"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 in
on an August day like the 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 describe 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
any one moving about here?" she cried, pointing to the couch and then to
the window. "But the window was closed and the door, as 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 Gwendolen 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, but led the way myself to the door. As we
entered the little path which runs directly to that outlet in the hedge
marked E, 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. Carew's driveway. It did not
mean much to me then, for I expected to find the child somewhere about
the grounds; but _now_, when I come to think, it means everything, for a
child's cry mingled with it (or I imagined that it did) and that
child--"
"But," I forcibly interposed, "the police should know this."
"They do; and so does Mrs. Ocumpaugh; 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. Carew tell us something about this?" I asked, with a
gesture toward the house we were now passing.
"No. Mrs. Carew went to New York that morning and had only just returned
when we missed Gwendolen. She had been for her little nephew, who has
lately been made an orphan, and she was too busy making him feel 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 this 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. Carew was very intimate with Mrs. Ocumpaugh."
"She is; they are more like sisters than mere friends."
"Yet she goes to New York the very day her friend gives a musicale."
"Oh, she had good reasons for that. Mrs. Carew 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 Gwendolen's loss, and will not feel
like leaving Mrs. Ocumpaugh till 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 her 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
Ocumpaugh dock, where a dozen men could be seen at work dragging the
river-bed 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
men or so had separated themselves from this group, with every
appearance of intending to waylay and question her. She noticed this
too, and 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 our 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 half-way 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 on 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," said she. 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 to where
Mrs. Ocumpaugh could be seen awaiting it with outstretched 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 can not keep back another moment what I think or
what I feel. Some one is playing with Mrs. Ocumpaugh's fears. That shoe
is Gwendolen's, but it is not the mate of the one found on the bank
above. That was for the left foot _and so is this one_. Did you not
notice?"