"FIND THE CHILD!"
I could well understand the wrath to which this man had given way, by
the feeling which now took hold of my own breast.
"A boy!" I exclaimed.
"A boy."
Still incredulous, I leaned over the child and lifted into the full
light of the lamp one of the little hands I saw lying outside of the
coverlet. There was no mistaking it for a girl's hand, let alone a
little lady's.
"So we are both fools!" I vociferated in my unbounded indignation,
careful however to lay the small hand gently back on the panting breast.
And turning away both from the doctor and his small patient, I strolled
back into the office.
The bubble whose gay colors I had followed with such avidity had burst
in my face with a vengeance.
But once from under the influence of the doctor's sarcastic eye, my
better nature reasserted itself. Wheeling about, I threw this question
back:
"If that is a boy and a stranger, where is Gwendolen Ocumpaugh?"
A moan from the bed and a hurried movement on the part of the doctor,
who took this opportunity to give the child another dose of medicine,
were my sole response. Waiting till the doctor had finished his task and
drawn back from the bedside, I repeated the question and with increased
emphasis:
"Where, then, is Gwendolen Ocumpaugh?"
Still the doctor did not answer, though he turned my way and even
stepped forward; his long visage, cadaverous from fatigue and the shock
of his disappointment, growing more and more somber as he advanced.
When he came to a stand by the table, I asked again:
"Where is the child idolized by Mr. Ocumpaugh and mourned to such a
degree by his almost maddened wife that they say she will die if the
little girl is not found?"
The threat in my tones brought a response at last,--a response which
astonished me.
"Have I not said that I do not know? Do you not believe me? Do you think
me as blind to-day to truth and honor as I was six years ago? Have you
no idea of repentance and regeneration from sin? You are a detective.
Find me that child. You shall have money--hundreds--thousands--if you
can bring me proofs of her being yet alive. If the Hudson has swallowed
her--" here his figure rose, dilated and took on a majesty which
impressed itself upon me through all my doubts--"I will have vengeance
on whoever has thus dared the laws of God and man as I would on the
foulest murderer in the foulest slums of that city which breeds
wickedness in high places as in low. I lock hands no longer with Belial.
Find me the child, or make me at least to know the truth!"
There was no doubting the passion which drove these words hot from his
lips. I recognized at last the fanatic whom Miss Graham had so
graphically described in relating her extraordinary adventure on the
bridge; and met him with this one question, which was certainly a vital
one:
"Who dropped a shoe from the little one's closet, into the water under
the dock? Did you?"
"No." His reply came quick and sharp.
"But," I insisted, "you have had something to do with this child's
disappearance."
He did not answer. A sullen look was displacing the fire of resolve in
the eyes I saw sinking slowly before mine.
"I will not acknowledge it," he muttered; adding, however, in what was
little short of a growl: "Not yet, not till it becomes my duty to avenge
innocent blood."
"You foretold the date."
"Drop it."
"You were in league with the abductor," I persisted. "I declare to your
face, in spite of all the vaunted scruples with which you seek to blind
me to your guilt, that you were in league with the abductor, knowing
what money Mrs. Ocumpaugh would pay. Only he was too smart for you, and
perhaps too unscrupulous. You would stop short of murder, now that you
have got religion. But his conscience is not so nice and so you fear--"
"You do not know what I fear and I am not going to tell you. It is
enough that I am conscious of my own uprightness and that I say, Find
the child! You have incentive enough."
It was true and it was growing stronger every minute.
"Confine yourself to such clues as are apparent to every eye," he now
admonished me with an eagerness that seemed real. "If they are pointed
by some special knowledge you believe yourself to have gained, that is
all the better--perhaps. I do not propose to say."