 CHAPTER 1 2 LITTLE SHOES The morning of August 18th was a memorable one to me. For two months I had had a run of bad luck. During that time I had failed to score in at least three affairs of unusual importance, and the result was a decided loss in repute as well as great financial embarrassment. As I had a mother and two sisters to support, and knew but one way to do it, I was in a state of profound discouragement. This was before I took up the morning papers. After I had opened and read them, not a man in New York could boast of higher hopes or greater confidence in his power to rise by one bold stroke from threatened bankruptcy to immediate independence. The paragraph which had occasioned this amazing change must have passed under the eyes of many of you. It created a widespread excitement at the time, and raised in more than one breast the hope of speedy fortune. It was attached to, or rather introduced, the most startling feature of the week, and it ran thus—a fortune for a child, by cable from Southampton. A reward of five thousand dollars is offered by Philo Ocampa to whoever will give such information as will lead to the recovery alive or dead of his six-year-old daughter Gwendolyn, missing since the afternoon of August the 16th from her home on the Hudson, New York, USA. Fifty thousand dollars additional and no questions asked if she is restored unharmed within the week to her mother at Homewood. All communications to be addressed to Samuel Atwater on the Hudson. A minute description of the child followed, but this did not interest me, and I did not linger over it. The child was no stranger to me. I knew her well and consequently was quite aware of her personal characteristics. It was the great amount offered for her discovery and restoration which moved me so deeply. Fifty thousand dollars. A fortune for any man. More than a fortune to me, who stood in such need of ready money. I was determined to win this extraordinary sum. I had my reason for hope and, in the light of this unexpectedly munificent reward, decided to waive all the considerations which had hitherto prevented me from stirring in the matter. There were other reasons less selfish which gave impetus to my resolve. I had done business for the Ocampas before and had been well treated in the transaction. I recognized and understood both Mr. Ocampa's peculiarities and those of his admired and devoted wife. As man and woman they were kindly, honorable and devoted to many more interests than those connected with their own wealth. I also knew their hearts to be wrapped up in this child, the sole offspring of a long and happy union, and the actual as well as prospective inheritor of more millions than I shall ever see thousands, unless I am fortunate enough to solve the mystery now exercising the sympathies of the whole New York public. You have all heard of this child under another name. From her birth she has been known as the millionaire baby, being the direct heir to three fortunes, two of which she has already received. I saw her first when she was three years old, a cherubic little being, lovely to look upon, and possessing unusual qualities for so young a child. Indeed, her picturesque beauty and appealing ways would have attracted all eyes and won all hearts, even if she had not represented in her small person, the wealth both of the Ocampa and Rathbone families. There was an individuality about her, combined with sensibilities of no ordinary nature, which fully accounted for the devoted affection with which she was universally regarded. And when she suddenly disappeared, it was easy to comprehend, if one did not share, the thrill of horror which swept from one end of our broad continent to the other. Those who knew the parents, and those who did not, suffered an equal pain at the awful thought of this petted, innocent, lost in the depths of the great unknown, with only the false caresses of her abductors to comfort her, for the deprivation of all those delights which love and unlimited means could provide to make a child of her years supremely happy. Her father, and this was what gave the keen edge of horror to the whole occurrence, was in Europe when she disappeared. He had been cabled at once and his answer was the profit reward with which I have opened this story. An accompanying dispatch to his distracted wife announced his relinquishment of the project which had taken him abroad and his immediate return on the next steamer sailing from Southampton. As this chance to be the fastest on the line, we had reason to expect him in six days, meanwhile. But to complete my personal recapitulations, when the first news of this startling abduction flashed upon my eyes from the bulletin boards, I looked on the matter as one of two great magnitudes to be dealt with by any but the metropolitan police. But as time passed and further details of the strange and seemingly inexplicable affair came to light, I began to feel the stirring of the detective instinct within me. Did I say that I was connected with a private detective agency of some note in the metropolis? And a desire, quite apart from any mere humane interest in the event itself, to locate the intelligence back of such a desperate crime, an intelligence so keen that, up to the present moment, if we may trust the published accounts of the affair, not a clue had been unearthed by which its author could be traced, or the means employed for carrying off this petted object of a thousand cares. To be sure there was a theory which eliminated all crime from the occurrence as well as the intervention of anyone in the child's fate, she might have strayed down to the river and been drowned. But the probabilities were so opposed to this supposition that the police had refused to embrace it, although the mother had accepted it from the first, and up to the present moment, or so it was stated, had refused to consider any other. As she had some basis for this conclusion, I am still quoting from the papers, you understand. I was not disposed to ignore it in the study I proceeded to make of the situation. The details, as I ran them over in the hurried trip I now made up the river, were as follows. On the afternoon of Wednesday, August 16th, the guests assembled in Mrs. Ocampa's white and gold music room were suddenly thrown into confusion by the appearance among them of a young girl in a state of great perturbation, who, running up to the startled hostess, announced that Gwendolyn, the petted darling of the house, was missing from the bungalow where she had been lying asleep, and could not be found, though a dozen men had been out on search. The wretched mother, who, as it afterward transpired, had not only given the orders by which the child had been thus removed from the excitement of the house, but had actually been herself but a few moments before to see that the little one was well cared for and happy, seemed struck as by a mortal blow at these words, and, uttering a heart-rending scream, ran out on to the lawn. A crowd of guests rushed after her, and as they followed her flying figure across the lawn to the small cops, in which lay hidden this favored retreat, they could hear, born back on the wind, the wild protests of the young nurse, that she had left the child for a minute only, and then to go no farther than the bench running along the end of the bungalow facing the house, that she had been told she could sit there and listen to the music, but that she never would have left the child's side for a minute if she had not supposed she would hear her, least stir, protests which the mother scarcely seemed to heed, in which were presently lost in the deep silence which fell on all. As, brought to a stand in the thick shrubbery surrounding the bungalow, they saw the mother stagger up to the door, look in and turn toward them with death in her face. The river she gasped, the river, and heedless of all attempt to stop her, heedless even of the efforts made by the little one's nurse to draw her attention to the nearness of a certain opening in the high hedge marking off the Ocampa's grounds on this side, she ran down the bank in the direction of the railway, but fainted before she had more than cleared the thicket. When they lifted her up, they all saw the reason for this. She had come upon a little shoe which she held frantic, clutched against her breast, her child's shoe, which, as she afterward acknowledged, she had loosened with her own hand on the little one's foot. Of course after this the whole hillside was searched down to the fence which separated it from the railroad track. But no further trace of the child was found, nor did it appear possible to anyone that she could have strayed away in this direction, for not only was the bank exceedingly steep and the fence at its base impassable, but a gang of men working as good fortune would have it at such a point on the road below as to render it next to impossible for her to have crossed the track within a half-mile either way without being observed, had one and all declared that not one of them had seen her or any other person descend the slope. This, however, made but little impression on the mother. She would listen to no hints of abduction but persisted in her declaration that the river had swallowed her darling, and would neither rest nor turn her head from its waters till some half a dozen men about the place had been set systematically to work to drag the stream. Meanwhile, the police had been notified and the whole town aroused. The search, which had been carried on up to this time in a frantic but desultory way, now became methodical. Nor was it confined to the Acumpa estate. All the roads and byways within half a mile either way were covered by a most careful investigation. All the nearby houses were entered, especially those which the child was most in the habit of frequenting, but no one had seen her, nor could any trace of her presence be found. At five o'clock all hope of her return was abandoned, and much against Mrs. Acumpa's wish, who declared that the news of the child's death would affect her father far