Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/97

 ings are about ready to cave in and nobody has lived there for twenty years—not since my mother died there. The house itself has been locked up, although we stayed a few times at one of the cottages on the property, on account of father’s stable being there, and his horses. He had a kind of a race track there where there used to be try-outs.

“I spent all of my girlhood and most of my young womanhood in boarding and finishing schools and I only came home for good a few months before my father’s death last year. I never was very intimate with my father—in fact, I don’t think I saw enough of him to become intimate with him. He was a peculiar sort—that is, much different from most people. He came into a large fortune when he attained his majority—in Virginia. He turned it all into cash, preparatory to making an investment, and placed it all in the bank.

“The details of the investment took two or three months to complete. In the meantime, the bank failed. Creditors received about two cents on the dollar—it completely wiped out my father’s fortune. Well, he made two or three more before he was through—but, as I told you, he never trusted banks after that, and he always kept his money and his valuable papers—stocks and bonds—hidden away or on his person. More than once he carried over a hundred thousand dollars with him in large bills, to my knowledge. He always had many thousands of dollars with him.

“Well, as I say, he recouped. He always loved horses, so I suppose it was perfectly natural to go in for them as a business. At one time it was said that he had the largest blooded stable in America. A few months before he died he turned it all into cash, keep-