"I know the child is here," I replied, "because my partner saw you bring
her in. I have gone into the detective business since leaving you."
"Ah!"
There was an astonishing edge to his smile and I felt that I should have
to make the most of that old discovery of mine, if I were to hold my own
with this man.
"And may I ask," he coldly continued, "how you have succeeded in
connecting me with this young child's disappearance?"
"It's straight as a string," I retorted. "You threatened the child to
its face in the hearing of its nurse some two weeks ago, on a certain
bridge where you stopped them. You even set the day when the little
Gwendolen should pass from luxury to poverty." Here I cast an
involuntary glance about the room where the only sign of comfort was the
newly upholstered lounge. "That day was the sixteenth, and we all know
what happened on that date. If this is not plain enough--" I had seen
his lip curl--"allow me to add, by way of explanation, that you have
seen fit to threaten Mrs. Ocumpaugh herself with this date, for I know
well the hand which wrote _August 16_ on the bungalow floor and in
various other places about Homewood where her eye was likely to fall."
And I let my own fall on a sort of manuscript lying open not far from
the Bible, which still looked so out of place to me on this
pagan-hearted old miser's table. "Such chirography as yours is not to be
mistaken," I completed, with a short gesture toward the disordered
sheets he had left spread out to every eye.
"I see. A detective without doubt. Did you play the detective here?"
The last question leaped like a shot from his lips.
"You have not denied the threats to which I have just called your
attention," was my cautious reply.
"What need of that?" he retorted. "Are you not a--_detective_?"
There was sarcasm, as well as taunt in the way he uttered that last
word. I was conscious of being at a loss, but put a bold front on the
matter and proceeded as if conscious of no secret misgiving.
"Can you deny as well that you have been gone two days from this place?
That during this time a doctor's buggy, drawn by a horse I should know
by description, having harnessed him three times a day for two years,
was seen by more than one observer in the wake of a mysterious wagon
from the interior of which a child's crying could be heard? The wagon
did not drive up to this house to-night, but the buggy did, and from it
you carried a child which you brought with you into this house."
With a sudden down-bringing of his old but powerful hand on the top of
the table before him, he seemed about to utter an oath or some angry
invective. But again he controlled himself, and eying me without any
show of shame or even of desire to contradict any of my assertions, he
quietly declared:
"You are after that reward, I observe. Well, you won't get it. Like many
others of your class you can follow a trail, but the insight to start
right and to end in triumphant success is given only to a genius, and
you are not a genius."
With a blush I could not control, I advanced upon him, crying:
"You have forestalled me. You have telegraphed or telephoned to Mr.
Atwater--"
"I have not left my house since I came in here three hours ago."
"Then--" I began.
But he hushed me with a look.
"It is not a matter of money," he declared almost with dignity. "Those
who think to reap dollars from the distress which has come upon the
Ocumpaugh family will eat ashes for their pains. Money will be spent,
but none of it earned, unless you, or such as you, are hired at so much
an hour to--follow trails."
Greatly astounded not only by the attitude he took, but by the calm and
almost indifferent way in which he mentioned what I had every reason to
believe to be the one burning object of his existence, I surveyed him
with undisguised astonishment till another thought, growing out of the
silence of the many-roomed house above us, gripped me with secret dread;
and I exclaimed aloud and without any attempt at subterfuge:
"She is dead, then! the child is dead!"
"I do not know," was his reply.
The four words were uttered with undeniable gloom.
"You do not know?" I echoed, conscious that my jaw had fallen, and that
I was staring at him with fright in my eyes.
"No. I wish I did. I would give half of my small savings to know where
that innocent baby is to-night. Sit down!" he vehemently commanded. "You
do not understand me, I see. You confound the old Doctor Pool with the
new."
"I confound nothing," I violently retorted in strong revulsion against
what I had now come to look upon as the attempt of a subtile actor to
turn aside my suspicions and brave out a dangerous situation by a
ridiculous subterfuge. "I understand the miser whom I have beheld
gloating over his hoard in the room above, and I understand the doctor
who for money could lend himself to a fraud, the secret results of which
are agitating the whole country at this moment."