less than the dreadful possibilities of abduction, the exact facts of the case had been cabled to Mr. Acumpa. The night and another day passed, bringing but little relief to the situation. Not an eye had yet been closed in Homewood, nor had the search ceased for an instant. Not an inch of the great estate had been overlooked, yet men could still be seen beating the bushes and peering in all the secluded spots, which once had formed the charm of this delightful place. As on the land, so on the river. All the waters in the dock had been dragged, yet the work went on. Some said under the very eye of Mrs. Acumpa. But there was no result as yet. In the city the interest was intense. The telegraph at police headquarters had been clicking incessantly for thirty-six hours, under the direction, some said, of the superintendent himself. Everything which could be done had been done, but as yet the papers were able to report nothing beyond some vague stories of a child with its face much bound up, having been seen at the heels of a woman in Grand Central Station in New York. And hints of a covered wagon with a crying child inside, which had been driven through Westchester County at a great pace shortly before sunset on the previous day, closely followed by a buggy with the storm apron up, though the sun shone and there was not a cloud in the sky. But nothing definite, nothing which could give hope to the distracted mother, or do more than divide the attention of the police between two different but equally tenable theories. Then came the cablegram from Mr. Acumpa, which threw amateur as well as professional detectives into the field. Among the latter was myself, which naturally brings me back once more to my own conclusions. Of one thing I felt sure, very early in my cogitations before we had quitted the Park Avenue tunnel, in fact, I had decided in my own mind that if I were to succeed in locating the lost heiress, it must be by subtler methods than lay open to the police. I was master of such methods, in this case at least, and though one of many owning to similar hopes on this very train which was rushing me through to Homewood, I had no feeling but that of confidence in the final success. How well-founded this confidence was, will presently appear. The number of seedy-looking men with a mysterious air who alighted in my company at the station, and immediately proceeded to make their way up the steep street toward Homewood, warned me that it would soon be extremely difficult for anyone to obtain access to the parties most interested in the child's loss. Had I not possessed the advantage of being already known to Mrs. Ocampa, I should have immediately given up all hope of ever obtaining access to her presence, and even with this fact to back me, I approached the house with very little confidence in my ability to win my way through the iron gates I had so frequently passed before without difficulty. And indeed I found them well-guarded. As I came nearer I could see man after man being turned away, and not till my card had been handed in and a hurried note to boot, did I obtain permission to pass the first boundary. Another note secured me admission to the house, but there my progress stopped. Mrs. Ocampa had already been interviewed by five reporters and a special agent from the New York police. She could see no one else at present. If however my business was of importance, an opportunity would be given for me to see Miss Porter. Miss Porter was her companion and female factorum. As I had calculated upon having a half-dozen words with the mother herself, I was greatly thrown out by this. But, going upon the principle that half a loaf was better than no bread, I was about to express a desire to see Miss Porter when an incident occurred which effectually changed my mind in this regard. The hall in which I was standing, in which communicated with the side door, by which I had entered, ended in a staircase, leading as I had reason to believe to the smaller and less pretentious rooms in the rear of the house. While I hesitated what reply to give the girl awaiting my decision, I caught the sound of soft weeping from the top of this staircase, and presently beheld the figure of a young woman coming slowly down, clad in coat and hat, and giving every evidence both in dress and manner of leaving for good. It was Miss Graham, a young woman who held the position of nursery governess to the child. I had seen her before, and had no small admiration for her. And the sensation I experienced at the sight of her leaving the house, where her services were apparently no longer needed, proved to me, possibly for the first time, that I had more heart in my breast than I had ever before realized. But it was not this which led me to say to the maid standing before me that I preferred to see Mrs. O'Cumper herself, and would call early the next day. It was the thought that this sorrowing girl would have to pass the gauntlet of many prying eyes on her way to the station, and that she might be glad of an escort whom she knew, and had shown some trust in. Also, but the reasons behind that also will soon become sufficiently apparent. I was right in supposing that my presence on the porch outside would be a pleasing surprise to her. Though her tears continued to flow, she accepted my proffered companionship with gratitude, and soon we were passing side by side across the lawn, toward a short cut leading down the bank to the small flag station used by the family and by certain favored neighbors. As we threaded the shrubbery, which is very thick about the place, she explained to me the cause of her abrupt departure. The sight of her, it seemed, had become insupportable to Mrs. O'Cumper. Though no blame could be rightfully attached to her, it was certainly true that the child had been carried off while in her charge, and however hard that might be for her, few could blame the mother for wishing her removed from the house, desolated by the lack of vigilance. But she was a good girl and felt the humiliation of her departure, almost in the light of a disgrace. As soon as we came again into an open portion of the lawn, she stopped short and looked back. Oh! she cried, gripping me by the arm. There is Mrs. O'Cumper still at the window. All night she has stood there except when she flew down to the river at the sound of some imaginary call from the boats. She believes, she really believes, that they will yet come upon Gwendolyn's body in the dock there. Following the direction of her glance I looked up, was that Mrs. O'Cumper, that haggard intent figure with eyes fixed in awful expectancy on the sinister group I could picture to myself down at the water's edge? Never could I have imagined such a look on features that I had always considered as cold as they were undeniably beautiful. As I took in the misery it expressed, that awful waiting for an event momentally anticipated and momentally postponed, I found myself without reason and simply in response to the force of her expression, unconsciously sharing her expectation, and with a momentary forgetfulness of all the probabilities, was about to turn toward the spot upon which her glances were fixed, when a touch on my arm recalled me to myself. Come, whispered my trembling companion, she may look down and see us here. I yielded to her persuasion and turned away into the cluster of trees that lay between us and the opening in the hedge through which our course lay. Had I been alone I should not have budged until I had seen some change, any change, in the face whose appearance had so deeply affected me. Mrs. O'Cumper certainly believes that the body of her child lies in the water, I remarked, as we took our way onward as rapidly as possible. Do you know her reasons for this? She says, and I think she is right so far, that the child has been bent for a long time on fishing, that she has heard her father talk repeatedly of his great luck in Canada last year, and wished to try the sport for herself, that she has been forbidden to go to the river, but must have taken the first opportunity when no eye was on her to do so. And Mrs. O'Cumper shows a bit of string which she found last night in the bushes alongside the tracks when she ran down, as I have said at some imaginary shout from the boats, a string which she declares she saw rolled up in Gwendolyn's hand when she went into the bungalow to look at her. Of course it may not be the same, but Mrs. O'Cumper thinks it is. And do you think it possible, after all, that the child did stray down to the water? No, was the vehement disclaimer. Gwendolyn's feet were excessively tender. She could not have taken three steps in only one shoe. I should have heard her cry out. What if she went in someone's arms? Us strangers? She has a decided instinct against strangers. Never could any one she did not know and like have carried her so far as that without her waking. Then those men on the track they would have seen her. No, Mr. Trevitt, it was not in that direction she went. The force of her emphasis convinced me that she had an opinion of her own in regard to this matter. Was it one she was ready to impart? In what direction, then, I asked, with a gentleness I hoped would prove effective. Her impulse was toward Frank reply. I saw her lips part and her eyes take on the look which precedes a direct of owl. But, as chance would have it, we came at that moment upon the thicket enclosing the bungalow, and the sight of its picturesque walls showing brown through the verter of surrounding shrubbery seemed to act as a check upon her. For, with a quick look and a certain dry accent, quite new in her speech, she suddenly inquired if I did not want to see the place from which Gwendolyn had disappeared. Naturally I answered in the affirmative, and followed her as she turned aside into the circular path which embraces the hidden retreat. But I had rather have heard her answer to my question than have gone anywhere or seen anything at that moment. Yet, when in full view of the bungalow's open door, she stopped to point out to me the nearness of that place to that