A Pinch of Poison by Frances Lockridge Page B

got it, but held it only a few months. That had been during the winter before. While he still had the job, he had begun to feel weak and ill and had looked around for someone with whom he could board the child. Through a man who worked with him he had heard of a woman—a Mrs. Halstead—who sometimes boarded children. She—Miss Crane stopped. She had been summarizing from a sheaf of papers on her desk, now and then checking her memory against something written there. Now she looked up.
    â€œOh, yes,” she said. “I remember, now. I should have started back a bit. Mrs. Halstead lives up in Riverdale too, you see. But it isn’t merely coincidence.”
    â€œWell,” Weigand said, “let’s finish with the boy.”
    The boy’s father, Miss Crane continued, had gone to see Mrs. Halstead, decided she would be suitable, and arranged to board the child there. He had done so until recently, paying seven dollars each week. For the past several weeks, however, he had been unable to pay.
    That was because he had, recently, grown so ill that he could not continue to work. He had gone to a doctor and, on the doctor’s advice, to the Veterans Bureau. A complete physical examination had followed.
    â€œI’m a very sick man, Miss,” he had told Miss Crane. From his description, he was indeed a very sick man. He had contracted tuberculosis and, in addition, had a serious heart condition. Those things were, he said grimly, in addition to an eye ailment he had had, off and on, for years. The upshot was that he had been accepted for care at a Veterans Hospital. Because of his lungs, they were sending him to Arizona. But they were not hopeful.
    â€œI am going to die very soon,” he said. He said it matter-of-factly, Miss Crane remembered. Before he died, he wanted to make provision for Michael. He could no longer pay board to Mrs. Halstead, but he believed she would keep the child in any case. She had, he said, grown attached to Michael. But she was an old woman and, he had recently decided, a difficult one. “Cantankerous,” he said. “I’ve heard—”
    He had, he explained, heard indirectly that Mrs. Halstead was severe with Michael and irritable. He was sure that this was only on the surface; that at bottom the woman was deeply attached to the little boy. But she was too old to take permanent charge of him as Osborne suspected she now wanted to do. What he hoped was that the Foundation could take the boy under care and arrange, eventually, for his adoption by a couple nearer the right age.
    â€œI don’t want him brought up by an old woman,” Richard Osborne had insisted. “And I can’t care for him. I’m not going to live long enough.”
    He had, he said, somebody in mind. When he had heard that Mrs. Halstead was irritable with the child, he had gone to a park in which he knew Michael and the boarding mother went for walks. He had watched, and seen Mrs. Halstead pull at the child’s arm, and snap at him irritably. And he had seen Michael run to another, much younger woman, who called him by name. Michael had run to this woman and it had seemed to the man, watching, that there was a flow of affection between them which was what he wanted for his son.
    It was that woman, or someone like her, he wanted for his child, he explained. Possibly that very woman, who had somehow got to know Michael in the park, and perhaps to care for him. He didn’t know, of course, whether she would want to adopt the boy—so far as he knew she might have children of her own. But seeing her with his boy had made him realize more acutely than ever what the child should have. And it was that he wanted the Foundation to find for Michael. He wanted, he said, to surrender the child to the agency and have him cared for.
    â€œI told him we could not accept a child without seeing him,” Miss Crane explained. “We have to know whether children are