"So!" The word came with difficulty. "So you _did_ play the detective,
even as a boy. Pity I had not recognized your talents at the time. But
no--" he contradicted himself with great rapidity; "I was not a redeemed
soul then; I might have done you harm. I might have had more if not
worse sins to atone for than I have now." And with scant appearance of
having noted the doubtful manner in which I had received this
astonishing outburst, he proceeded to cry aloud and with a commanding
gesture: "Quit this. You have undertaken more than you can handle. You,
a messenger from Mrs. Ocumpaugh? Never. You are but the messenger of
your own cupidity; and cupidity leads by the straightest of roads
directly down to hell."
"This you proved six long years ago. Lead me to the child I believe to
be in this house or I will proclaim aloud the pact you entered into
then--a pact to which I was an involuntary witness whose word, however,
will not go for less on that account. Behind the curtain still hanging
over that old closet I stood while--"
His hand had seized my arm with a grip few could have proceeded under.
"Do you mean--"
The rest was whispered in my ear.
[Illustration: "DO YOU MEAN"--THE REST WAS WHISPERED IN MY EAR.]
I nodded and felt that he was mine now. But the laugh which the next
minute broke from his lips dashed my assurance.
"Oh, the ways of the world!" he cried. Then in a different tone and not
without reverence: "Oh, the ways of God!"
I made no reply. For every reason I felt that the next word must come
from him.
It was an unexpected one.
"That was Doctor Pool unregenerate and more heedful of the things of
this world than of those of the world to come. You have to deal with
quite a different man now. It is of that very sin I am now repenting in
sackcloth and ashes. I live but to expiate it. Something has been done
toward accomplishing this, but not enough. I have been played upon,
used. This I will avenge. New sin is a poor apology for an old one."
I scarcely heeded him. I was again straining my ears to catch a
smothered sob or a frightened moan.
"What are you listening for?" he asked.
"For the sound of little Gwendolen's voice. It is worth fifty thousand
dollars, you remember. Why shouldn't I listen for it? Besides, I have a
real and uncontrollable sympathy for the child. I am determined to
restore her to her home. Your blasphemous babble of a changed heart does
not affect me. You are after a larger haul than the sum offered by Mr.
Ocumpaugh. You want some of Mrs. Ocumpaugh's fortune. I have suspected
it from the first."
"I want? Little you know what I want"--then quickly, convincingly: "You
are strangely deceived. Little Miss Ocumpaugh is not here."
"What is that I hear, then?" was the quick retort with which I hailed
the sigh, unmistakably from infantile lips, which now rose from some
place very much nearer us than the hollow regions overhead toward which
my ears had been so long turned.
"That!" He flashed with uncontrollable passion, and if I am not mistaken
clenched his hands so violently as to bury his nails in his flesh.
"Would you like to see what that is? Come!"--and taking up the lamp, he
moved, much to my surprise as well as to my intense interest, toward the
door of the small cupboard where I had myself slept when in his service.
That he still meditated some deviltry which would call for my full
presence of mind to combat successfully, I did not in the least doubt.
Yet the agitation under which I crossed the floor was more the result of
an immediate anticipation of seeing--and in this place of all others in
the world--the child about whom my thoughts had clung so persistently
for forty-two hours, than of any results to myself in the way of injury
or misfortune. Though the room was small and my passage across it
necessarily short, I had time to remember Mrs. Ocumpaugh's pitiful
countenance as I saw it gazing in agony of expectation from her window
overlooking the river, and to catch again the sounds, less true and yet
strangely thrilling, of Mrs. Carew's voice as she said: "A tragedy at my
doors and I occupied with my own affairs!" Nor was this all. A
recollection of Miss Graham's sorrow came up before my eyes also, and,
truest of all, most penetrating to me of all the loves which seemed to
encompass this rare and winsome infant, the infinite tenderness with
which I once saw Mr. Ocumpaugh lift her to his breast, during one of my
interviews with him at Homewood.
All this before the door had swung open. Afterward, I saw nothing and
thought of nothing but the small figure lying in the spot where I had
once pillowed my own head, and with no more luxuries or even comforts
about her than had been my lot under this broad but by no means
hospitable roof.