opening in the hedge we had just been making for, and when she even went so far as to indicate the tangled little path by which that opening could be reached directly from the farther end of the bungalow, I considered that my question had been answered, though in another way than I had anticipated, even before I noted the slight flush which rose to her cheek under my earnest scrutiny. As I took this all in, I ventured to ask some particulars of the family living so near the Okampas. Who occupies that house, I asked, pointing to the sloping roof's ornamental chimney arising just beyond us over the hedge-rows. Oh, that is Mrs. Caru's home. She is a widow and Mrs. Okampas' dearest friend, how she loved Gwendolyn, how we all loved her, and now, that wretch, she burst into tears, they were genuine ones, so was her grief. I waited till she was calm again, then inquired very softly, what wretch? You have not been inside, she suggested, pointing sharply to the bungalow? I took the implied rebuke and entered the door, she indicated. A man was sitting within, but he rose and went out when he saw us. He wore a policeman's badge and evidently recognized her, or possibly myself. I noted, however, that he did not go far from the doorway. It is only a den, remarked Miss Graham. I looked about me. She had described it perfectly, a place to lounge on an August day like present. Walls of Georgia pine, across one of which hung a series of long dark rugs, a long, low window looking toward the house, a few articles of bamboo furniture, described the place. Among the latter was a couch. It was drawn up underneath the window, on the other side of which ran the bench, where my companion declared she had been sitting while listening to the music. Wouldn't you think my attention would have been caught by the sound of anyone moving about here, she cried, pointing to the couch and then to the window. But the window was closed and the door, if you see, is round the corner from the bench. A person with a very stealthy step, apparently. Very, she admitted. Oh, how can I ever forgive myself? How can I ever, ever forgive myself? As she stood wringing her hands in sight of that empty couch, I cast a scrutinizing glance about me, which led me to remark. This interior looks new, much newer than the outside. It has quite a modern air. Yes, the bungalow is old, very old, but this room, or den, or whatever you might call it, was all remodeled and fitted up as you see it now, when the new house went up. It had long been abandoned as a place of retreat and had fallen into such decay that it was a perfect eyesore to all who saw it. Now it is likely to be abandoned again, and for what a reason! Oh, the dreadful place! How I hate it now, Gwendolyn, is gone! One moment, I notice another thing. This room does not occupy the whole of the bungalow. Either she did not hear me or thought it unnecessary to reply, and perceiving that her grief had now given way to an impatience to be gone, I did not press the matter, that led the way myself to the door. As we entered the little path which runs directly to that outlet in the hedge, I ventured to speak again. You have reasons, or so it appears, for believing that the child was carried off through this very path? The reply was impetuous. How else could she have been spirited away so quickly? Besides, here her eye stole back at me over her shoulder. I have since remembered that as I ran out of the bungalow in my fright at finding the child gone, I heard the sound of wheels on Mrs. Caru's driveway. It did not mean much to me then, for I expected to find the child somewhere about on the grounds. But now, when I come to think it, it means everything for a child's cry mingled with it, or I imagine that it did, and that child. But, I forcibly interposed, the police should know this. They do, and so does Mrs. Ocampa, but she has only the one idea, and nothing can move her. I remembered the wagon with the crying child inside which had been seen on the roads the previous evening, and my heart fell a little in spite of myself. Couldn't Mrs. Caru tell us something about this, I asked, with a gesture toward the house we were now passing? No, Mrs. Caru went to New York that morning and had only just returned when we missed Gwendolyn. She had been for her little nephew who has lately been made an orphan, and she was too busy making him feel comfortable at home to notice if a carriage had passed through her grounds. Her servants then? She had none, all had been sent away, the house was quite empty. I thought this rather odd, but having at that moment reached the long flight of steps leading down the embankment, I made no reply till we reached the foot, then I observed. I thought Mrs. Caru was very intimate with Mrs. Ocampa. She is, they are more like sisters than mere friends. Yet she goes to New York the very day her friend gives a music hall? Oh, she had good reasons for that. Mrs. Caru is planning to sail this week for Europe, and this was her only opportunity for getting her little nephew who is to go with her. But I don't know as she will sail now. She is wild with grief over Gwendolyn's loss and will not feel like leaving Mrs. Ocampa until she knows whether we shall ever see the dear child again. But I shall miss my train. Here her step visibly hastened. As it was really very nearly due, I had not the heart to detain her. But as I followed in her wake, I noticed that for all her hurry a curious hesitancy crept into her step at times, and I should not have been surprised at any moment to see her stop and confront me on one of the two remaining long flights of steps leading down the steep hillside. But we both reached the base without having yielded to this impulse, and presently we found ourselves in full view of the river and the small flag station located but a few rods away toward the left. As we turned toward the latter we both cast an involuntary look back at the Ocampa deck where a dozen men could be seen at work dragging the riverbed with grappling irons. It made a sadly suggestive picture, and the young girl at my side shuddered violently as we noted the expression of morbid curiosity on the faces of such onlookers, men and women as were drawn up at the end of the small point on which the boat-house stood. But I had another reason than this for urging her on. I had noticed how at the sight of her slight figure descending the slope some half dozen or so men separated themselves from this group, with every appearance of intending to waylay and question her. She noticed this too when drawing up more closely to my side exclaimed with marked feeling, Save me from these men and I will tell you something that no one, but here she stopped. Here are very thoughts stopped. A shout had risen from the group at the water edge, a shout which made us both turn, and even caused the men who had started to follow us to wheel about and rush back to the dock with every appearance of intense excitement. What is it? What can it be? faltered my greatly alarmed companion. They have found something, see! What is that the man in the boat is holding up? It looks like. But she was already halfway to the point, outstripping the very men whose importunities she had shrunk from a moment before. I was not far behind her and almost immediately we found ourselves wedged among the agitated group, leaning over the little object which had been tossed ashore into the first hand outstretched to receive it. It was a second little shoe, filled with sand and dripping with water, but recognizable as similar to the one already found the preceding day, high up on the bank. As this fact was borne in on us all, a groan of pity broke from more than one pair of lips, and eye after eye stole up the hillside to that far window in the great pile above us where the mother's form could be dimly discerned swaying in an agitation caught from our own excitement. But there was one amongst us whose glance never left that little shoe. The train she had been so anxious to take whistled and went thundering by, but she never moved or noticed. Suddenly she reached out her hand. Let me see it, please, she entreated. I was her nurse. Let me take it in my hand. The man who held it passed it over. She examined it long and closely. Yes, it is hers, she said. But in another moment she had laid it down with what I thought was a very peculiar look. Instantly it was caught up and carried with a rush up the slope where Mrs. Ocampa could be seen awaiting it without stretched arms. But I did not linger to mark her reception of it. Miss Graham had drawn me to one side and was whispering in my ear. I must talk to you. I cannot keep back another moment what I think or what I feel. Someone is playing with Mrs. Ocampa's fears. That shoe is Gwendolyn's, but it is not the mate of the one found on the bank above. That one, that was for the left foot, and so was this one. Did you not notice? CHAPTER II The effect of this statement upon me was greater than even she had contemplated. You thought the child had been stolen for the reward she would bring? She continued. She was not. She was taken out of pure hate, and that is why I suffer so. What may they not do to her? Oh, in what hole hide her? My darling! Oh, my darling! She was going off into hysterics, but the look and touch I gave her recalled her to herself. We need to be calm, I urged. You, because you have something of importance to impart, and I, because of the action I must take as soon as the facts you have concealed become known to me. What gives you such confidence in this belief, which I am sure is not shared by the police, and who is the someone who, as you say, is playing upon Mrs. Ocampa's fears? A short time ago it was as the wretch you spoke of him. Are not someone and the wretch one and the same person, and can you not give him now a name? We had been moving all this time in the direction of the station, and had now reached the foot of the platform. Pausing she cast a last look up the bank. The trees were thick and hid from our view the Ocampa mansion, but in imagination she beheld the mother moaning over