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  “Before you let me see my child?”

  “You must understand. It’s only a matter of identification. Formalities. Routine. I believe you but—”

  “But there’s all that money,” he said, with a tinge of bitterness.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “But Jonny is in my care. The others gave me that responsibility and I—”

  He interrupted. “The others?”

  “Yes—you must know. It was all in the letter which was left at the orphanage in Vienna?”

  “Oh, the letter. Yes. Yes, I have it.”

  “Then you know all about Conrad Stanley’s will.”

  “Oh, yes. My uncle.”

  “Matt told you about it in the letter. That’s Matt Cosden. He brought Jonny here. He is—he explained it all in the letter. He is Mrs. Stanley’s lawyer. And then, of course, there is another trustee, Charlie Stedman. All of them will be very interested to know that you have arrived. I will telephone to Matt and—”

  “Wait, please!” he said, suddenly and peremptorily. “I would like to see my child first. Can’t all this—this formality wait?”

  Laura hesitated. “I think I should let them know that you are here as soon as possible. And then, you see—well, they will expect you to give some proof of your identity.”

  “I understand. There’s all that money!”

  “Well, yes. They told me, Matt and Charlie Stedman, that when you came, if you came, we would have to be sure—”

  “You want my dossier. Very well. I was born in Cracow.”

  “Yes, we knew that.” Cracow: the cradle of culture, the begetter of scholars for one-time sturdy and self-reliant Poland. A Poland which for much of its life had suffered invasion, division and redivision, but somehow always had retained a stubborn flame of life, so it gathered itself together again, piece by piece, and limb by limb. Who can say, Laura thought, that this country is now dead, lost, forever surrendered? Poland had always somehow, sometime, asserted its own stubborn independence. Battered and bleeding after the German invasion in World War II, and then again made captive, still, somewhere, a secret flame of liberty might smolder. The man standing before her was a symbol of that.

  He had not followed the swift course of her thoughts. He said slowly, as if merely reciting facts that were completely objective and impersonal, “I studied languages. I was going to teach. I went to England to study, and just before the war, when I knew the war was inevitable, I came to Poland again. I was there that September.”

  His voice took on an even more impersonal and chilly quality, as if those terrible September days had killed feelings as they had destroyed cities and people. “Eventually I joined a Polish brigade. We were sent to Russia and then to Africa. After the war was over I returned. There were some difficult times; I need not go into that. However, I managed to live. I was married. Jonny was born. My wife—” He checked himself almost imperceptibly; his eyes seemed suddenly very bleak and guarded, his face more closed in on itself. He went on rather quickly. “I was left to see to Jonny who was then two years old. I did my best but—that was not good enough. I wished to leave Poland, escape, but meantime I had to live and support Jonny. I became—that is, I joined the government party. I was a language expert.” He shrugged. “I was useful. Eventually I became a member of a minor commission. Two years ago I had a chance to send Jonny to Vienna. I intended to follow her as soon as possible and escape to England or America. However, it took a long time, two years in fact, before I contrived an errand to Vienna and had an opportunity to do so. When I went to the home where I expected to find Jonny, I found instead your letter.” He paused and looked at her steadily. “Now may I see my child?”

  It was a reasonable and a factual account of himself. Laura forced herself to question it. She said, “You will have your passport, of course. Or the letter from Matt. Perhaps some means of identification.”

  Again his face seemed to withdraw warily into itself. “I do have these things,” he said. His thin shoulders seemed to brace themselves under the awkwardly tailored coat. His rather weak chin lifted. There was a thin edge of defiance in his voice. “I have everything which you will need or any of the others will need to convince you that I am really the man I say I am. I do not have them with me. I do not intend to show them to you at this time.”

  The defiance was as surprising as his flat statement. Laura said, “But—but I don’t understand. You must see that—”

  He interrupted, “I only know that I want to see my child now. Only let me look at her, Miss March. I will not talk to her. I will not touch her. I will not speak to her. But I must see her—only for a moment.” He put a thin and shaking hand on the door.

  And Laura thought, but Jonny will recognize him! That will be proof of his identity. She opened the door to the living room.

  He took a quick step or two inside. Laura began “Jonny—” and stopped, for then she saw that Jonny had retreated swiftly as a bird into a thicket, to the cautious stillness and silence which had characterized her first few days with Laura, in a strange home, in a strange country.

  She must have heard their voices in the hall, for she was standing now behind an armchair as if it were a bulwark. The kitten stood on the arm of the chair, humped up and gazing with serious blue eyes at this intruder. But Jonny’s face was completely still. She made no movement, she made no cry of recognition, she simply stood there, her eyes blue and fixed and perfectly blank.

  The stillness and silence lasted for perhaps a few seconds. Then Conrad Stanislowski said to Laura, “Thank you,” and turned abruptly back into the hall.

  “But you—please wait—where are you going?”

  “I told you I would only look at her and be sure she was here.” He was already at the door to the corridor.

  She cried, “But you can’t leave now. Let me phone the others—”

  “No” he said sharply. “Don’t do that.” He took a long breath and said, “Miss March, I must ask you to do something—it is extremely important, otherwise I would not ask you to do it. You won’t understand—only believe me. I must ask you not to tell the others of my arrival. Not yet.”

