A dying man's secret unravels in this gripping 1869 tale of greed, guilt, and ghostly reckoning. Wealthy Ralph Raymond, wasting away in the home of his financially strained friend Paul Morton, reveals he has a son named Robert the world knows nothing about. When drugstore clerk James Cromwell sells poison to a mysterious buyer and later connects Morton to the deadly transaction, suspicions curdle into something far darker. As Ralph's health fails, the race to find his hidden heir intensifies, with moral lines blurring and loyalties fracturing under the weight of potential fortune. But the novel's shocking centerpiece is young Robert himself, appearing to claim he has been murdered. Part moral fable, part gothic mystery, Alger's lesser-known work builds to a revelation that implicates the very man who sheltered the dying Ralph on his deathbed.
