rangement whereby I sent them all in care of his colored valet, Major Arthur Brooks.
Even then I shied at a direct revelation. I merely parried with the issue in such a manner as to hint at it strongly. I said since Mr. Harding's death there was but one thing in all the world that I wanted. I found the tears coming into my voice as I talked, and oh, how distasteful it was to me to think of speaking of such a sordid thing as money in confessing why I could not have this one thing I wanted.
"What is it you want more than anything else in this world?" Tim asked me kindly, avoiding my eyes because he felt my sensitiveness.
And somehow I found great relief in confessing to him that I wanted the daughter of Warren Harding who was also my daughter. And when Tim turned to look at me there were tears in his own eyes as he said, "I thought so!"
After that I talked much and at random, explaining this and that, and Tim seemed genuinely interested in hearing the whole story. I told him how I had married Captain Neilsen with the idea of being able to take Elizabeth Ann, and how that marriage had been a failure from the standpoint of fulfilling this promise. And when I observed that it just did not seem possible that Mr. Harding could have entrusted money to someone for me who would deliberately fail to hand it on to me after his death, Tim ejaculated in great surprise, "Didn't he leave you anything at all?" I said I would never, never believe that he had failed to do so, but I was convinced that the manner in which he had done so had been such as to make it a very simple thing for the person entrusted with the money to withhold it from me.
Tim's assertion was spontaneous and emphatic, "Well, he didn't leave anything with me, that's a cinch!" I told him I had thought such a thing was possible, but that inasmuch as he did not hold the fund I wondered if he would have any suggestions as to who might have been chosen by Mr. Harding as confidential messenger to me after his death. He volunteered to make guarded inquiry in Washington in my behalf.
