"You may be sure that I shall not rest until I find him, Mr. Pettigrew,"

Hilda said. "I shall devote my life to it. I love the child dearly; but even were he a perfect stranger to me I would do everything in my power, if only to prevent this man from obtaining the proceeds of his villainy."

Mr. Farmer again interposed.

"My dear Miss Covington," he said, "you really must not speak like this.

Of course, with us it is perfectly safe. I admit that you have good reason for your indignation, but you must really moderate your expressions, which might cause infinite mischief were you to use them before other people. In the eye of the law a man is innocent until he is proved guilty, and we have not a shadow of proof that this man has anything to do with the child's abduction. Moreover, it might do harm in other ways. To begin with, it might render the discovery of the child more difficult; for if his abductors were aware or even suspected that you were searching in all directions for him, they would take all the greater pains to conceal his hiding-place."

"I will be careful, Mr. Farmer, but I shall proceed to have a search made at every workhouse and night refuge and place of that sort in London, and within twenty miles round, and issue more placards of your offer of a reward of five hundred pounds for information. There is no harm in that."

"Certainly not. Those are the measures that one would naturally take in any case. Indeed, I should already have pushed my inquiries in that direction, but I have hitherto felt sure that had he been merely taken for his clothes, the police would have traced him before now; but as they have not been able to do so, that it was a case of blackmail, and that we should hear very shortly from the people that had stolen him. I sincerely trust that this may the case, and that it will turn out that this man Simcoe has nothing whatever to do with it. I will come down and let you know what steps we are taking from time to time, and learn the directions in which you are pushing your inquiries."

Neither Miss Purcell nor Netta had spoken from the time they had entered the room, but as soon as they took their places in the carriage waiting for them, they burst out.

"What an extraordinary thing, Hilda! And yet," Miss Purcell added, "the search for Walter may do good in one way; it will prevent you from turning your thoughts constantly to the past and to the loss that you have suffered."

"If it had not been for Walter being missing, aunt, I should have thought nothing of uncle's appointing Mr. Simcoe as heir to his property if anything should happen to him. This man had obtained an extraordinary influence over him, and there can be no doubt from uncle's statement to me that he owed his life solely to him, and that Simcoe indeed was seriously injured in saving him. He knew that I had no occasion for the money, and have already more than is good for a girl to have at her absolute disposal; therefore I am in no way surprised that he should have left him his estate in the event of Walter's death. All that is quite right, and I have nothing to say against it, except that I have always disliked the man. It is only the extraordinary disappearance of Walter, just at this moment, that seems to me to render it certain that Simcoe is at the bottom of it. No one else could have had any motive for stealing Walter, more than any other rich man's child. His interest in his disappearance is immense. I have no doubt uncle had told him what he had done, and the man must have seen that his chance of getting the estate was very small unless the child could be put out of the way."

"You don't think," Netta began, "that any harm can have happened to him?"

"No, I don't think that. Whether this man would have shrunk from it if there were no other way, I need not ask myself; but there could have been no occasion for it. Walter is so young that he will very soon forget the past; he might be handed over to a gypsy and grow up a little vagrant, and as there is no mark on him by which he might be identified, he would be lost to us forever. You see the man can afford to wait. He has doubtless means of his own--how large I do not know, but I have heard my uncle say that he had handsome chambers, and certainly he lived in good style. Now he will have this legacy of ten thousand pounds, and if the court keeps him waiting ten or fifteen years before p.r.o.nouncing Walter dead, he can afford to wait. Anyhow, I shall have plenty of time in which to act, and it will require a lot of thinking over before I decide what I had best do."

She lost no time, however, in beginning to work. Posters offering the reward of five hundred pounds for information of the missing boy were at once issued, and stuck up not only in London, but in every town and village within thirty miles. Then she obtained from Mr. Pettigrew the name of a firm of trustworthy private detectives and set them to make inquiries, in the first place at all the inst.i.tutions where a lost child would be likely to be taken if found, or where it might have been left by a tramp. Two days after the reading of the will she received the following letter from John Simcoe:

"DEAR MISS COVINGTON: I have learned from Messrs. Farmer & Pettigrew the liberal and I may say extraordinary generosity shown towards myself by the late General Mathieson, whose loss I most deeply deplore. My feelings of grat.i.tude are at the present moment overwhelmed by the very painful position in which I find myself. I had, of course, heard, upon calling at your door to make inquiries, that little Walter was missing, and was deeply grieved at the news, though not at the time dreaming that it could affect me personally.

