Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"My information from the sanitarium, which I procured in response to
your request, and the governor's instructions to me for a full inquiry
into all the circumstances is that since her confinement Miss
Vinsolving has been under constant observation. She has been orderly and
obedient and except for slightly melancholic tendencies, which might
easily be provoked by the nature of her environment, is quite natural in
her behavior. I draw the inference, however, that this docility may be
merely the forerunner of an outburst at any time.
"Altogether my investigation convinces me that no miscarriage of the law
could possibly have occurred in this instance. There is certainly no
ground for suspecting that the mother had any ulterior or improper
motive in seeking to have her daughter and sole companion deprived of
liberty. Neither the mother nor any other person alive can hope to
profit in a financial sense by reason of the girl's temporary or
permanent detention.
"The girl herself is without means of her own. The mother for her
maintenance is largely dependent upon the pension she receives from the
United States Government. The girl had no income or estate of her own
and no expectancy of any inheritance from any imaginable source other
than the small estate she will legally inherit at the death of her
mother. Finally I may add that nowhere in the case has there developed
any suggestion of a scandal in the life of mother or daughter or of any
clandestine love affair on the part of either.
"These briefly are the available facts as compiled by a trustworthy
member of my staff, Assistant District Attorney Horace Wilkes, to whom
I detailed the duty of making a painstaking inquiry. If I may hereafter
be of service to you in this matter or any other matter, kindly command
me. I have the honor to be,
"Yours etc., etc."
With a little gesture of despairful resignation Miss Smith laid the
letter down. Well, there was nothing more she could do; nothing more to
be done. She had come to a blind end. The proof was conclusive of the
worst. But in her thoughts, waking and sleeping, persisted the image of
that gallant, pathetic little figure which she had seen last at the
Peekskill station, bound, helpless, alone and all so courageously facing
what to most of us would be worse than death itself. Awake or in sleep
she could not get it out of her mind.
At length one night following on a day which for the greater part she
had spent in a study of the somewhat curious laws that in New York
State--as well as in divers other states of the Union--govern the
procedure touching certain classes coming within purview of the code,
she awoke in the little hours preceding the dawn to find herself saying
aloud: "There's something wrong--there must be--there has to be!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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