that little shoe. I shall never return there, she muttered. Why do I hesitate so to speak? Then in a burst as I watched her in growing excitement, she, Mrs. Ocampa, begged me not to tell what she believed had nothing to do with our Gwendolyn's loss. But I cannot keep silent. This proof of a conspiracy against herself certainly relieves me from any promise I may have made her. Mr. Trevitt, I am positive that I know who carried off Gwendolyn. This was becoming interesting, intensely interesting to me. Glancing about and noting that the group down at the water's edge had become absorbed again in renewed efforts toward further discoveries, I beckoned her to follow me into the station. It was but a step, but it gave me time to think. What was I encouraging this young girl to do? To reveal to me, who had no claim upon her but that of friendship, a secret which had not been given to the police? True, it might not be worth much, but it was also true that it might be worth a great deal. Did she know how much? I wanted money, few wanted it more, but I felt that I could not listen to her story till I had fairly settled this point. I therefore hastened to interpose a remark. Miss Graham, you are good enough to offer to reveal some fact hitherto concealed. Do you do this because you have no closer friend than myself? Or because you do not know what such knowledge may be worth to the person you give it to, in money, I mean. In money? I am not thinking of money, was her amazed reply. I am thinking of Gwendolyn. I understand, but you should think of the practical results as well. Have you not heard of the enormous reward offered by Mr. O'Cumpa? No, I—five thousand dollars for information, and fifty thousand to the one who will bring her back within the week unharmed. Mr. O'Cumpa cabled to that effect yesterday. It is a large sum, she faltered, and for a moment she hesitated. Then with a sweet and candid look, which sank deep into my heart, she added gravely, I had rather not think of money in connection with Gwendolyn. If what I have to tell you leads to her recovery, you can be trusted, I know, to do what is right toward me. Mr. Trevitt, the man who stole her from her couch and carried her away through Mrs. O'Cumpa's grounds in a wagon or otherwise, is long haired, a heavily whiskered man of sixty or more years of age. His face is deeply wrinkled, but chiefly marked by a long scar running down between his eyebrows, which are so shaggy that they would quite hide his eyes if they were not lit up within extraordinary expression of resolution, carried almost to the point of frenzy. A fearsome man making your heart stand still when he pauses to speak to you. Startled as I had seldom been, for reasons which will hereafter appear, I surveyed her in mingled wonder and satisfaction. His name, I demanded. I do not know his name. Again I stopped to look at her. Does Mrs. O'Cumpa? I do not think so. She only knows what I told her. And what did you tell her? Ah, who are these? Two or three persons had entered the station, probably to wait for the next train. No one who will molest you. But she was not content till we had withdrawn to where the timetable hung on the opposite wall. Turning about as if to consult it, she told the following story. I never see a timetable now, but I think of her expression as she stood there, looking up as if her mind were fixed on what she probably did not see at all. Last Wednesday, no, it was on the Wednesday proceeding. I was taking a ride with Gwendolyn on one of the side roads branching off toward Fordham. We were in her own little pony cart, and as we seldom rode together like this, she had been chattering away about a hundred things till her eyes danced in her head, and she looked as lovely as I had ever seen her. But suddenly, just as we were about to cross a small wooden bridge, I saw her turn pale in her whole sensitive form quiver. Someone I don't like, she cried. There is someone about whom I don't like. Drive on, Ellie, drive on. But before I could gather up the reins, a figure which I had not noticed before, stepped from behind a tree at the farther end of the bridge, and advancing into the middle of the road with arms thrown out, stopped our advance. I have told you how he looked, but I can give you no idea of the passionate fury lighting up his eyes, or the fiery dignity with which he held his place and kept us subdued to his will till he had looked the shrinking child all over and laughed. Not as a madman laughs, oh, much too slow and ironically for that, but like one who takes an unholy pleasure in mocking the happy present with evil prophecy. Nothing that I can say will make you see him as I saw him in that one instant, and though there was much in the circumstance to cause fear, I think it was more awe than fright we felt, so commanding was his whole appearance, and so forcible the assurance with which he held us there until he was ready to move. Gwendolyn cried out, but the imploring sound had no effect upon him. It only reawakened his mirth and led him to say, in a clear, cold, mocking tone which I hear yet, Cry out, little one, cry out for your short day is nearly over. Silks and feathers and carriages and servants will soon be a half-forgotten memory to you, and write that it should be so. Ten days, little one, only ten days more. And with that he moved and slipped aside behind the tree allowing us to drive on. Mr. Trivet yesterday was the end of those ten days, and where is she now? Only that man knows. He is one man in a thousand. Can you not find him? She turned, a train was coming, a train which it was very evident she felt at her duty to take. I had no right to detain her, but I found time for a question or two. And you told Mrs. Ocampa this? The moment we arrived home. And she, what did she think of it? Mrs. Ocampa is not a talkative woman. She grew very white and clasped the child passionately in her arms. But the next minute she had to all appearances dismissed the whole occurrence from her thoughts. Some socialistic fanatic, she called him, and merely advised me to stop driving with Gwendolyn for the present. Didn't you recall the matter to her when you found the child missing? Yes, but then she appeared to regard it in a superstitious way only. It was a warning of death, she said, and the man an irresponsible clairvoyant. When I tried to urge my own idea upon her and describe how I thought he might have obtained access to the bungalow, and carried her off, while still asleep, to some vehicle awaiting them in Mrs. Karoo's grounds, she only rebuked me for my folly, and bade me keep still about the whole occurrence, saying that I should only be getting some poor, half-demented old wretch into trouble for something for which he was not in the least responsible. A very considerate woman, I remarked, to which Miss Graham made reply as the train came storming up. Nobody knows how considerate, even if she has dismissed me rather suddenly from her service. Don't let that wretch, again she used the word, deceive her or you into thinking that that little one perished in the water. Gwendolyn is alive, I say. Find him and you will find her. I saw his resolution in his eye. Here she made a rush for the cars, and I had time only to get her future address before the train started, and all further opportunity of conversation between us was over for that day. I remained behind because I was by no means through with my investigations. What she had told me only convinced me of the necessity I had already recognized, of making myself master of all that could be learned at Homewood, before undertaking the very serious business of locating the child, or even the aged man, just described to me, and who I was now sure had been the chief, if not the soul, instrument in her abduction. THE MILLIONAIR BABY by Anna Kay Green, CHAPTER III A CHARMING WOMAN Stopping only long enough to send a telegram to my partner in New York, for which purpose I had to walk along the tracks to the main station, I returned by the shortcut to Homewood. My purpose in doing this was twofold. I should have a chance of seeing if the men were still at work in the river, and I should also have the added opportunity of quietly revisiting the bungalow, on the floor of which I had noted some chalk marks, which I felt called for a closer examination than I had given them. As I came in view of the dock, I saw that the men were still busy, but at a point farther out in the river, as if all hope had been abandoned of their discovering anything more inshore. But the chalk marks in the bungalow were almost forgotten by me, in the interest I experienced in a certain adventure which befell me on my way there. I had just reached the opening in the hedge, communicating with Mrs. Carew's grounds, when I heard steps on the walk inside, and a woman's rich voice saying, There, that will do, you must play on the other side of the house, Harry. And Dina, see that he does so, and that he does not cross the hall again till I come back. The sight of so Mary a child might kill Mrs. Ocampa if she happened to look this way. Moved by the tone which was one in a thousand, I involuntarily peered through the outlet I was passing, in the hope of catching a glimpse of its owner, and thus was favoured with the sight of a face which instantly fixed itself in my memory, as one of the most enchanting I had ever encountered. Not from its beauty, yet it may have been beautiful, nor from its youth, for the woman before me was not youthful, but from the extraordinary eloquence of its expression caught at a rare moment when the heart which gave it life was full. She was standing halfway down the path, throwing kisses to a little boy who was leaning toward her from an upper window. The child was laughing with joyfully, and it was this laugh she was trying to check. But her countenance, as she made the effort, was almost as merry as his, and yet filled with such solemn joy, such ecstasy of motherhood, I should be inclined to call it, if I had not been conscious that this must be Mrs. Carew, and that the child her nephew. That in my admiration