Now, however, the circ.u.mstances of the case are completely changed, for, by the provisions of the will, I should benefit pecuniarily by the poor child's death. I will not for a moment permit myself to believe that he is not alive and well, and do not doubt that you will speedily recover him; but, until this occurs, I feel that some sort of suspicion must attach to me, who am the only person having an interest in his disappearance. The thought that this may be so is distressing to me in the extreme. Since I heard of his disappearance I have spent the greater part of my time in traversing the slums of London in hopes of lighting upon him. I shall now undertake wider researches, and shall to-day insert advertis.e.m.e.nts in all the daily papers, offering one thousand pounds for his recovery. I feel sure that you at least will not for a moment entertain unjust suspicions concerning me, but those who do not know me well may do so, and although at present none of the facts have been made public, I feel as if I were already under a cloud, and that men in the club look askance at me, and unless the child is found my position will speedily become intolerable. My only support in this trial is my consciousness of innocence. You will excuse me for intruding upon your sorrow at the present moment, but I felt compelled to write as I have done, and to a.s.sure you that I will use every effort in my power to discover the child, not only for his own sake and yours, but because I feel that until he is discovered I must continue to rest under the terrible, if unspoken, suspicion of being concerned in his disappearance.

"Believe me, yours very truly, "JOHN SIMCOE."

CHAPTER XII.

DR. LEEDS SPEAKS.

After reading John Simcoe's letter, Hilda threw it down with an exclamation of contempt.

"Read it!" she said to Netta, who was alone with her.

"The letter is good enough as it stands," Netta remarked, as she finished it.

"Good enough, if coming from anyone else," Hilda said scornfully, "perhaps better than most men would write, but I think that a rogue can generally express himself better than an honest man."

"Now you are getting cynical--a new and unpleasant phase in your character, Hilda. I have heard you say that you do not like this man, but you have never given me any particular reason for it, beyond, in one of your letters, saying that it was an instinct. Now do try to give me a more palpable reason than that. At present it seems to be only a case of Dr. Fell. You don't like him because you don't."

"I don't like him because from the first I distrusted him. Personally, I had no reason to complain; on the contrary, he has been extremely civil, and indeed willing to put himself out in any way to do me small services. Then, as I told you, Walter disliked him, too, although he was always bringing chocolates and toys for him; so that the child's dislike must have been also a sort of instinct. He felt, as I did, that the man was not true and honest. He always gave me the impression of acting a part, and I have never been able to understand how a man of his cla.s.s could have performed so n.o.ble and heroic an act as rushing in almost unarmed to save another, who was almost a stranger to him, from the grip of a tiger. So absolutely did I feel this that I have at times even doubted whether he could be the John Simcoe who had performed this gallant action."

"My dear Hilda, you are getting fanciful! Do you think that your uncle was likely to be deceived in such a matter, and that he would not have a vivid remembrance of his preserver, even after twenty years?"

"That depends on how much he saw of him. My uncle told me that Mr.

Simcoe brought some good introductions from a friend of his at Calcutta who came out in the same ship with him. No doubt he dined at my uncle's two or three times--he may even have stayed a few days in the house--possibly more; but as commanding the district my uncle must have been fully occupied during the day, and can have seen little of him until, I suppose, a week or so after his arrival, when he invited him to join in the hunt for a tiger. Although much hurt on that occasion, Simcoe was much less injured than my uncle, who lay between life and death for some time, and Simcoe had left before he was well enough to see him. If he had dined with my uncle a few times after this affair, undoubtedly his features would have been so impressed on him that he would have recognized him, even after twenty years; but, as it was, he could have no particular interest in this gentleman, and can have entertained but a hazy recollection of his features. In fact, the General did not recognize him when he first called upon him, until he had related certain details of the affair. It had always been a sore point with my uncle that he had never had an opportunity of thanking his preserver, who had, as he believed, lost his life at sea before he himself was off his sick bed, and when he heard the man's story he was naturally anxious to welcome him with open arms, and to do all in his power for him. I admit that this man must either have been in Benares then, or shortly afterwards, for he remembered various officers who were there and little incidents of cantonment life that could, one would think, be only known to one who had been there at the time."

"But you say he was only there a week, Hilda?"

