Lady Afraid Read Online Free PDF

afternoon,” she said. “But that isn’t what I called about, Mr. Arbogast. If you will let me impose on you, I’d like to ask for a reference on someone.”
    “Of course. You couldn’t impose on me, Sarah,” he said.
    “Do you know an attorney named Calvin Brandeis Brill?”
    “Brill? Brill?” said Arbogast. “Hm-m-m-m. Brill. What about him?”
    “Is he reliable?”
    “Why, I’d say so. Chicago man. Criminal lawyer. Quite adept, I’ve heard.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Arbogast.” Sarah gathered herself, because this next was going to be difficult to get out. And then she plunged, saying, “I wonder if you could answer another question to settle an argument. Take a situation that would be this: A married couple have a small son, and the father is killed in an automobile accident. The grandparents—the father and mother of the husband who is killed—make trouble for the mother, try to get charges filed against her. She wasn’t driving the car but they try to claim she was and that she was intoxicated. And while the mother is in a hospital in another state, the grandparents take the mother’s child. They have an adoption put through, without the mother’s consent. The mother was sane, was not intemperate. Can they do that?”
    She had finished on an edge. Why , I’m about to be hysterical , she thought. And then she waited, wondering wildly if Arbogast would realize she had spoken of herself.
    “You say,” inquired Arbogast, “that this is to settle an argument?”
    “Can they?” Sarah demanded quickly. “Can they take the child?”
    “I’m a financial lawyer, Sarah… but it is the intent of most state statutes that there shall be no severance of parental relationship without consent.”
    “Then it’s illegal?”
    “Fundamentally. What did they do, use notice by publication?”
    “Yes.”
    “They usually do. It would be wrong, Sarah.”
    “Then the mother should just take the child back?”
    Mr. Arbogast grunted hastily. “I wouldn’t say—Oh well, who would blame her?… But she might have a legal scrap on her hands, Sarah.”
    “But would it be best for her to take the child and let the grandparents initiate the legal fight?”
    “If she had courage and a sharp lawyer, I’d say that would be a quick way.”
    “Would it look too bad, her just taking her son?”
    “Considering the emotional values involved, probably not. The court will take cognizance of the mother’s love for the child, and the love should be strongly established. I can’t think of a stronger way for the mother to establish interest than by a desperate move like taking the child.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Arbogast,” Sarah said weakly.
    “You’re welcome, of course….” Mr. Arbogast’s pause had a fishhook quality. He let it dangle hopefully. Sarah could imagine him sitting there, plump, soft, dependent. Depending on her even now, to satisfy the curiosity he must have. She fooled him.
    “Thank you again, Mr. Arbogast, and good-by,” Sarah said.
    Replacing the telephone on the cradle, she stood quickly and went to the window. Her gaze was outward and blank, seeing nothing. All of her movements were swift now, and she went to the water cooler for a drink. There was a kind of headlong excitement in her. The way lay open. Doubts she still had, but they were less acute. She crushed the paper water cup. She no longer moved in a dark forest that was frightening. Her fingers sent the crushed paper cup into the wastebasket and she walked back to the desk, sure now where her way lay.
    When Captain Most came into Sarah’s office sometime later, he first knocked, and the knock brought her head up, but her eyes were vague. She was reluctant to quit the pell-mell reverie of her planning.
    “Come in,” she called.
    Captain Most entered. He closed the door and leaned against it for a moment, the expression on his angular face a difficult one to fathom. And presently, without having spoken, he strolled over to Sarah’s drawing