for this exhibition of pure feeling, I forgot to move as she advanced into the hedge-row, and so we came face to face. The result was as extraordinary to me as all the rest. Instantly all the gay abandonment left her features, and she showed me a grave, almost troubled countenance, more in keeping with her severe dress, which was as nearly like mourning as it could be and not be made of crepe. It was such a sudden change, and of so complete a character, that I was thrown off my guard for a moment and probably betrayed the curiosity I undoubtedly felt, for she paused as she reached me, and, surveying me very quietly but very scrutinizingly too, raised again that marvelous voice of hers and pointedly observed. This is a private path, sir. Only friends of Mrs. Ocampa or my self-pass here. This was a speech calculated to restore my self-possession. With a bow which evidently surprised her, I answered with just enough respect to temper my apparent presumption. I am here in the interests of Mrs. Ocampa to assist her in finding her child. Moments are precious, so I ventured to approach by the shorter way. Pardon me! The words did not come instantly but after some hesitation, during which she kept her eyes on my face in a way to rob me of all thoughts saved that she possessed a very strong, magnetic quality, to which it were well for a man like myself to yield. You will be my friend too if you succeed in restoring Gwendolyn. Then quickly as she crossed to the Ocampa grounds, you do not look like a member of the police. Are you here at Mrs. Ocampa's bidding? And has she at last given up all expectation of finding her child in the river? I too thought a minute before answering, then I put on my most candid expression, for was not this woman on her way to Mrs. Ocampa, and would she not be likely to repeat what she heard me say? I do not know how Mrs. Ocampa feels at present, but I know what her dearest wish is to see her child again alive and well. That wish I shall do my best to gratify. It is true that I am not a police detective, but I have an agency of my own, well known to both Mrs. and Mr. Ocampa. All its resources will be devoted to this business and I hope to succeed, madam. If, as I suspect, you are on your way to Mrs. Ocampa, please tell her that Robert Trevitt, of Trevitt & Jupp, hopes to succeed. I will, she emphasized, then stepped back to me, in all the grace of her thrilling personality she eagerly added, if there is any information I can give, do not be afraid to ask me. I love children, and would give anything in the world to see Mrs. Ocampa as happy with Gwendolyn, again as I am with my little nephew. Are you quite sure that there is any possibility of this? I was told that the child's shoe had been found in the river, but almost immediately following this information came a report that there was something odd about this shoe, and that Mrs. Ocampa had gone into hysterics. Do you know what they mean by that? I was just going over to see. I did know what they meant, but I preferred to see ignorant. I have not seen Mrs. Ocampa, I evasively rejoined. But I don't look for the child to be drawn from the water. Nor I, she repeated with a horse catch in her breath. It is thirty-six hours since we lost her. Time enough for the current to have carried that sweet little body far from here. I surveyed the lady before me in amazement. Then you think she strayed down to the water? Yes, it would madden me to believe otherwise, loving her so well, and her parents so well. I dare not think of a worse fate. Taking advantage of her amyability and the unexpected opportunity it offered for a leading question, I hereupon ventured to say, You were not at home, I hear, when she vanished from the bungalow? No, that is, if it happened before three o'clock. I arrived from the station just as the clock was striking the hour, and, having my little nephew with me, I was too much occupied in reconciling him to his new home, to hear or see anything outside. Most unfortunate, she mourned. Most unfortunate. I shall never cease reproaching myself. A tragedy at my door. Here she glanced across the shrubbery at the bungalow, and I occupied with my own affairs. With a flush, the undoubted result of her own eagerness, she turned as if to go. But I could not let her depart without another question. Excuse me, Mrs. Carew, but you gave me permission to seem importunate. With the exception of her nurse, you were the one person nearest the bungalow at the time. Didn't you hear a carriage drive through your grounds at about the hour the alarm first started? I know you have been asked this before, but not by me. It is a very important fact to have settled. Very important for those who wish to discover this child at once. For reply she gave me a look of honest amazement. Of course I did, she replied. I came in a carriage myself from the station, and naturally heard it drive away. At her look, at her word, the thread which I had seized with such avidity seemed to slip from my fingers. Had little Miss Graham's theory no better foundation than this, and were the wheels she heard only those of Mrs. Carew's departing carriage, I resolved to press the matter even as I ran risk of displeasing her. Mrs. Carew, for it must be Mrs. Carew I am addressing, did you hear a little nephew cry when you first brought him to the house? I think he did, she admitted slowly. I think he did. I must have given evidence of the sudden discouragement this brought me, for her lips parted and her whole frame trembled with sudden eagerness. Did you think, did anyone think, that those cries came from Gwendolyn, that she was carried out through my grounds? Could anyone have thought that? I have been told that the nursery governess did. Little Miss Graham, poor girl, but she is defending herself from despair. She is ready to believe everything but that the child is dead. Was it so, was I following the false light of a will of the wisp? No. No. The strange coincidence of the threat made on the bridge, with the disappearance of the child on the day named, was at least real. The thread had not altogether escaped from my hands. It was less tangible, but it was still there. You may be right, I acquiesced, for I saw that her theories were entirely opposed to those of Miss Graham. But we must try everything, everything. I was about to ask whether she had ever seen in the adjoining grounds, or on the roads about, an old man with long hair and a remarkable scar running down between his eyebrows, when a young girl in a cap and apron of a maid-servant came running through the shrubbery from the Ocampa house and, seeing Mrs. Carew, panted out, To come over to the house, Mrs. Carew, Mrs. Ocampa has been told that the two shoes which have been found, one on the bank and the other in the river, are not mates, and it is quite distracted her. She has gone to her room and will let no one else in. We can hear her moaning and crying, but we can do nothing. Perhaps she will see you. She called for you, I know, before she shut her door. I will go. Mrs. Carew had turned quite pale, and from standing upright in the road had moved so as to gain support from one of the hedges. I expected to see her turn and go as soon as the trembling fit was over, but she did not, though she waved the girl away as if she intended to follow her. Had I not learned to distrust my own impressions of people's motives from their manners and conduct, I should have said that she was waiting for me to proceed her. Two shoes and not mates, she finally exclaimed. What does she mean? Simply that another shoe had been drawn up from the river bottom, which does not mate the one picked up near the bungalow. Both are for the left foot. Ah, gasped this sympathetic woman! And what inference can we draw from that? I should not have answered her, but the command in her eyes or the thrilling effect of her manner compelled me, and I spoke the truth at once, just as I might have done to Mrs. Ocampa, or better still, to Mr. Ocampa if either had insisted. But one, said I, there is a conspiracy on the part of one or more persons to delude Mrs. Ocampa into believing the child is dead. They blundered over it, but they came very near succeeding. Who blundered? And what is the meaning of the conspiracy you hint at? Tell me, tell me what such men as you think. Her plastic features had again shown a change. She was all anxiety now, cheeks burning, eyes blazing, a very beautiful woman. We think that the case looks serious. We think from the very mystery it displays that there is a keen intelligence back of this crime. I cannot go any further than that. The affair is yet to obscure. You amaze me, she faltered, making an effort to collect her thoughts. I have always thought, just as Mrs. Ocampa has, that the child had somehow found her way to the water and was drowned. But if all this is true, we shall have to face a worth's evil. A conspiracy against such a tender little being is that. A conspiracy and for what? Not to extort money, or why these blundering efforts to make the child appear dead. She was the same sympathetic woman agitated by real feelings as before. Yet at this moment I do not understand now just why. I became aware of an inner movement of caution against too many a display of candor on my own part. Madam, it is all a mystery at present. I am sure that the police will tell you the same. But another day may bring developments. Let us hope so, was her ardent reply, accompanied by a gesture, the freedom of which suited her style in person as it would not have done those of a less impressionable woman. And seeing that I had no intention of leaving the spot where I stood, she moved at last from where she held herself upright against the hedge and entered the Ocampa grounds. Will you call in to see me to-morrow? She asked, pausing to look back at the turn in the path. I shall not sleep tonight for thinking of those possible developments. Since you permit me, I have returned, that is, if I am still here, affairs may call me away at any moment. Yes, and so with me, affairs may call me away also. I was to sail on