The Great Impostor by Robert Crichton

Author:Robert Crichton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

14

THE SHORT LIFE OF CECIL BOYCE HAMANN

As prodigal sons go, he got as good a reception in Lawrence as he could have expected.

“I have only this to say. I have paid my debt and now I am clear. But some of the places I was in and some of the things I did would have made you proud of me.”

Since he had gone away the family had moved to State Street into a smaller house, much smaller than the one on Andover Road and backing directly on the railroad tracks. It greatly depressed him.

Ever since he’d conducted his own defense he had become convinced that his great future lay in the law and he evolved a plan. He would go to Boston and study law by day and pay for it by working at night. His family were pleased. It did not occur to them that a person with a criminal record need not apply to the bar, but it did to Demara. He had a way around that one.

Before leaving for Boston he did a characteristic thing. In his backyard he painted a large sign and then had it carried out to the edge of town where he put it up at night.

WELCOME TO LAWRENCE

Our motto: See Dante’s Inferno, Canto III, Line 9

“For all I know the sign’s still there. You don’t think anyone in Lawrence ever bothered to look up the line, do you? But I’ll bet a lot of out-of-towners got a hell of a laugh later.”

The line is: All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

He took a large, gloomy, cheap room under his real name, on Commonwealth Avenue, and then he found a nighttime job in the Massachusetts General Eye and Ear Infirmary. For at least one reason it was the ideal situation. At night he had access to various offices and to the mailroom. Using Mass. General stationery and the forged signatures of Mass. General doctors, Demara began piling up the credentials of the quiet professor he had heard about on the bus. It was simple to find out where to start looking for credentials. He wrote to Dr. Cecil Boyce Hamann and asked him. It was his easiest job of getting the right background. At night he wrote his letters to the various institutions and colleges and in the morning he plucked any answers out of the mailbox of the doctor’s name he had used.

In September, now owning almost every document ever issued to Hamann, Demara presented himself as a candidate for first-year law courses at Northeastern Law School as C. B. Hamann.

“I still feel I was on the right track. Even if I didn’t make a great lawyer, the way I was heading I figured any little knowledge of briefs and torts was going to come in very handy.”

Outside of doing well at law school his aim was to get married that year and begin raising a family.

“I tried very hard. I learned to dance. I told charming stories. I spent every cent I had on women.

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