"Only a week before this tiger business; but it was a month before he was able to travel. No doubt all the officers there would make a good deal of a man who had performed such a deed, and would go and sit with him and chat to while away the hours; so that he would, in that time, pick up a great deal of the gossip of the station."

"Well, then, what is your theory, Hilda? The real man, as you say, no doubt made a great many acquaintances there; this man seems to have been behind the scenes also."

"He unquestionably knew many of the officers, for uncle told me that he recognized several men who had been out there when he met them at the club, and went up and addressed them by name."

"Did they know him also?"

"No; at first none of them had any idea who he was. But that is not surprising, for they had seen him princ.i.p.ally when he was greatly pulled down; and believing him to be drowned, it would have been strange indeed if they had recalled his face until he had mentioned who he was."

"Well, it seems to me that you are arguing against yourself, Hilda.

Everything you say points to the fact that this man is the John Simcoe he claims to be. If he is not Simcoe, who can he be?"

"Ah! There you ask a question that I cannot answer."

"In fact, Hilda, you have nothing beyond the fact that you do not like the man, and believe that he is not the sort of man to perform an heroic and self-sacrificing action, on behalf of this curious theory of yours."

"That is all at present, but I mean to set myself to work to find out more about him. If I can find out that this man is an impostor we shall recover Walter; if not, I doubt whether we shall ever hear of him again."

Netta lifted her eyebrows.

"Well, at any rate, you have plenty of time before you, Hilda."

The next morning Dr. Leeds, who had not called for the last three or four days, came in to say that he was arranging a partnership with a doctor of considerable eminence, but who was beginning to find the pressure of work too much for him, and wanted the aid of a younger and more active man.

"It is a chance in a thousand," he said. "I owe it largely to the kind manner in which both Sir Henry Havercourt and Dr. Pearson spoke to him as to my ability. You will excuse me," he went on, after Hilda had warmly congratulated him, "for talking of myself before I have asked any questions, but I know that, had you obtained any news of Walter, you would have let me know at once."

"Certainly I should; but I have some news, and really important news, to give you." And she related the production of the new will and gave him the details of its provisions.

He looked very serious.

"It is certainly an ugly outlook," he said. "I have never seen this Simcoe, but I know from the tone in which you have spoken of him, at least two or three times, that he is by no means a favorite of yours.

Can you tell me anything about him?"

"Not beyond the fact that he saved the General's life from a tiger a great many years ago. Shortly after that he was supposed to be lost at sea. Certainly the vessel in which he sailed went down in a hurricane with, as was reported, all hands. He says that he was picked up clinging to a spar. Of his life for the twenty years following he has never given a very connected account, at least as far as I know; but some of the stories that I have heard him tell show that he led a very wild sort of life. Sometimes he was working in a small trader among the islands of the Pacific, and I believe he had a share in some of these enterprises.

Then he claims to have been in the service of a native prince somewhere up beyond Burmah, and according to his account took quite an active part in many sanguinary wars and adventures of all sorts."

The doctor's face grew more and more serious as she proceeded.

"Do I gather, Miss Covington, that you do not believe that this man is what he claims to be?"

"Frankly that is my opinion, doctor. I own that I have no ground whatever for my disbelief, except that I have naturally studied the man closely. I have watched his lips as he spoke. When he has been talking about these adventures with savages he spoke without effort, and I have no doubt whatever that he did take part in such adventures; but when he was speaking of India, and especially when at some of the bachelor dinners uncle gave there were officers who had known him out there, it was clear to me that he did not speak with the same freedom. He weighed his words, as if afraid of making a mistake. I believe that the man was playing a part. His tone was genial and sometimes a little boisterous, as it might well be on the part of a man who had been years away from civilization; but I always thought from his manner that all this was false. I am convinced that he is a double-faced man. When he spoke I observed that he watched in a furtive sort of way the person to whom he was speaking, to see the effect of his words; but, above all, I formed my opinion upon the fact that I am absolutely convinced that this man could never have performed the splendid action of facing a wounded tiger unarmed for the sake of one who was, in fact, but a casual acquaintance."

"You will excuse me if I make no comment on what you have told me, Miss Covington. It is a matter far too serious for any man to form a hasty opinion upon. I myself have never seen this man, but I am content to take your estimate of his character. One trained, as you were for years, in the habit of closely watching faces cannot but be a far better judge of character than those who have not had such training. I will take two or three days to think the matter over; and now will you tell me what steps you are taking at present to discover Walter?"