Saturday for Liverpool. Only Mrs. Ocampa's distress detains me. If the situation lightens, if we hear any good news to-night, or even early to-morrow, I shall continue my preparations which will take me again to New York. I will call if you are at home. She gave me a slight nod and vanished. Why did I stand there a good three minutes where she had left me, thinking, but not getting anything from my thoughts, save that I was glad that I had not been betrayed into speaking of the old man Miss Graham had met on the bridge? Yet it might have been well, after all, if I had done so. If only to discover whether Mrs. Ocampa had confided this occurrence to her most intimate friend. End of CHAPTER IV My next move was toward the bungalow. Those chalk marks still struck me as being worthy of investigation, and not only they, but the bungalow itself. That certainly merited a much closer inspection than I had been able to give it under Miss Graham's eye. It was not quite a new place to me, nor was I so ignorant of its history, and it had a history as I had appeared to be in my conversation with Miss Graham. Originally it had been a stabling place for horses, and tradition said that it had once harbored for a week the horse of General Washington. This was when the house on the knoll above had been the seat and home of one of our most famous revolutionary generals. Later, as the trees grew up around this building, it attracted the attention of a new owner, William Ocampa, the first of that name to inhabit Homewood, and he, being a man of reserved manners and very studious habits, turned it into what we would now call, as Miss Graham did, a den, but which he styled a pavilion and used it as a sort of study or reading-room. His son, who inherited it, Judge Philo Ocampa, grandfather of the present Philo, was as studious as his father, but preferred to read and write in the quaint old library up at the house, famous for its wide glass doors opening onto the lawn, and its magnificent view of the Hudson. His desk, which many remember, it has a place in the present house, I believe, was so located that for forty years or more he had this prospect ever before him, a prospect which included the site of his own pavilion, a round which, for no cause apparent to his contemporaries, he had caused a high wall to be built, effectually shutting in both trees and building. This wall has since been removed, but I have often heard it spoken of, and always with a certain air of mystery, possibly because, as I have said, there seems no good reason for its erection, the place holding no treasure and the gate standing always open, possibly because of its having been painted, indefiance of all harmony with everything about the place, a dazzling white, and possibly because it had not been raised till after the death of the judge's first wife, whose some have said, breathed her last within the precincts and enclosed. However that may be, there seems to be no doubt that this place exerted, very likely against his will, for he never visited it, a singular fascination over the secretive mind of this same upright but strangely taciturn ancestor of the Ocampas. For during the forty years in which he wrote and read at this desk, the shutters guarding the door overlooking those decaying walls were never drawn to, or so the tradition runs, and when he died it was found that by a clause in his will, this pavilion, hot or bungalow, all of which names it bore at different stages of its existence, was recommended to the notice of his heirs as an object which they were at liberty to leave in its present forsaken condition, though he did not exact this, but which was never under any circumstances or to serve any purpose, to be removed from its present sight, or even to suffer any demolitions saved such as came with time and the natural round of the seasons, to whose tender mercies he advised it to be left. In other words, it was to stand and to stand unmolested till it fell of its own accord, or was struck to the earth by lightning, a tragic alternative in the judgment of those who knew it for a structure of comparative insignificance, and one which, in the minds of many, and perhaps I may say in my own, appeared to point to some serious and unrevealed cause not unlinked with the almost forgotten death of that young wife to which I have just eluded. This was years ago, far back in the fifties, and his son, who was a minor at his death, grew up and assumed the natural proprietorship. The hut, it was nothing but a hut now, had remained untouched, a ruin no longer habitable. The spirit as well as the letter of that particular clause in his father's will had so far been literally obeyed. The walls being of stone had withstood decay, and still rose straight and firm, but the roof had begun to sag, and whatever of woodwork yet remained about it had rotted and fallen away till the building was little more than a skeleton, with holes for its windows and an open gap for its door. As for the surrounding wall, it no longer stood out an incongruous landmark from its background of trees and shrubbery. Young shoots had started up, and old branches developed, till brick and paint alike were almost concealed from view by a fresh girdle of greenery. And now comes the second mystery. Sometime after this lateral compa had attained his majority, his name was Edwin, and he was, as you already imagine, the father of the present Philo. He made an attempt, a daring one it was afterward called, to brighten this neglected spot and restore it to some sort of use by giving a supper to his friends within its broken-down walls. This supper was no orgy nor were the proprieties in any way transgressed by so harmless a festivity, yet from this night a singular change was observed in this man. Pleasure no longer charmed him, and instead of repeating the experiment I have just described, he speedily evinced such an antipathy to the scene of his late revel that only from the greatest necessity would he ever again visit that part of the grounds. What did it mean? What had occurred on that night of innocent enjoyment to disturb or alarm him? Had some note in his own conscience been struck by an act which, in his cooler moments, he may have looked upon as a species of sacrilege? Or had some whisper from the past reached him amid the feasting, the laughter and the jesting, to render these old walls henceforth intolerable to him? He never said, but whatever the cause of this sudden aversion, the effect was deep and promised to be long lasting. For, one morning, not long after this event, a party of workmen was seen leaving these grounds at daybreak, and soon it was noised about that the massive brick partition had been put across the interior of the same pavilion, completely shutting off for no reason that anyone could see, some ten feet of what had been one long and undivided room. It was a strange enough act, but when a few days later it was followed by one equally mysterious, and they saw the encircling wall which had been so carefully raised by Judge Ocampa ruthlessly pulled down, and every sign of its former presence there destroyed, wonder filled the highway and the curiosity of neighbors and friends past all bounds. But no explanation were volunteered then or ever. People might query and peer, but they learned nothing. What was left open to view told no tales beyond the old one, and as for the single window which was the sole opening into the shut-off space, it was then, as now, so completely blocked off by a network of closely impacted vines, that it offered little more encouragement than the wall itself to the eyes of the curiosity-mongers, as crept in by way of the hedge-rose to steal a look at the hut, and if possible gain a glimpse of an interior which had suddenly acquired, by the very means taken to shut it off from every human eye, a new importance pointing very decidedly toward the tragic. But soon even this semblance of interest died out, or was confined to the strange tales whispered under breath on weird nights at neighboring firesides, and the old neglect prevailed once more. The whole place, new brick, old stone, seemed doomed to a common fate under the hand of time when the present Philo Ocampa, succeeding to the property, brought new wealth and business enterprise into the family, and the old house on the hill was replaced by the marble turrets of homewood, and this hut, or rather the portion open to improvement, was restored to some sort of comfort and rechristened the bungalow. Was fate to be appeased by this effort at forgetfulness? No. In emulation of the long abandoned portion so hopelessly cut off by that dividing wall, this brightly furnished adjunct to the great house had linked itself in the minds of men to a new mystery, the mystery which I had come there to solve, if wits and patience could do it, aided by my supposedly unshared knowledge of a fact connecting me with this family's history in a way it little dreamed of. Naturally my first look was at the building itself. I have described its location in the room from which the child was lost. What I wanted to see now, after studying those chalk marks, was whether that partition which had been put in was as impassable as was supposed. The policeman on guard having strolled a few feet away, I approached the open doorway without hindrance, and at once took that close look I had promised myself of the marks which I had observed scrawled broadly across the floor just inside the threshold. They were as interesting and as fully important as I had anticipated. Though nearly obliterated by the passing of policemen's feet to cross them, I was still enabled to read one word which appeared to me significant. If you will glance at the following reproduction of a snapshot which I took of this scrawl, you will see what I mean. The significant character was the sixteen. Taken with the U.S.T., there could be no doubt that the whole writing had been a record of the date on which the child had disappeared, August 16. This in itself was of small consequence if the handwriting had not possessed those marked peculiarities