The Complete Works of Arthur Morrison (Illustrated). Arthur Morrison

of his offer; that will fetch him if he wants the money, and can do anything for it. Have you nothing else to tell me?”

      “Nothing. But have you ascertained nothing yourself? Don’t say I’ve to pass another night in such dreadful suspense.”

      “I’m afraid, Mrs. Seton, I must ask you to be patient a little longer. I have ascertained something, but it has not carried me far as yet. Remember that if there is anything at all in these anonymous letters (and I think there is) the child is at any rate safe, and to be found one way or another. Both agree in that.” This he said mainly to comfort his client, for in fact he had learned very little. His news from the City as to Mr. Seton’s early history had been but meagre. He was known as a successful speculator, and that was almost all. There was an indefinite notion that he had been married once before, but nothing more.

      All the next day Hewitt did nothing in the case. Another affair, a previous engagement, kept him hard at work in his office all day, and indeed had this not been the case he could have done little. His City inquiries were still in progress, and he awaited, moreover, a reply to the advertisement. But at about half-pest seven in the evening this telegram arrived—

      CHILD RETURNED. COME AT ONCE.—SETON.

      In five minutes Hewitt was making northwest in a hansom, and in half an hour he was ringing the bell at the Setons’ house. Within, Mrs. Seton was still semi-hysterical, clasping the child—an intelligent-looking little fellow—in her arms, and refusing to release her hold of him for a moment. Mr. Seton stood before the fire in the same room. He was a smart-looking, scrupulously dressed man of thirty-five or thereabouts, and he began explaining his telegram as soon as he had wished Hewitt good evening.

      “The child’s back,” he said, “and of course that’s the great thing. But I’m not satisfied, Mr. Hewitt. I want to know why it was taken away, and I want to punish somebody. It’s really very extraordinary. My poor wife has been driving about all day—she called on you, by the bye, but you were out,” (Hewitt credited this to Kerrett, who had been told he must not be disturbed) “and she has been all over the place uselessly, unable to rest, of course. Well, I have been at home since half-past four, and at about six I was smoking in the small morning-room—I often use it as a smoking-room—and looking out at the French window. I came away from there, and half an hour or more later, as it was getting dusk, I remembered I had left the French window open, and sent a servant to shut it. She went straight to the room, and there on the floor, where he was seen last, she found the child playing with his toys as though nothing had happened!”

      “And how was he dressed—as he is now?”

      “Yes, just as he was when we missed him.”

      Hewitt stepped up to the child as he sat on his mother’s lap, and rubbed his cheek, speaking pleasantly to him. The little fellow looked up and smiled, and Hewitt observed: “One thing is noticeable: this linen overall is almost clean. Little boys like this don’t keep one white overall clean for three days, do they? And see—those shoes—aren’t they new? Those he had were old, I think you said, and tan coloured.”

      The shoes now on the child’s feet were of white leather, with a noticeable sewn ornamentation in silk. His mother had not noticed them before, and as she looked he lifted his little foot higher and said. “Look, mummy, more new shoes!”

      “Ask him,” suggested Hewitt hurriedly, “who gave them to him.”

      His father asked him and the little fellow looked puzzled. After a pause he said “Mummy.”

      “No,” his mother answered, “I didn’t.”

      He thought a moment and then said, “No, no, not his mummy—course not.” And for some little while after that the only answer procurable from him was “Course not,” which seemed to be a favourite phrase of his.

      “Have you asked him where he has been?”

      “Yes,” his mother answered, “but he only says ‘Ta-ta.’”

      “Ask him again.”

      She did. This time, after a little reflection, he pointed his chubby arm toward the door and said. “Been dere.”

      “Who took you?” asked Mrs. Seton.

      Again Charley seemed puzzled. Then, looking doubtfully at his mother, he said “Mummy.”

      “No, not mummy,” she answered, and his reply was “Course not,” after which he attempted to climb on her shoulder.

      Then, at Hewitt’s suggestion, he was asked whom he went to see. This time the reply was prompt.

      “Poor daddy,” he said.

      “What, this daddy?”

      “No, not vis daddy—course not.” And that was all that could be got from him.

      “He will probably say things in the next day or two which may be useful,” Hewitt said, “if you listen pretty sharply. Now I should like to go to the small morning-room.”

      In time room in question the door was still open. Outside the moon had risen and made the evening almost as clear as day. Hewitt examined the steps and the path at their foot, but all was dry and hard and showed no footmark. Then, as his eye rested on the small gate, “See here,” he exclaimed suddenly; “somebody has been in, lifting the gate as I showed Mrs. Seton when I was last here. The gate has been replaced in a hurry and only the top hinge has dropped in its place; the bottom one is disjointed.” He lifted time gate once more and set it back. The ground just along its foot was softer than in the parts surrounding, and here Hewitt perceived the print of a heel. It was the heel-mark of a woman’s boot, small and sharp and of the usual curved D -shape. Nowhere else within or without was there the slightest mark. Hewitt went some distance either way in the outer lane, but without discovering anything more.

      “I think I will borrow those new shoes,” Hewitt said on his return. “I think I should be disposed to investigate further in any case, for my own satisfaction. The thing interests me. By the way, Mrs. Seton, tell me, would these shoes be more likely to have been bought at a regular shoemaker’s or at a baby-linen shop?”

      “Certainly, I should say at a baby-linen shop,” Mrs. Seton answered; “they are of excellent quality, and for babies’ shoes of this fancy description one would never go to an ordinary shoemaker’s.”

      “So much the better, because the baby-linen shops are fewer than the shoemakers’. I may take these, then? Perhaps before I go you had better make quite certain that there is nothing else not your own about the child.”

      There was nothing, and with the shoes in his pocket Hewitt regained his cab and travelled back to his office. The case, from its very bareness and simplicity, puzzled him. Why was the child taken? Plainly not to keep, for it had been returned almost as it went. Plainly also not for the sake of reward or blackmail, for here was the child safely back, before the anonymous blackmailer had had a chance of earning his money. More, the advertised reward had not been claimed. Also it could not be a matter of malice or revenge, for the child was quite unharmed, and indeed seems to have been quite happy. No conceivable family complication previous to the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Seton could induce anybody to take away and return the child, which was undoubtedly Mrs. Seton’s. Then who could be the “poor daddy” and “mummy”—not “vis daddy” and not “vis mummy “—that the child had been with. The Setons knew nothing of them. It was difficult to see what it could all mean.

      Arrived at his office Hewitt took a map, and, setting the leg of a pair of compasses on the site of the Setons’ house, described a circle, including in its radius all Willesden and Hampstead. Then, with the Suburban Directory to help him, he began searching out and noting all the baby-linen shops in the area. After all, there were not many—about a dozen. This done, Hewitt went home.

      In the morning he began his hunt. His design was to call at each of the shops until he laid found in which a pair of shoes of that particular pattern had been sold on the day of little