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was that he was not alive and that Jonny, somehow, like so many hundreds of other little waifs, had drifted into the orphanage. The circumstances of her arrival were mysterious and so far as Matt could discover Conrad Stanislowski himself had had nothing to do with it. However, there was no doubt about Jonny’s identity; there was her own birth certificate; there was also, in the thin little file labeled Stanislowski, Jonny, a photostatic copy of Conrad Stanislowski’s birth certificate. It was not at all unusual, the head of the orphanage assured Matt—rather wearily, as if nothing that developed in that post-war melee of displaced persons, of homeless children, was really unusual; people took the greatest care to establish their own and their children’s identity with whatever means they could employ. It was tragically, terribly important. Jonny was the child of Conrad Stanislowski, who was the child of Stefan Stanislowski, Conrad Stanley’s older brother; there was no doubt about that.
    Matt had taken time in Vienna to explore every possibility of getting in touch with Conrad Stanislowski; his attempt at communication came to nothing.
    There were, of course, several reasons to account for Jonny’s presence in the orphanage. The logical conclusion was that her father was dead. Yet there were alternatives; perhaps he was sick, perhaps he was unable to care for her and in some way had contrived a way to get Jonny to Vienna. There was even, Matt had suggested, the possibility that Conrad himself intended to escape Poland and had sent Jonny ahead of him. And then for some reason Conrad had failed to get to Vienna.
    That, according to Conrad Stanislowski himself, was the truth.
    It had grown later as she stood at the window, staring out at the lake and the sky, thinking of Conrad Stanislowski, of all the circumstances surrounding him and surrounding her long association with Conrad Stanley; trying to discover exactly what Conrad Stanley would have told her to do. Suddenly and reassuringly it occurred to her that Conrad Stanley was a man who believed the best of his fellow beings and acted on that faith. He would have granted Conrad Stanislowski’s request for secrecy; he would have followed his own instinct, as she had done. Yet what did Stanislowski intend to do during those few days?
    And why had Laura felt that he was frightened?
    It was only then that it struck Laura that Jonny’s reaction was not all right; it was all wrong.

FOUR
    T HE CHILD HAD SHOWN no recognition at all of the man who stood in the doorway looking at her. There had not been a smile, a cry of greeting; she had not flung herself joyfully upon him as she flung herself upon Matt, when he arrived. In two years’ time, even though two years is a long time in the life of a child, Jonny could not have forgotten her father. Yet there had not been so much as a flicker of recognition in the still little face, the rigid, sturdy body; her Slav blue eyes had been completely blank and without expression. So then if Jonny had not recognized the man, he was not her father!
    He was an impostor! Charlie and Doris and Matt had talked of that possibility; they had warned Laura. There was so much money involved that there might be impostors claiming it. The man of the afternoon with his mysterious request, with his refusal to show any kind of identification, asking her only to see Jonny (which in itself had a certain curious and questionable implication as if perhaps he only wanted to make sure that Jonny was there), calling himself Conrad Stanislowski, was an impostor! She would telephone to Matt at once.
    The room had grown darker. Away below, along Lake Shore Drive, the homeward traffic rush had long ago begun; lights from cars swept by in constant four-lane streams. The long two-noted whistle of the traffic policeman came clearly to her ears. She turned on lamps in the room and went into the hall. But with her hand on the telephone she saw the little red Polish