“Give me a piece of paper. You know my writing—”
With clutching claws John seized a sheet of bank stationery and tried to write in the round script of Jasper. During the past year and a half he had filled thousands of pages with the small finicky hand of John. Now, though he tried to prevent it, after he had traced two or three words in large but shaky letters the writing became smaller, more pinched, less legible.
Even while John wrote the president looked at the sheet and said easily: “Afraid it’s no use. That isn’t Jasper’s fist. See here, I want you to get away from Rosebank—go to some farm—work outdoors—cut out this fuming and fussing—get some fresh air in your lungs.” The president rose and purred: “Now, I’m afraid I have some work to do.”
He paused, waiting for John to go.
John fiercely crumpled the sheet and hurled it away. Tears were in his weary eyes.
He wailed: “Is there nothing I can do to prove I am Jasper?”
“Why, certainly! You can produce what’s left of the ninety-seven thousand!”
John took from his ragged waistcoat pocket a five-dollar bill and some change. “Here’s all there is. Ninety-six thousand of it was stolen from my house last night.”
Sorry though he was for the madman the president could not help laughing. Then he tried to look sympathetic, and he comforted: “Well, that’s hard luck, old man. Uh, let’s see. You might produce some parents or relatives or somebody to prove that Jasper never did have a twin brother.”
“My parents are dead, and I’ve lost track of their kin—I was born in England—father came over when I was six. There might be some cousins or some old neighbors, but I don’t know. Probably impossible to find out, in these wartimes, without going over there.”