During this time Andrew slept and ate little, cried easily and was prone to nightmares of the worst sort. He could not help but notice that his parents no longer looked him in the eye, that the servants whispered. Had not Grandpapa arrived to protect him from his persecutors, and threatened to remove their one remaining son from their home, the Masterses might not have gone on as a family through the ordeal that awaited them.
The instructions never came. The explanation for the failure of the kidnappers to continue on their course was not uncovered until an enterprising Pinkerton’s man compared descriptions of Jack and Phil with two robbers gunned down by police in Pittsburgh on the day the letter had been received. As he lay dying, one of the men-Jack, it seems-had said, “Never find Charlie now.”
Questioning of the men’s few known associates yielded nothing. The detectives advised the Masterses to assume their son was dead.
Never one to give up, Papa announced to the newspapers that he was offering forty thousand dollars-an astronomical sum, twice the amount demanded by the kidnappers-to anyone who returned his son Charlie to him. Other than renewed publicity and attention, nothing came of it.
Over the years following Charlie’s kidnapping, Andrew learned to calmly accept his altered position in the family. His parents could not punish the kidnappers, so they punished the person they had come to view as an accomplice. They used the weapon of choice for persons of their breeding and social stature-civility. Andrew was accorded this, but little more. Charlie, by contrast, took on in memory saintly attributes he never had in life, became the perfect son denied to them. His room was enshrined, his toys left waiting for his return.
On Andrew’s eleventh birthday, the one hundred and fourth pretender (by Andrew’s careful accounting) arrived at the Masters home. He was easily dismissed as yet another boy put forward by some schemer as “Little Charlie.” There were always stories to go with these pretenders-of how the missing boy’s “adoptive” parents had taken pity on some feverish waif who had then forgotten all of his previous life until just this moment-but Andrew could not bear to listen to another one. He asked Old Davey to saddle his favorite mare, then rode toward the town where Charlie had disappeared.
This time he did not venture into the town itself, where he had become a familiar and pitied sight, but turned off into the abandoned oil field. He rode slowly, and at times dismounted to take a closer look at some object. At last his search was, at least in one sense, rewarded. He spent another hour or two at the site, then rode home. That he was filthy and had ruined his clothes either escaped his parents’ notice, or was (more likely) not thought to be worthy of their comment.
This he did not mind.
Now, as he stood beneath the oak on his twenty-first birthday, he put the quarter back in his pocket and removed a second object. It was a crudely whittled soldier, weather-beaten and oil-stained, found near an abandoned well.
The well was a disposal well, used to hold oil-contaminated water and sludge pumped from other wells. It was about sixteen inches in diameter; too narrow for an adult, perhaps too narrow even for a schoolboy, but not too narrow for the body of a small child. He had known that it would be useless to look down it for Charlie’s remains; the well would be too deep.
Andrew had never been able to picture Phil and Jack planning to endure a child’s company while waiting for ransom; if they had left Charlie with someone else while they robbed houses, that person would have long ago claimed his father’s reward money. No genuine claimant had stepped forward.
Fourteen years had passed since Charlie disappeared, and the pretenders were growing fewer, but before the end of his father’s life, Andrew’s count of them would reach two hundred and eighty-six. On this day, he did not yet know that number, but he did know what had happened to his brother. On this day, he simply rested in that knowledge, and took his revenge in his silence.
“Thank you for the birthday present, Charlie,” he said, tucking away the second-and only other one-he had received since the day he turned seven.
An Unsuspected Condition of The Heart
Now and again you may call me a rattlepate and tell me I don’t know what’s o’clock, Charles, but even you will account me a man who can handle the ribbons. And a dashed good thing it is that I am able to drive to an inch-or I’d have bowled your cousin Harry over right there in the middle of the road. I daresay running him over is no less than he deserved, for he’d overturned as beautiful a phaeton as I’d ever seen, which was a thing nearly as bad as wearing that floral waistcoat of his in public-upon my oath, Charles, even the horses took exception to it.
“Oh, thank heaven,” he cried, even before I’d settled the grays, “it’s dear old Rossiter!”
Two days earlier, the fellow had all but given me the cut direct at Lady Fanshawe’s rout, and here he was, addressing me as if I were an angel come down the road just to save him.
“Dallingham!” I replied. “What on earth has happened? I trust you’ve taken no hurt?”
“Nothing that signifies,” he said, dabbing at a little cut above his left brow. “But I am in the devil’s own hurry and here this phaeton has lost a wheel and broken an axle!”
“Let me take you up, then,” I said. “Will your groom be able to manage those bays?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, already climbing up next to me. “I’d just instructed him to take them back to that inn we passed-five miles back or so, and to see about repairs. May I trouble you to take me there? I must see if they’ve something I can hire-”
“Nonsense, Dallingham, can’t imagine they’d have so much as a horsecart to hire. I’m on my way to Ollington-to see my Aunt Lavinia. I’ll take you along as far as that, and if you need-”
“Ollington! Why, I’m to dine at Bingsley Hall this evening, and-”
“Bingsley Hall?” I said. “Well, that is on my way. No trouble at all.”
“My thanks, Rossiter!”
The grays were restive, and I put them to. A moment later, he said, “Perhaps you can save me from disgrace.”
I doubted there was any possibility of such a thing, but I said, “Oh?” (Just like that, you know-“Oh?” I believe I raised a brow, but I can’t swear to it.)
“Have you met Lord and Lady Bingsley?” he asked.
“Never had the pleasure. They do not go about much in society. I believe my aunt has some acquaintance with them.”
“Damned recluses, the pair of them.”
“I beg your pardon? Did you not just say you were invited to dine there?”
He smiled. “Oh no, I’m to stay there a fortnight!”
“A fortnight! With the Bingsleys!”
“Well, yes, as it turns out, we’re related!”
“You are related to Miss Bannister’s aunt and uncle?”
He laughed. “Wish me happy, Rossiter! I’m newly married!”
“Married!” I could not hide my shock.
“Yes, as of yesterday. And in future you must refer to Miss Bannister as Lady Dallingham. We were married by special license. She’s gone on to Bingsley to-er, prepare my welcome.”
Charles, I own I was left speechless. The grays took advantage of my lack of concentration, and a rather difficult moment passed before both my horses and my composure were back in hand.
“Well, then,” I said, rather bravely, really, “I do wish you happy. Miss-er, Lady Dallingham is a lovely young woman.”
“Oh, I suppose the chit’s well enough,” he said, “but there can be no doubt that her fortune’s mighty handsome.”
As you can imagine, this blunt speech left me appalled. Of course, all the world knew that Dallingham was hanging out for an heiress, and that he had followed in his father’s footsteps-meaning that his gaming had finally destroyed whatever portion of the family fortune the old man had not already lost at faro and dicing.