“Hylda was dumb; spoke only with her eyes, which dwelt upon Laura with reproach.
“ ‘There, now I have wounded you,’ said Laura ruefully, darting suddenly anew to her, ‘because I am an ungenerous mean beast who kicks when one is down... He forgot to mention it to you, that’s all. You are so sensitive, so finely strung, and to bruise you is like trampling brutally upon a lute that breathes music to every breeze... But, dear, it is so: he was to be paid on his birthdays, it was papa’s whim. When is his birthday?’
“ ‘I — don’t happen to know,’ said Hylda in a maze; ‘it must have been two days before the wedding day, since he said he was going to draw the legacy on that day.’
“ ‘No, it wasn’t, then,’ said Laura decisively: ‘for the wedding day was in November, but it was not in November that he rescued Papa in the car: and that day was his birthday. It was, if I remember right, an evening in March.’
“ ‘He said that that night was his birthday?’
“ ‘Aye — told papa.’
“ ‘Then, that was why he brought me that specially large bouquet that Wednesday night. But why, why was he in black?’ Hylda wondered.
“Laura, whirling a gold breloque about her forefinger, murmured, ‘It is curious that he never told you, or that you never asked him, as to his birthday!’
“Hylda said, ‘I have always had an instinct of anything which Aubrey did not wish to discuss, so never asked him that — not directly, that is; twice indirectly I have: but he never mentioned it.’
“But now, before she could say more, a footman, looking in, announced Detective-Sergeant Barker.
“ ‘Don’t go,’ Laura said to Hylda, ‘Barker and I are pals — he says the Force missed something when I was born a woman.’
“Barker came in — a man who, though his grade in the police was not high, would have received a telegram addressed to ‘Barker, London’ — or to ‘Rob Roy,’ his name among the cracksmen, others of the ‘gentry’ naming him ‘Old Moore.’ Tallish, forty, agile, he had an agreeable smile beneath his mustache, and a wary gaze out of the tail of his eye. His teeth seemed excellent, but three in front were false, to replace the three knocked forty degrees inward by the maulers of ‘Fred the Freak,’ and that cheek-scar was from a stab by a Greek in a Soho club-raid. Since he had had occasion, some months before, to warn Laura with regard to her father’s intimacy with the notorious Salvadora Rosa, or La Rosa, he had seen her several times in respect to various phases of the same matter; and she, fascinated by the extraordinary existence which this man lived, had sat chin on fist to hearken to histories of his hundred and one disguises as cab-driver, or street-artist, or weak-minded curate, of the clicking of the ‘snips’ on the wrists of the Dresden bank-robbers, the Frameley forgers, famous ‘receivers,’ crib-crackers, of kind deeds done among those beasts of society, and tiger-struggles on the stairs of benighted lairs. In he now came, bowing, hat in hand, and Laura in her frank way gave him her hand, saw him seated, saying:
“ ‘You already know Miss Hood of the vanished bridegroom, Sergeant Barker?’
“ ‘I have that honor,’ says Barker.
“ ‘We were just talking,’ Laura remarked, hand on hip, with her saucy air, her dark hair parted at the side — ‘this lady derides the idea that you heard anyone in Mr. Aubrey Smith’s flat that day when, as you affirm, you heard the child in it.’
“ ‘A lady is invariably right,’ the detective admitted.
“ ‘What did you hear the child say, if one may ask?’ Hylda demanded, paying no attention to his politeness.
“ ‘Surely you may ask, Miss Hood. There was little to be heard, you understand, with a thick door between, but I distinctly heard a child utter the words: “Now that I am seven years of age.” As to that, I give you my word.’
“ ‘How miraculous this thing!’ Hylda murmured. ‘There was no one in the flat!’
“ ‘Mr. Aubrey Smith told you that, did he?’ Barker asked.
“ ‘He told me of the incident, and did not tell me that there was anyone.’
“ ‘Negative evidence,’ Barker laughed. ‘To me, now, he admitted that there was someone in the flat, implying that it was a lady; but then I heard the child, and knew who it was.’
“ ‘Lady,’ Hylda breathed.
“ ‘You see now, Hylda’ — from Laura: ‘a detective, like a lady, is invariably right, except when a detective and a lady differ, and then both are sure to be wrong.’
“ ‘Did he — actually say that there was a lady?’ Hylda asked.
“ ‘No,’ said the detective, ‘but he looked, or tried to look, shy when we came to the locked door—’
“ ‘Locked door?’ Hylda’s eyes dropped.
“ ‘Ah, the incident of the locked door was never told you, I see,’ said Barker; ‘but it is well, Miss Hood, for us all to know what’s what. I was allowed to look all through the flat, you see; but when it came to that locked room — ah, that was another affair; and it was “there’s someone in there” in a whisper, with shy looks.’
“Laura, standing against a cabinet with her arms spread out like one crucified, and her head thrown back, looked down upon Hylda, contemplating her suffering; while Hylda, now quite gaunt, looked at the carpet.
“ ‘Never mind, dear,’ said Laura; ‘there’s some explanation.’
“Suddenly Hylda flushed, and looking up with a smile, her eyes bravely met Laura’s, as she said: ‘I know that, Miss O’Donague’; then, turning to Barker, she asked: ‘And you seriously believe, Sergeant Barker, that it was the lost child from Clanning that Mr. Smith had in that locked room?’
“ ‘I believe that it was, Miss Hood, and I know that it was a child.’
“ ‘Then, what do you say has become of this child?’
“ ‘Ah, there now you ask one of the most difficult questions of all in this extraordinary matter,’ said Barker. ‘The house, of course, was closely watched from that moment, and he never brought out the child — that we know; nor is the child now in the building: vanished is the word — unless the child whom I heard in his flat is the same child whom he shot; but, then, the shot child is foreign... By the way, that’s one of the questions I have to ask you now, Miss O’Donague: you know little Ada Price, and you have seen the wounded child in hospitaclass="underline" do you not see a likeness between the two?’
“ ‘It did not strike me,’ Laura replied.
“ ‘Kindly look at little Ada’s photo,’ said Barker, producing it, and Laura, looking at it, now said: ‘Yes, I do rather see it now: only the wounded child is much more beautiful.’
“ ‘Still, you notice that they are alike... And now, Miss O’Donague, I must next say to you what will be greatly against the grain.’
“ ‘Oh?’ said Laura. ‘My grain or yours?’
“ ‘Both our grains.’
“ ‘Ah, they both run the same way. But I am dying to hear—’
“ ‘Well, the Home Office has issued an order for the exhumation of your father’s body.’
“Laura stood pale, then darting three steps at him with a face of wrath, ‘You wouldn’t dare!’ she breathed.
“ ‘Now, do not take it to heart,’ Detective-Sergeant Barker said gently. ‘If it could be avoided, it wouldn’t be done. But in the circumstances—’
“ ‘What circumstances, pray, Sergeant?’
“ ‘Why, I have heard you hint yourself that he was poisoned!’
“ ‘I was not in the least serious,’ Laura answered: ‘a natural death! So why is this outrage perpetrated?’