A bare wall, a narrow cot, a table with a bottle and glass on it and the
child in the bed--that was all. But God knows, it was enough to me at
that breathless moment; and advancing eagerly, I was about to stoop over
the little head sunk deep in its pillow, when the old man stepped
between and with a short laugh remarked:
"There's no such hurry. I have something to say first, in explanation of
the anger you have seen me display; an anger which is unseemly in a man
professing to have conquered the sins and passions of lost humanity. I
did follow this child. You were right in saying that it was my horse
and buggy which were seen in the wake of the wagon which came from the
region of Homewood and lost itself in the crossroads running between the
North River and the Sound. For two days and a night I followed it,
through more difficulties than I could relate in an hour, stopping in
lonely woods, or at wretched taverns, watching, waiting for the transfer
of the child, whose destination I was bound to know even if it cost me a
week of miserable travel without comfortable food or decent lodging. I
could hear the child cry out from time to time--an assurance that I was
not following a will-o'-the-wisp--but not till to-day, not till very
late to-day, did any words pass between me and the man and woman who
drove the wagon. At Fordham, just as I suspected them of making final
efforts to escape me, they came to a halt and I saw the man get out.
"I immediately got out too. As we faced each other, I demanded what the
matter was. He appeared reckless. 'Are you a doctor?' he asked. I
assured him that I was. At which he blurted out: 'I don't know why
you've been following us so long, and I don't care. I've got a job for
you. A child in our wagon is ill.'"
With a start I attempted to look over the old man's shoulder toward the
bed. But the deep, if irregular, breathing of the child reassured me,
and I turned to hear the doctor out.
"This gave me my chance. 'Let me see her,' I cried. The man's eye
lowered. I did not like his face at all. 'If it's anything serious,' he
growled, 'I shall cut. It isn't my flesh and blood nor yet my old
woman's there. You'll have to find some place for the brat besides my
wagon if it's anything that won't get cured without nu'ssin'. So come
along and have a look.' I followed him, perfectly determined to take the
child under my own care, sick or well. 'Where were you going to take
her?' I asked. I didn't ask who she was; why should I? 'I don't know as
I am obliged to tell,' was his surly reply. 'Where we are going
oursel's,' he reluctantly added. 'But not to nu'ss. I've no time for
nu'ssin' brats, nor my wife neither. We have a journey to make.
Sarah!'--this to his wife, for by this time we were beside the wagon,
'lift up the flap and hold the youngster's hand out. Here's a doctor who
will tell us if it's fever or not.' A puny hand and wrist were thrust
out. I felt the pulse and then held out my arms. 'Give me the child,' I
commanded. 'She's sick enough for a hospital.' A grunt from the woman
within, an oath from the man, and a bundle was presently put in my arms,
from which a little moan escaped as I strode with it toward my buggy. 'I
do not ask your name,' I called back to the man who reluctantly followed
me. 'Mine is Doctor Pool and I live in Yonkers.' He muttered something
about not peachin' on a poor man who was really doin' an unfortunate a
kindness, and then slunk hurriedly back and was gone, wagon, wife and
all, by the time I had whipped up my tired old nag and turned about
toward Yonkers. But I had the child safe and sound in my arms, and my
fears of its fate were relieved. It was not well, but I anticipated
nothing serious. When it moaned I pressed it a little closer to my
breast and that was all. In three-quarters of an hour we were in
Yonkers. In fifteen minutes I had it on this bed, and had begun to
unroll the shawl in which it was closely wrapped. Did you ever see the
child about whom there has been all this coil?"
"Yes, about three years ago."
"Three years! I have seen her within a fortnight; yet I could carry
that young one in my arms for a whole hour without the least suspicion
that I was making a fool of myself."
Quickly slipping aside, he allowed me to approach the bed and take my
first look at the sleeping child's face. It was a sweet one but I did
not need the hint he had given me to find the features strange, and
lacking every characteristic of those of Gwendolen Ocumpaugh. Yet as the
cutting off of the hair will often change the whole aspect of the
face--and this child's hair was short--I was stooping in great
excitement to notice more particularly the contour of cheek and chin
which had given individuality to the little heiress, when the doctor
touched me on the arm and drew my attention to a pair of little trousers
and a shirt which were hanging on the door behind me.
"Those are the clothes I came upon under that great shawl. The child I
have been following and whom I have brought into my house under the
impression it was Gwendolen Ocumpaugh is not even a girl."