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dictionary which she had supplied herself with when Jonny came to live with her. Why not question Jonny?
    The child understood some English, and Laura had trained herself to find Polish words and painstakingly labored over their pronunciation until there was some current of understanding between her and Jonny. They made, in fact, a game of it, she and Jonny. She snatched up the Polish dictionary and went to Jonny’s room.
    It, too, was dark. She turned on the light. Jonny was huddled at the low table, her head in her arms, sobbing convulsively. It was the more touching because Jonny was crying with such desperate silence, as if she must control even the sound of her sobs. Laura ran to her. She took her in her arms. Jonny pressed her hot face against Laura’s shoulder and allowed herself the luxury of sobbing aloud, great, strangling gulps.
    So Conrad Stanislowski was really Conrad Stanislowski and Jonny’s father.
    A wave of compunction swept Laura. She had been overconscientious, overanxious about her responsibility as trustee, overcautious. She ought to have let father and daughter meet, freely and happily, without question. Even the kitten seemed to eye Laura with disapproval.
    She held Jonny in her arms and talked to her. “We’ll see your father, we’ll telephone to him, we’ll have him here right away. We’ll see him, Jonny, he’s not gone, he’ll come back.” She didn’t know how much Jonny understood of the words, but perhaps her tone was comforting, for gradually Jonny quieted. But her sobs had been the heartbroken sobs of a child perplexed by the ways of a world in which a father could appear and then disappear in a matter of moments.
    The telephone rang.
    It rang and rang again, jabbing insistently, before Laura at last disengaged Jonny’s arm from around her neck and went to answer it.
    If it was Matt she was going to make an exception to her resolution and tell him the truth about Conrad Stanislowski. She owed it to Jonny, and no matter what Conrad Stanislowski had said, nor what the reasons for his request for secrecy were, it was more important to restore the confidence in Jonny’s heart which she and Matt had been at such loving pains to build.
    She took down the telephone. A woman’s voice said, “Is this Miss Laura March?”
    It was a strange voice, flat and toneless, with a heavy foreign accent. Laura said in surprise, “Why, yes. I am Laura March.”
    “Come at once. It is Conrad Stanislowski. Come to 3936 Koska Street. Bring a doctor.”
    “But who— what do you mean? What has happened?” Laura stopped. There was an unmistakable click of the telephone and then nothing but silence.
    “Come at once,” the woman had said—what woman, who was she, what did she know of Conrad Stanislowski? But the address was right, 3936 Koska Street. “Come at once. Bring a doctor.”
    Conrad Stanislowski had been in an accident! He had had a heart attack—something! Hurriedly she telephoned for her own doctor, Doctor Stevens; he was out on a call, his nurse said; she didn’t know when he would return; however, she took the Koska Street address and the message. Laura then telephoned to Matt.
    She had already decided to tell Matt of Conrad Stanislowski and, certainly, in an emergency an implied promise to Conrad Stanislowski meant nothing. Matt was not in his office; she tried his apartment, he was not there. In desperation she tried Charlie Stedman’s office; there was no answer. She tried his club and he was out. There was no use phoning to Doris. “Come at once. Bring a doctor.”
    She could not leave Jonny alone. Besides, if Conrad Stanislowski were seriously sick, circumstances might be such that she ought to let him see the child, she thought swiftly. If not—well, if not, she could protect Jonny. Certainly she could not leave the child alone in the apartment. She hurried back to Jonny and washed the tear stains from the child’s little face. Jonny was tired now and weary; when Laura got out