  “But I must tell them!” she cried. “I have to tell them. They will want to see you. Besides, Jonny—”

  “That will wait,” he said. “Please promise me now, to keep my arrival a secret? I realize this is an extraordinary request. I must make it.”

  Suddenly there was something desperate and beseeching in his face and his thin body. He opened the door.

  “But—but I can’t let you go like this! Where are you going?”

  He turned back. “I’ll tell you that. I got to a rooming house— 3936 Koska Street. I trust you, Miss March. I believe you will keep a promise. In a few days—only a few days, I’ll come back. I’ll do everything that’s required of me. I’ll show you all my credentials, all my cards of identification, everything. But until—” He stopped, gave her one long intent look and unexpectedly, as if she had yielded to his appeal, said, “Thank you.” His thin figure with its bulky overcoat turned into the corridor and disappeared.

  For a moment Laura did not move. Then she went to the door; he had already reached the bank of elevators. He did not look back; the door closed after him. Somehow she knew that it would have been useless to pursue him, useless to question him. But she stood for a moment staring at the blank, closed doors of the elevators, halfway down the corridor. They were as blank and in a way as baffling as that unexpected and extraordinary encounter.

  Why had she let him leave, like that?

  How could she have stopped him!

  And when after some time she turned back into the hall again, Jonny also had disappeared and with her the kitten.

  Jonny had not gone far. There was nowhere to go in Laura’s small apartment. She found the child back in her own small bedroom, bending over a book of drawings to be filled in with colored crayons. The kitten sat on the low play table beside the book, watching with deep concentration,
for sometimes a crayon could be transformed into a moving object; Suki greatly interfered with the accuracy of Jonny’s drawing. But the child was apparently in engrossed study over the book of pictures. So that was all right, Laura thought, and returned to the living room.

  For a long time she walked up and down the room, pausing to stare at nothing out the window, thinking of the curious affair of Conrad Stanislowski’s appearance. She had entirely mismanaged the interview.

  Intending to do what she thought was right, she had only wounded him—and perhaps Jonny—by interfering with their reunion. And then she had let him go, not only with very few facts in her possession but with a tacit promise on her part to keep his arrival a secret.

  Yes, she had mismanaged that curious but important interview. She had failed in her duty as trustee. Certainly she should not have allowed him to leave believing that she would keep his arrival a secret. Her obvious duty was to go straight to the telephone—tell Matt, tell Charlie, tell Doris of Conrad Stanislowski’s amazing appearance and of his still more amazing request to keep his arrival a secret.

  Yet there was the pleading in his eyes, in his voice. There was something intangible, indescribable that touched her heart, and made her believe at least for the moment in him and in the validity of his request. Whatever the reasons for it were, just there and just then she had believed that there were reasons.

  She thought unexpectedly, he doesn’t look like Conrad Stanley; there ought to be some family resemblance.

  There was none. Conrad Stanley had been a stocky, strongly built man with a fresh color, wide cheekbones and a broad forehead, a firm and determined nose and chin, massive and blunt. He had had light, Slav blue eyes, but they were intelligent and determined, clear and sparkling—never a bleak and faded blue.

  And Conrad had never been nervous, uncertain, desperate; he had always known exactly where he was going, and why, and how he was going to get there.

  Laura had known Conrad Stanley and loved him since she was a very small child. She could not remember when Conrad Stanley had not been a part of her life.

  THREE

  CONRAD STANLEY’S STORY HAD been the success story of many Americans. He, too, was born in Cracow. Laura had often heard the details of his early life, for Conrad as he grew older, like many self-made men, liked to talk. He did not boast; there was only a kind of candid surprise and pleasure about him when he talked of his life, which was almost naïve except that Conrad was in no sense naïve; he was instead remarkably worldly-wise, understanding of human frailties as well as human strength, and deeply compassionate about the whole.

  “Rags to riches,” he would say and chuckle. “I came up the hard way. I was younger than you are now, Laura, when my mother brought me to America.”

  There had been then a brother, Paul, older than Conrad. A still older brother, Stefan, remained in Poland. Conrad, his mother and Paul had landed in America with only a few dollars. Laura had felt dimly that their reason for emigrating to America was not only poverty and a desire to better themselves—but that there might have been some distant but then operative political reason for their departure. In any event, they had landed in New York among its teeming emigrants from other shores and had tried to make for themselves a new life. When Conrad was twelve he got a job in a machine shop.

  He had native ingenuity and, as became increasingly evident, great intelligence. He also had the drive of a pressing need for money. Nothing was too hard for him to do; no hours were too long. His brother Paul, working in a steel mill in Pittsburgh where so many Polish laborers drifted about that time, was killed in an accident. Conrad worked harder, in order to care for his mother.

