, two years his senior, and, I am convinced, a most worthy and exemplary young woman. She became infatuated with the young man. He asked her to marry him. (Permit me to digress for a moment in order to state that while Courtney Thane was in his freshman year at college his father was obliged to pay out quite a large sum of money to a chorus-girl with whom, it appears, he had become involved.) To make a long story short, our client, trusting implicitly to his honour and submitting to the ardour of their joint passion, anticipated the marriage ceremony with serious results to herself. When she discovered that he had no intention of marrying her, she attempted suicide. Her mother, on learning the truth, went to Thane's parents and pleaded for the righting of the wrong. Howard Thane had, by this time, lost all patience with his son. He refused to have anything to do with the matter. The young man's mother ordered Miss Ritter's mother out of the apartment and threatened to have her arrested for blackmail. Shortly after this episode, we were consulted by Mrs. Ritter, much against the wishes of her daughter, who shrank from the notoriety and the disgrace of a lawsuit. The elder Thane was adamant in his decision that his son should marry the girl, who, he was fair enough to admit, was a young woman of very superior character and who, he was convinced, had been basely deceived. The mother, on the other hand, was relentlessly opposed to the sacrifice of her son. We took the matter to court. On the morning of the first day of the trial, before the opening of court, the defendant's counsel came to us with a proposition. They offered to settle out of court for twenty-five thousand dollars. In the end, we accepted fifty thousand, and the case was dismissed. Afterwards counsel for the other side informed us that the elder Thane turned his son out of his home and refused to have anything more to do with him. I understand the young man went to Europe, where he subsisted on an allowance provided by his mother. Thane, senior, died shortly after this. Our client, I am pained to say, died with her babe in childbirth.
You may be interested to know, my dear niece, that Mrs. Thane married soon after her husband's death. Her second husband was a young French nobleman, many years her junior. He was killed in the war, I think at Verdun. I understand she is now living in this city. Her present name escapes me, but I know that her widowhood has been made endurable by a legacy which happens to be one in name only. In other words, he left her the title of Countess.
If I can be of any further service to you, my dear niece, pray do not hesitate to call upon me. Believe me to be...etc., etc.