Hearing this she retreated, laid off her defiance, and sat down. I took out my notebook and started my questioning.
"Have you now an idea where your husband is?"
"Of course I have, and this started the whole trouble," she began with animation.
"How so?" I asked.
"For four years I looked and searched without any result. I hoped and hoped, and the charities helped me also. I did not want to publish his picture in the papers. Then I had that accident in the factory. Great God! what that woman, Mrs. Sol (an investigator) made me suffer! Never did she believe a word I said. Called me beggar, liar, crazy, and all the ugly names in the language. I stood it all because I hoped that one day I would get rid of them. Suddenly, one morning, while going to work, I saw him going into a door on Greene Street. I ran after him and throwing my arms around him, cried: 'Chaim, Chaim.'"
Mrs. Baum sobbed again and repeated her husband's name, as though she again saw him. After a few moments she resumed her narrative.
"He looked at me, with strange eyes, as though he saw me for the first time. Meanwhile a crowd had collected. I still kept calling 'Chaim! don't you know me? Your wife, Leah?' 'What wife Leah?' he asked. 'Are you crazy?' Ah! my own husband; the father of my children, did not want to recognise me. The crowd grew. I kept at him. A policeman arrived and forced me to let him go. He quickly entered the door and I ran to the charities and told them my story and gave them the street and house number. I was told to come the next day, when some one would be sent with me—a special man they had for such errands. What a day and what a night I passed! The next morning, bright and early, I was at the office. A young man accompanied me and I led the way to the house. We entered and the man asked the bookkeeper if a Mr. Baum was not working there. He looked in all the books and could find no such name. On my advice the young man asked permission to visit the shop. We were allowed to go up. We looked—he was not there. Yet I was certain that I had seen him enter."
The investigator again treated me to such epithets as "crazy woman, liar, etc." Coming down, I begged the bookkeeper to look over the names of all the employés again. I thought perhaps he was working as a driver, clerk—or at some other job. To get rid of me he asked, 'How does he look?' I had his picture with me and I showed it to the man. He grew pale, and exclaimed: 'That's our boss, Mr. Ap.' All at once he realised what he had said and bent his head over his books. I was thunderstruck. Here he was, the boss of all this and his wife and children starving and begging. So that's the kind of a man he is? The investigator asked the bookkeeper:
"'Is Mr. Ap. here?'
"'No.'