  Somehow he found time to go to a trade school at night. But necessity was the forcing house for the quality of genius he possessed. After his mother’s rather early death, when he was relieved of the pressing need for money, he turned that quality of genius toward invention. In the end he went to Chicago in the hope of buying a small manufacturing plant with the small savings he had by then accumulated. At the same time he was working nights with various ideas for inventions. It was about that time that he became acquainted with Laura’s father. He also, by then, had legally changed his name from Stanislowski to Stanley; long ago he had become an American citizen.

  Laura’s father was an assistant vice-president in a small suburban bank near Chicago. Conrad, needing more money to buy his factory and money to promote the invention he was then working on, had gone to the bank in the hope of negotiating a loan. Laura’s father had believed in him. He had advised the loan.

  The factory Conrad bought prospered; he both manufactured and sold the invention which then engrossed his attention. This first project was a kind of slide fastener with a mechanical clip and bolt. It was a gadget in the beginning; it blossomed into a sizable business. Conrad then extended his patents to cover all sorts of by-products and variations; in the end he developed a very big business and accumulated a very large fortune.

  It was from the beginning a one-man business; it remained so to the end, with Conrad not only keeping his own hands on the helm but a close and minute observation upon every detail.

  It was like Conrad to look upon Peter March’s belief in him not as an impersonal matter of sheer business intelligence but as a personal favor. So Conrad himself pursued and made a friendship of the business relationship. Laura as a child became accustomed to the regular appearance of this dynamic, sturdy, strong-featured man with his Polish accent, his keen mind and his never-failing kindness to her. Perhaps Conrad’s warm heart rejoiced in the taste of family life his friendship with Peter March gave him. In those days Conrad was too busy and too engrossed to think of marriage—that or he did not meet the kind of woman he wished to marry. But he liked Peter March and showed it, and he was always devoted to Laura’s mother, a quiet, slim, lovely young woman whom Laura only dimly remembered.

  Peter March was a hard-working, imaginative and contradictory man. He liked books, he liked music; he had no gift for money-making and very little interest in it as such, yet he was efficient in his work at the bank. He looked upon Conrad Stanley, this rock of a man who had so determinedly and resolutely become his close and intimate friend, with a kind of amused awe. But Peter was idealistic, too.

  When World War II began and the Germans marched into Poland, Peter had already seen the handwriting on the wall and had quietly made his plans. Probably to the surprise of everyone except Laura’s mother and Conrad, Peter March gave up his job at the bank, said good-bye to his wife and small daughter and Conrad Stanley and went to England to enlist.

  He knew, or at least believed, that America would sooner or later get into the war but he would not wait for that. He was overage; he would never have been drafted. He had only a strong feeling of individual duty and he was idealistic. Somewhere he had learned the rudiments of flying; probably it was one of his unexpectedly adventurous, out-of-the-ordinary diversions. In any event, fliers or men who knew anything at all about flying were then desperately needed. And in a bombing run over Germany during the first days of spring, when the Germans made their seemingly irresistible sweep down through Belgium and into France, Peter March was in a plane which never returned.

  Laura, even now that she was older, still had very little idea of how her mother felt about Peter’s enlistment. She did remember that after the cable came to the effect that Peter had not returned, all her mother’s interest in life seemed to fade; she died scarcely a year later and Laura, at very nearly Jonny’s age, was alone in the world.

  There were of course distant relatives, none of whom showed any particular interest in taking care of Peter March’s orphaned child; probably they felt that Peter March would have done better to stay at home’ and see to his own family. There were a few rather cold and tentative offers but they were not needed for Conrad Stanley stepped firmly and promptly into the situation.

  There was very little money; an assistant vice-president of a suburban bank does not have
a salary which permits of much saving or investment. Laura’s mother’s small annuity died with her. Conrad Stanley saw to all the small business affairs resulting from Peter March’s and then Margaret March’s death. What money could be saved he put in a savings account in Laura’s name. He then found a school for Laura.

  He did not touch any of the modest savings account. Laura knew later that it would not have been adequate in any event to see to her education, but mainly Conrad wished her to keep the small fund intact. He paid, himself, for all her school expenses. And even more important, in a definite way, it was Conrad who arranged little treats for Laura; it was Conrad who came to see her; it was Conrad who took her with him on carefully planned trips during her vacations. It was Conrad in fact who tried and in many ways succeeded in taking the place of a father and mother whose images gradually retreated into the past. Conrad had been more than a father to her; he had been a guardian, a teacher and a bulwark against the world.

  As she grew older, she began to realize the great debt of her gratitude to Conrad. She could not pay him back in any way for the generosity and affection his great warm heart had so willingly given her, but she could, sometime, pay him for her school expenses; when she was seventeen she made a stand: she wished to go to a school which would teach her a profession. Then when she could work, she would pay back to Conrad, at least in money, some of the debt she owed him.

  It was like Conrad to agree to this. He didn’t want the money, that was clear, but it was equally clear that he liked and wished to encourage her sense of independence. He agreed; when Laura could work she could pay him; he had kept an account of all the money he had spent on her.

  So she went to a secretarial school. She worked hard, driven by her deep affection and her sense of gratitude for Conrad and also by that growing independence which perhaps Conrad himself had taught her. When she emerged from the secretarial school, Conrad had taken her into his own office; she was to be his secretary.