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.