by David Marcum
“Do you know who the lady was?”
“Her name was Mrs. Clark. She left her name and address at the police station, and of course I wrote to thank her. But there was some mistake in taking it down, I suppose, for the letter was returned marked ‘not known.’ ”
“Then you never saw this lady yourself?”
“No.”
“I think I will make a note of the exact description of the child, and then visit the police station to which this lady took him six weeks ago. Fair, curly hair, I think, and blue eyes? Age two years and three months; walks and runs well, and speaks fairly plainly. Dress?”
“Pale blue llama frock with lace, white under-linen, linen overall, pale blue silk socks and tan shoes. Everything good as new except the shoes, which were badly worn at the backs, through a habit he has of kicking back and downward with his heels when sitting. They were rather old shoes, and only used indoors.”
“If I remember aright nothing was said of those shoes in the printed bill?”
“Was that so? No, I believe not. I have been so worried.”
“Yes, Mrs. Seton, of course. It is most creditable in you to have kept up so well while I have been making my inquiries. Go now and take a good rest while I do what is possible. By the way, where was Mr. Seton yesterday morning when you missed the boy?”
“In the City. He has some important business in hand just now.”
“And today?”
“He has gone to the City again. Of course he is sadly worried; but he saw that everything possible was done, and, his business was very important.”
“Just so. Mr. Seton was not married before, I presume - if I may?”
“No, certainly not; why do you ask?”
“I beg your pardon, but I have a habit of asking almost every question I can think of; I can’t know too much of a case, you know, and most unlikely pieces of information sometimes turn out useful. Thank you for your patience; I will try another plan now.”
Mrs. Seton had kept up remarkably well during Holmes’s examination, but she was plainly by no means a strong woman, and her maid came again to her assistance as Holmes left. Holmes himself made for the police station. Few inspectors indeed of the Metropolitan Police force did not know Holmes by sight, and the one here in charge knew him well. He remembered very well the occasion, six weeks or so before, when Mrs. Clark brought Mrs. Seton’s child to the station. He was on duty himself at the time, and he turned up the book containing an entry on the subject. From this it appeared that the lady gave the address No. 89, Sedgby Road, Belsize Park.
“I suppose you didn’t happen to know the lady,” Holmes asked, “by sight or otherwise?”
“No, I didn’t, and I’m not sure I could swear to her again,” the inspector answered. “She wore a heavy veil, and I didn’t see much of her face. One rum thing I noticed, though: she seemed rather taken with the baby, and as she stooped down to kiss him before she went away I could see an old scar on her throat. It was just the sort of scar I’ve seen on a man that’s had his throat cut and got over it. She wore a high collar to hide it, but stooping shifted the collar, and so I saw it.”
“Did she seem an educated woman?”
“Oh, yes; perfect lady; spoke very nice. I told her a baby had been inquired after by Mrs. Seton, and from the description I’d no doubt this was the one. And so it was.”
“At what time was this?”
“7.10 p.m., exactly. Here it is, all entered property.”
“Now as to Sedgby Road, Belsize Park. Do you happen to know it?”
“Oh, yes, very well. Very quiet, respectable road indeed. I only know it through walking through.”
“I see a suburban directory on the shelf behind you. Do you mind pulling it down? Thanks. Let us find Sedgby Road. Here it is. See, there is no No. 89; the highest number is 67.”
“No more there is,” the inspector answered, running his finger down the column; “and there’s no Clark in the road, that’s more. False address, that’s plain. And so they’ve lost him again, have they? We had notice yesterday, of course, and I’ve just got some bills. This last seems a queer sort of affair, don’t it? Child sitting inside the house disappeared like a ghost, and all the doors and windows fastened inside.”
Holmes agreed that the affair had very uncommon features, and presently left the station and sought a cab. All the way back to his rooms he considered the matter deeply. As a matter of fact he was at a loss. Certain evidence he had seen in the house, but it went a very little way, and beyond that there was merely no clue whatever. There were features of the child’s first estrayal also that attracted him, though it might very easily be the case that nothing connected the two events. There was an unknown woman - apparently a lady - who had once had her throat cut, bringing the child back after several hours, and giving a false name and address, for since the address was false, the same was probably the case with the name. Why was this? This time the child was still absent, and nothing whatever was there to suggest in what direction he might be followed, neither was there anything to indicate why he should be detained anywhere, if detained he was. Holmes determined, while awaiting any result that the bills might bring, to cause certain inquiries to be made into the antecedents of the Setons. Moreover, other work was waiting, and the Seton business must be put aside for a few hours at least.
Holmes sat late in his rooms that evening, and at about nine o’clock Mrs. Seton returned. The poor woman seemed on the verge of serious illness. She had received two anonymous letters, which she brought with her, and with scarcely a word placed before Holmes’s eyes. The first he opened and read as follows:
The writer observes that you are offering a reward for the recovery of your child. There is no necessity for this; Charley is quite safe, happy, and in good hands. Pray do not instruct detectives or take any such steps just yet. The child is well and shall be returned to you. This I swear solemnly. His errand is one of mercy; pray have patience.