which I believed belonged to one man, a man I had once known, a man of revered aspect, upright carriage in a strong, distinguished mark like an old-time scar running straight down between his eyebrows. This had been my thought when I first saw it. It was doubly so on seeing it again after the doubts expressed by Miss Graham of a threatening old man who possessed similar characteristics. Satisfied on this point, I turned my attention to what still more seriously occupied it. The three or four long rugs, which hung from the ceiling across the whole wall at my left, evidently concealed the mysterious partition put up in Mr. Ocampa's father's time directly across this portion of the room. Was it a totally unbroken partition? I had been told so, but I never accept such assertions without a personal investigation. Casting a glance through the doorway and seeing that it would take my dreaming friend, the policeman, some two or three minutes yet to find his way back to his post, I hastily lifted these rugs aside one after the other and took a look behind them. A stretch of Georgia pine, laid as I readily discovered by more than one wrap of my knuckles, directly over the bricks it was intended to conceal, was visible under each, from end to end a plain partition with no indications of its having been tampered with since the alterations were first made. Dismissing from my mind one of those vague possibilities which add such interest to the calling of a detective, I left the place with my full thought concentrated on the definite clue I had received from the chalk marks. But I had not walked far before I met with a surprise which possibly possessed a significance equal to any I had already observed, if only I could have fully understood it. On the path into which I now entered I encountered again the figure of Mrs. Karoo. Her face was turned full on mine and she had evidently retraced her steps to have another instance conversation with me. The next moment I was sure of this. Her eyes always magnetic, shown with increased brightness as I advanced to meet her, and her manner, while grave, was that of a woman quite conscious of the effect she produced by her least word or action. I have returned to tell you, she said, that I have more confidence in your efforts than in those of the police officers around here. If Gwendolyn's fate is determined by anyone it will be by you. So I want to be of aid to you if I can. Remember that. I may have said this to you before, but I wish to impress it upon you. There was a flutter in her movements which astonished me. She was surveying me in a straightforward way and I could not but feel the fire and force of her look. Happily she was no longer a young woman, or I might have misunderstood the disturbance which took place in my own breast as I waited for the musical tones to cease. You are very good, I rejoined. I need help and I shall be only too glad to receive your assistance. Yet I did question her, though I presently found myself walking toward the house at her side. She may not have expected me to presume so far. Certainly she showed no dissatisfaction when at a parting in the path I took my leave of her and turned my face in the direction of the gates. A strange, sweet woman with a power quite apart from the physical charms which usually affected men of my age but one not easily read nor parted from unless one had an imperative errand as I had. This errand was to meet and forstall the messenger boy whom I momentarily expected with the answer to my telegram. That an opportunity for gossip was likewise afforded by the motley group of men and boys drawn up near one of the gateposts gave an added interest to the event which I was quite ready to appreciate. Approaching this group I assimilated myself with it as speedily as possible, and having some tact for this sort of thing, soon found myself the recipient of various gratuitous opinions as to the significance of the find which had offered such a problem both to the professional and the unprofessional detective, to mismated shoes. Had Gwendolyn Ocampa by any chance worn such? No, or the ones mating them would have been found in her closet, and this someone shouted had not been done. Only the one corresponding to the one fished up from the waters of the dock had come to light. The other, the one which the child must really have worn, was nowhere nearer being found than the child herself. What did it all mean? No one knew, but all attempted some sort of hazardous guess which I was happy to see fell entirely short of the mark. It was not a word of the vindictive old man described by Miss Graham till I myself introduced the topic. My reason, or rather my excuse, for introducing it was this. On the gatepost near me I had observed the remnants of a strip of paper which had been pasted there and afterward imperfectly torn off. It had an unsightly look, but I did not pay much attention to it till some movement in the group forced me a little nearer to the post, when I was surprised enough to see that this scrap of paper showed signs of words, and that these words gave evidence of being a date written in the very hand I now had no difficulty in recognizing as that of the old man uppermost in my mind, even if he were not the one whom Miss Graham had seen on the bridge. This date, strange to say, was the same significant one already noted on the floor of the bungalow, a fact which I felt merited an explanation if anyone about me could give it. Waiting, therefore, for a lull in the remarks passing between the stablemen and other employees about the place, I drew the attention of the first man who would listen to the half torn off strip of paper on the post, and asked if that was the way the Ocampas gave the notice of their entertainments. He started, then turned his back on me. That wasn't put there for entertainment, he growled. That was posted up there by someone who wanted to show off his writing. There don't seem to be no other reason. As the man who spoke these words had thereby proved himself a blockhead, I edged away from him as soon as possible toward a very decent-looking fellow who appeared to have more brains than speech. Do you know who pasted that date upon the post, I inquired? He answered very directly. No, or I should have been laying for him long before this. Why it is not only there you can see it, I found it pinned to the carriage-cushions one day just as I was going to drive Mrs. Ocampa out. Evidently I had struck upon the coachman. And not only that, one of the girls up at the house, one as I know is pretty well, tells me, I don't care who hears it now, that it was written across a card which was left at the door for Mrs. Ocampa, and all in the same handwriting, which is not a common one, as you can see. This means something, seeing it was the date when our bad luck fell on us. He had noted that. You don't mean to say that these things were written and put about before the date you see on them? But I do. Would we have noticed since? But who are you, sir, if I may ask, one of them detective fellows? If so, I have a word to say. Find that child, or Mrs. Ocampa's blood will be on your head. She'll not live till Mr. Ocampa comes home unless she can show him his child. Wait! I called out, for he was turning away toward the stable. You know who wrote those slips? Not a bit of it, no one does. Not that anybody thinks much of them but me. The police must, I ventured. Maybe, but they don't say anything about it. Somehow it looks to me as if they were all at sea. Possibly they are, I remarked, letting him go as I caught sight of a small boy, coming up the road with several telegrams in his hand. Is one of those directed to Robert Trevitt, I asked, crowding up with the rest, as his small form was allowed to slip through the gate? Specks there is, he replied, looking them over and handing me one. I carried it to one side and hastily tore it open. It was, as I expected, from my partner and read as follows. Man you want has just returned after two days' absence. Come on watch. Saw him just a light from buggy with what looked like a sleeping child in his arms. Closed and fastened front door after him. Safe for to-night. Did I allow my triumph to betray itself? I do not think so. The question which kept down my elation was this. Would I be the first man to get there? End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 The Old House in Yonkers The old man, whose handwriting I had now positively identified, was a former employer of mine. I had worked in his office when a lad. He was a doctor of very fair reputation in Westchester County, and I recognized every characteristic of his, as mentioned by Miss Graham, save the frenzy which she described as accompanying his address. In those days he was calm and cold, and while outwardly scrupulous, capable of forgetting his honour as a physician under sufficiently strong temptation. I had left him when new prospects opened, and in the years which had elapsed had contented myself with the knowledge that his shingle still hung out in Yonkers, though his practice was nothing what it used to be when I was in his employ. Now I was going to see him again. That his was the hand which had stolen Gwendolyn seemed no longer open to doubt. That she was under his care in the curious old house I remembered in the heart of Yonkers seemed equally probable. But why so sordid a man, one who loved money above everything else in the world, should retain the child one minute after the publication of the bountiful reward offered by Mr. Ocampa, was what I could not at first understand? Miss Graham's theory of hate had made no impression on me. He was heartless and not likely to be turned aside from any project he had formed, but he was not what I considered vindictive where nothing was to be gained. Yet my comprehension of him had been but a boy's comprehension, and I was now prepared to put a very different estimate on one whose character had never struck me as being an open one, even when my own had been most credulous. That my enterprise, even with the knowledge I possessed of this