“I was between twelve and thirteen then, a sensitive child, to whom life, as it came to me, was a veritable hell. He asked me what my age was, and whether I was happy and I told him the truth. Apparently he had seen the authorities at the Institute, for I was allowed to go away with him, and he took me to a poor apartment house and placed me under the care of a woman who either owned or rented the house, and sub-let the rooms furnished to the queerest lot of people I have ever seen congregated under one roof. Knowing him now much better, I am inclined to think that Mr. Trasmere owned the house himself and that the woman was his nominee. I did not see him again for nearly two months. I had a room to myself and he sent me school books to read and study and it was whilst I was here that I first met Yeh Ling, who, as I have told you, was a poor waiter at a Chinese restaurant. “At the end of the two months, Mr. Trasmere came for me, and his coming was heralded by the arrival of a huge box of clothes, the like of which I had never seen, let alone worn. He left a message that I was to be dressed and ready to go with him, and that afternoon he called and took me down into the country, to a preparatory school which, after the Institute, was a heaven upon earth. On the way down, he told me he had heard about me from some friends of his, and he wanted to give me an education which would fit me to take the position which he had for me, and I was so overcome by his kindness that I cried all the way to our destination. “The three years that I spent at St. Helen’s seem, even now, like a beautiful dream. I was happy, I made many friends, and my whole outlook on life changed. The year I left, Mr. Trasmere came down to our Commemoration and saw me acting in a play which the school dramatic society had produced, and from what he saw, was evolved this extraordinary arrangement. Knowing what I do, I know he was not wholly disinterested. It was his practice to take up projects and finance likely people. Once he told me that he had intended settling in this country and living the life of a gentleman--to use his own words--but that he was so unutterably bored, that to give himself an interest, he took up the most extraordinary of schemes. “Do you know at one time he financed twelve tea-rooms and collected his share of the takings every day? Do you know that he was behind three doctors and took his profits from each? He was Yeh Ling’s backer, and in time he came to be mine. I was with him six months, acting as his secretary in a tiny office he hired for the purpose, and to which he never came until five o’clock in the afternoon.