Holmes turned the letter and envelope in his hand. “Good paper, of the same sort as the envelope,” he remarked, “but only a half sheet, freshly torn off, probably because the other side bore an address heading; therefore most likely from a respectable sort of house. The writing is a woman’s, and good, though the writer was agitated when she did it. Posted this afternoon, at Willesden.”
“You see,” Mrs. Seton said anxiously, “she knows his name. She calls him ‘Charley.’ ”
“Yes, “Holmes answered; “there may be something in that, or there may not. The name Charles Seton is on the bills, isn’t it? And they have been visible publicly all day today. So that the name may be more easily explained than some other parts of the letter. For instance, the writer says that the child’s ‘errand’ is one of mercy. The little fellow may be very intelligent - no doubt is - but children of two years old as a rule do not practice errands of mercy - nor indeed errands of any sort. Can you think of anything whatever, Mrs. Seton, in connection with your family history, or indeed anything else, that may throw light on that phrase?”
He looked keenly at her as he asked, but her expression was one of blank doubt merely, as she shook her head slowly and answered in the negative. Holmes turned to the other letter and read this:
MADAM,
If you want your child you had better make an arrangement with me. You fancy he has strayed, but as a matter of fact he has been stolen, and you little know by whom. You will never get him back except through me, you may rest assured of that. Are you prepared to pay me one hundred pounds (£100) if I hand him to you, and no questions asked? Your present reward, £20, is paltry; and you may finally bid good-bye to your child if you will not accept my terms. If you do, say as much in an advertisement to the Standard, addressed to
VERITAS
“A man’s handwriting,” Holmes commented; “fairly well formed, but shaky. The wri
ter is not in first-rate health - each line totters away in a downward slope at the end. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear that the gentleman drank. Postmark, Hampstead; posted this afternoon also. But the striking thing is the paper and envelope. They are each of exactly the same kind and size as those of the other letter. The paper also is a half sheet, and torn off on the same side as the other; confirmation of my suspicion that the object is to get rid of the printed address. I shall be surprised if both these were not written in the same house. That looks like a traitor in the enemy’s camp; the question is, which is the traitor?” Holmes regarded the letters intently for a few seconds and then proceeded. “Plainly,” he said, “if these letters are written by people who know anything about the matter, one writer is lying. The woman promises that the child shall be returned without reward or search, and talks generally as if the taking away of the child, or the estrayal, or whatever it was, were a very virtuous sort of proceeding. The man says plainly that the child has been stolen, with no attempt to gloss the matter, and asserts that nothing will get the child back but heavy blackmail - a very different story. On the other hand, can there be any concerted design in these two letters? Arc they intended, each from its own side, to play up to a certain result?” Holmes paused and thought. Then he asked suddenly: “Do you recognize anything familiar either in the handwriting or the stationery of these letters?”
“No, nothing.”
“Very well,” Holmes said, “we will come to closer quarters with the blackmailer, I think. You needn’t commit yourself to paying anything, of course.”
“But, Mr. Holmes, I will gladly pay or do anything. The hundred pounds is nothing. I will pay it gladly if I can only get my child.”
“Well, well, we shall see. The man may not be able to do what he offers, after all, but that we will test. It is too late now for an advertisement in tomorrow morning’s Standard, but there is the Evening Standard - he may even mean that - and the next morning’s. I will have an advertisement inserted in both, inviting this man to make an appointment, and prove the genuineness 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 meager. 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 Holmes did nothing in the case. Another affair, a previous engagement, kept him hard at work in his rooms 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-past seven in the evening this telegram arrived - Child returned. Come at once. - Seton.
In five minutes Holmes was making north-west 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-live or thereabouts, and he began explaining his telegram as soon as he had wished Holmes good-evening.
“The child’s back,” he said, “and of course that’s the great thing. But I’m not satisfied, Mr. Holmes. 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.” (Holmes credited this to his landlady, 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.”
Holmes 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 Holmes 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-colored.”
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 Holmes 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 vis mummy - course not.” And for some little while after that the only answer procurable from him was, “Course not,” which seemed to be a favorite 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 Holmes’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,” Holmes said, “if you listen pretty sharply. Now I should like to go to the small morning-room.”
In the room in question the door was still open. Outside the moon had risen and made the evening almost as clear as day. Holmes 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 the gate once more and set it back. The ground just along its foot was softer than in the parts surrounding, and here Holmes 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. Holmes went some distance either way in the outer lane, but without discovering anything more.
“I think I will borrow those new shoes,” Holmes 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 about the child which is not your own.” There was nothing, and with the shoes in his pocket Holmes regained his cab and traveled back to his rooms. 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 seemed 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 rooms, Holmes 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, Holmes stopped for the day.
In the morning he began his hunt. His design was to call at each of the shops until he had found in which a pair of shoes of that particular pattern had been sold on the day of little Charley Seton’s disappearance. The first two shops he tried did not keep shoes of the pattern, and had never had them, and the young ladies behind the counter seemed vastly amused at Holmes’s inquiries. Nothing perturbed, he tried the next shop on his list, in the Hampstead district. There they kept such shoes as a rule, but were “out of them at present.” Holmes immediately sent his card to the proprietress, requesting a few minutes’ interview.