man, promised well or held out any prospects of easy fulfillment, I no longer allowed myself to think. If money was his object, and what other could influence a man of his temperament, the sum offered by Mr. Ocampa, large though it was, had apparently not sufficed to satisfy his greed. He was holding back the child, or so I now believed, in order to ring a larger, possibly double, amount from the wretched mother. Fifty thousand was a goodly sum, but one hundred thousand was better, and this man had gigantic ideas where his cupidity was concerned. I remember how firmly he had once stood out for ten thousand dollars when he had been offered five, and I began to see, though in an obscure way as yet, how it might very easily be part of his plan to work Mrs. Ocampa up to a positive belief in the child's death. Before he came down upon her for the immense reward he had fixed his heart upon. The date he had written all over the place might thus find some explanation in a plan to weaken her nerve before pressing his exorbitant claims upon her. Nothing was clear, yet everything was possible in such a nature, and anxious to enter upon the struggle both for my own sake and that of the child of whose condition under that terrible eye I scarcely dared to think, I left homewood in haste, and took the first train for yonkers. Though the distance was not great, I had fully arranged my plans before entering the town where so many of my boyish years had been spent. I knew the old fox well enough, or I thought I did, to be certain that I should have anything but an easy entrance into his house, in case it still harbored the child, whom my partner had seen carried in there. I anticipated difficulties, but was concerned about none but the possibility of not being able to bring myself face to face with him. Once in his presence, the knowledge which I secretly possessed of an old but doubtful transaction of his would serve to make him mine even to the point of yielding up the child he had forcibly abducted. But would he accord me an interview? Could I, without appeal to the police, and you can readily believe I was not anxious to allow them to put their fingers in my pie, force him to open his door and let me into the house, which, as I well recalled, he locked up at nine after which he would receive no one, not even a patient. It was not nine yet, but it was very near that hour. I had but twenty minutes in which to mount the hill to the old house, marked by the doctor's sign, and by another peculiarity of so distinct a nature that it would serve to characterize a dwelling in a city as large as New York, though I doubt if New York can show its like from the battery to the Bronx. The particulars of this I will mention later. I have first to relate the relief I felt when, on entering the old neighborhood, I heard a response to a few notes of a certain popular melody which I had allowed to leave my lips, and added note or two which warned me that my partner was somewhere hidden among the alleys of this unaristocratic quarter. Indeed from the sound I judged him to be in the rear of the doctor's house, and being anxious to hear what he had to say before advancing upon the door, which might open my way to easy fortune or complete defeat, I paused a few steps off and waited for his appearance. He was at my elbow before I had either seen or heard him. He was always light afoot, but this time he seemed to have no tread at all. Still here was his comforting assurance. Both, I whispered back. Both. Anyone else? No, a boy drove away, the buggy, and has not come back. Saw bones keeps no girl. Is the child quiet? Has there been no alarm? Not a breath. No cops in the neighborhood? No spies around? Not one. We've got it all this time, but hush. There's nobody. Yes, the doctor, he's fastening up the house. I must hasten. Nothing would induce me to let that innocent remain under his roof all night. It's not the window he is at. What then? The door, the big front door. The—yes. I gave my partner a surprised look, undeadly lost in the darkness, and drew a step nearer the house. It's just the same old gloom box, I exclaimed, and paused for an instant to mark the changes which had taken place in the surroundings. They were very few, and I turned my eye back to fix on the front door where a rattling sound could be heard, as if someone fingering the latch. It was this door which formed the peculiarity of the house. In itself it was like any other that was well-fashioned and solid, but it opened upon space—that is, if it ever opened, which I doubted. The stoop and even the railing which had once guarded it had all been removed, leaving a bare front with this inhospitable entrance shut against everyone who had not the convenience for mounting to it by a ladder. There was another way in, but this was round on one side, and did not present itself to the eye unless one approached from the west end of the street, so that to half the passers-by the house looked like a deserted one till they came abreast of the flagged path which led to the office door. As the windows had never been unclosed in my day and were not now, I took it for granted that they had remained thus inhospitably shut during all the years of my absence, which certainly offered but little encouragement to a man bent on an errand which should soon take him into those dismal precincts. What goes on behind those shuttered windows, thought I? I know of one thing, but what else? The one thing was the counting of money and the arranging of innumerable gold pieces on the great top of a base-covered table in what I should now describe as the back-parler. I remembered how he used to do it. I caught him at it once, having crept up one windy night from my little room off the office to see what kept the doctor up so late. As I now stood listening in the dark street to those strange touches on a door disused for years, I recalled the tremor with which I rounded the top of the stair that night of long ago, and the mingled fear and awe with which I recognized not only such a mint of money as I had never seen out of the bank before, but the greedy and devouring passion with which he pushed the glittering coins about and handled the banknotes and gloated over the pile it all made when drawn together by his hooked fingers, till the sound, perhaps of my breathing in the dark hall, startled him with a thought of discovery, and his two hands came together over that pile, with a gesture even more eloquent than the look with which he seemed to penetrate the very shadows in the silent space wherein I stood. It was a vision short but inexpressibly vivid of the miser incarnate, and having seen it and escaped detection, as was my undeserved luck that night, I needed never to ask again why he had been willing to accept risks from which most men shrink from fear if not from conscience. He loved money, not as the spender loves it openly and with luxurious instincts, but secretly and with a naivish dread of discovery which spoke of treasure ill-acquired. And now he was seeking to add to his gains, and I stood on the outside of his house listening to sounds I did not understand, instead of attempting to draw him to the office door by ringing the bell he never used to disconnect, until nine. Do you know that I don't quite like the noises which are being made up there? came a sudden whisper to my ear. Suppose it was the child trying to get out. She does not know there is no stoop. She seemed sleeping or half dead when he carried her in, and if by any chance she had got to hold the key. And the door should open? Hush, I cried, starting forward in horror of the thought he had suggested. It is opening. I see a thread of light. What does it mean, Jap, the child? No, there is more than a child's strength in that push. Hiss! Here I drew him flat against the wall. The door above had swung back, and someone was stamping on the threshold over our heads in what appeared to be an outburst of ungovernable fury. That it was the doctor I could not doubt. But why this anger? Why this mad gasping after breath and the half-growl, half-cry, with which he faced the night and the quiet of the street, which to his glance, passing as it did over our heads, must have appeared altogether deserted? We were consulting each other's faces for some explanation of this unlooked-for outbreak when the door above us suddenly slammed to, and we heard a renewal of that fumbling with lock and key which had first drawn our attention. But the hand was not sure, or the hall was dark, for the key did not turn in the lock. Suddenly awake to my opportunity I wheeled Jap about in making use of his knee and back, climbed up till I was unable to reach the knob, and turned it just as the man within had stepped back, probably to procure more light. The result was that the door swung open and I stumbled in, falling almost face downward on the marble floor, faintly checkered off to my sight in the dim light of a lamp, set far back in a bare and dismal hall. I was on my feet again in an instant, and it was in this manner, and with all the disadvantages of a hatless head and a disordered countenance, that I encountered again my old employer after five years of absence. He did not recognize me. I saw it by the look of alarm which crossed his features and the involuntary opening of his lips and what would certainly have been a loud cry if I had not smiled and cried out with false gaiety. Excuse me, doctor. I never came in by that door before. Pardon my awkwardness. The step is somewhat high from the street. My smile is my own, they say. At all events it served to enlighten him. Bob Trevitt, he exclaimed, but with a growl of displeasure I could hardly condemn under the circumstances. I hastened to push my advantage, for he was looking very threateningly toward the door, which was swaying gently and in an inviting way to a man who, if old, had more power in his arms than I had in my whole body. Mr. Trevitt, I corrected, and on a very important errand. I am here on behalf of Mrs. O'Cumpa, whose child you have at this moment under your roof. End of Chapter 5