“I never cheated him of a name.  You did that.”

The man grunted.

“Right.  That is on my bill.  Lord knows, I wish it wasn’t.  Little enough did I ever get out of that particular piece of deviltry.  I over-reached myself, was a darned little bit too smart.  I held on to the boy, thinking I’d get more out of it later, and he slid out of my hands like an eel and I had nothing to show for it, until you came along and I saw a chance to make a new deal at your expense.  You fell for it like a lamb to the slaughter.  I’ll never forget your face when I told you John Massey was alive and that I could produce him in a minute for the courts.  If I had, your name would have been Dutch, young man.  You’d never have gotten a look in on the money.  You had the sense to see that.  Old John died without a will.  His grandson and not his grand-nephew was his heir provided anybody could dig up the fellow, and I was the boy that could do that.  I proved that to you, Alan Massey.”

“You proved nothing.  You scared me into handing you over a whole lot of money, you blackmailing rascal, I admit that.  But you didn’t prove anything.  You showed me the baby clothes you said John Massey wore when he was stolen.  The name might easily enough have been stamped on the linen later.  You showed me a silver rattle marked ‘John Massey.’  The inscription might also easily enough have been added later at a crook’s convenience.  You showed me some letters purporting to have been written by the woman who stole the child and was too much frightened by her crime to get the gains she planned to win from it.  The letters, too, might easily have been forgery.  The whole thing might have been a cock and bull story, fabricated by a rotten, clever mind like yours, to apply the money screw to me.”

“True,” chuckled Jim Roberts.  “Quite true.  I wondered at your credulity at the time.”

“You rat!  So it was all a fake, a trap?”

“You would like to believe that, wouldn’t you?  You would like to have a dying man’s oath that there was nothing but a pack of lies to the whole thing, blackmail of the crudest, most unsupportable variety?”

Alan bent over the man, shook his fist in the evil, withered old face.

“Damn you, Jim Roberts!  Was it a lie or was it not?”

“Keep your hands off me, Alan Massey.  It was the truth.  Sarah Nelson did steal the child just as I told you.  She gave the child to me when she was dying a few months later.  I’ll give my oath on that if you like.”

Alan brushed his hand across his forehead, and sat down again limply in the creaking rocker.

“Oh, you are willing to believe that again now, are you?” mocked Roberts.

“I’ve got to, I suppose.  Go on.  Tell me the rest.  I’ve got to know.  Did you really make a circus brat of John Massey and did he really run away from you?  That is all you told me before, you remember.”