"You must not speak or call, or make the slightest sound," she whispered tensely. "If you do, I'll kill you. Do you understand?"
Hatch confessed by a nod that he understood. He also imagined that he understood this sudden change in guard, and the warning. It was because some one was about to enter or had entered the house. His conjecture was partially confirmed instantly by a distant rapping on a door.
"Not a sound, now!" whispered the woman.
From somewhere below he heard the sound of steps as one of the servants answered the knock. After a short wait he heard two voices mumbling. Suddenly one was raised clearly.
"Why, Worcester can't be that far," it protested irritably.
Hatch knew. It was The Thinking Machine. The woman noted a change in his manner and drew back the hammer of the revolver. The reporter saw the idea. He didn't dare call. That would be suicide. Perhaps he could attract attention, though; drop a key, for instance. The sound might reach The Thinking Machine and be interpreted aright. One hand was in a pocket, and slowly he was drawing out a key. He would risk it. Maybe--
Then came a new sound. It was the patter of small feet. The guarded door was pushed open and a tousle-headed child, a boy, ran in.
"Mama, mama!" he called loudly. He ran to the woman and clutched at her skirts.
"Oh, my baby! what have you done?" she asked piteously. "We are lost, lost!"
"Me 'faid," the child went on.
With the door-his avenue of possible escape-open, Hatch did not drop the key. Instead, he gazed at the woman, then down at the child. From below he again heard The Thinking Machine.
"How far is the car track, then?"
The servant answered something. There was a sound of steps, and the front door closed. Hatch knew that The Thinking Machine had come and gone; yet he was strangely calm about it, quite himself, despite the fact that a nervous finger still lay on the trigger of the pistol.
From his refuge behind his mother's skirts the boy peered around at Hatch shyly. The reporter gazed, gazed, all eyes, and then was convinced. The boy was Walter Francis, the kidnapped boy whose pictures were being published in every newspaper of a dozen cities. Here was a story-the story-the superlative story.
"Mrs. Francis, if you wouldn't mind letting down that hammer--" he suggested modestly. "I assure you I contemplate no harm, and you-you are very nervous."
"You know me, then?" she asked.
"Only because the child there, Walter, called you mama."
Mrs. Francis lowered the revolver hammer so recklessly that Hatch involuntarily dodged. And then came a scene, a scene with tears in it, and all those things which stir men, even reporters. Finally the woman dropped the revolver on the floor and swept the boy up in her arms with a gesture of infinite tenderness. He cuddled there, content. At that moment Hatch could have walked out the door, but instead he sat down. He was just beginning to get interested.
"They sha'n't take you!" sobbed the mother.
"There is no immediate danger," the reporter assured her. "The man who came here for that purpose has gone. Meanwhile, if you will tell me the facts, perhaps-perhaps I may be able to be of some assistance."
Mrs. Francis looked at him, startled. "Help me?"
"If you will explain, perhaps I can do something," said Hatch again.
Somewhere back in a remote recess of his brain he was remembering. And as it became clearer he was surprised that he had not remembered sooner. It was a story of marital infelicity, and its principals were Stanley Francis and his wife-this bewilderingly pretty young woman before him. It had been only eight or nine months back.
Technically she had deserted Stanley Francis. There had been some violent scene and she left their home and little son. Soon afterward she went to Europe. It had been rumored that divorce proceedings would follow, or at least a legal separation, but nothing had ever come of the rumors. All this Mrs. Francis told to Hatch in little incoherent bursts, punctuated with sobs and tears.
"He struck me, he struck me!" she declared with a flush of anger and shame, "and I went then on impulse. I was desperate. Later, even before I went to Europe, I knew the legal status of the affair; but the thought of my boy lingered, and I resolved to come back and get him-abduct him, if necessary. I did that, and I will keep him if I have to kill the one who opposes me."
Hatch saw the mother instinct here, that tigerish ferocity of love which stops at nothing.
"I conceived the plan of demanding fifty thousand dollars of my husband under threat of abduction," Mrs. Francis went on. "My purpose was to make it appear that the plot was that of professional-what would you call it?-kidnappers. But I did not send the letter demanding this until I had perfected all my plans and knew I could get the boy. I wanted my husband to think it was the work of others, at least until we were safe in Europe, because even then I imagined there would be a long legal fight.
"After I stole the boy and he recognized me, I wanted him as my own, absolutely safe from legal action by his father. Then I wrote to Mr. Francis, telling him I had Walter, and asking that in pity to me he legally give me the boy by a document of some sort. In that letter I told how he might signify his willingness to do this; but of course I would not give my address. I placed a string, the one you saw, in that tree after having tied two knots in it. It was a silly, romantic means of communication he and I used years ago in my girlhood when we both lived near here. If he agreed that I should have the child, he was to come or send some one last night and unties one of the two knots."
Then, to Hatch, the intricacies passed away. He understood clearly. Instead of going to the police with the second letter from his wife, Francis had gone to The Thinking Machine. The Thinking Machine sent the reporter to untie the knot, which was an answer of "Yes" to Mrs. Francis's request for the child. Then she would have written giving her address, and there would have been a clue to the child's whereabouts. It was all perfectly clear now.
"Did you specifically mention a string in your letter?" he asked.
"No. I merely stated that I would expect his answer in that place, and would leave something there by which he could signify 'Yes' or 'No,' as he did years ago. The string was one of the odd little ideas of my girlhood. Two knots meant 'No'; one knot meant 'Yes'; and if the string was found by anyone else it meant nothing."
This, then, was why The Thinking Machine did not tell him at first that he would find a string and instruct him to untie one of the knots in it. The scientist had seen that it might have been one of the other tokens of the old romantic days.
"When I met you there," Mrs. Francis resumed. "I believed you were an imposter-I don't know why, I just believed it-yet your answers were in a way correct. For fear you were not what you seemed-that you were a detective-I brought you here to keep you until I got the child's release. You know the rest."
The reporter picked up the revolver and whirled it in his fingers. The action, apparently, did not disturb Mrs. Francis.
"Why did you remain here so long after you got the child?" asked Hatch.
"I believed it was safer than in a city," she answered frankly. "The steamer on which I planned to sail for Europe with my boy leaves to-morrow. I had intended going to New York to-night to catch it; but now--"
The reporter glanced down at the child. He had fallen asleep in his mother's arms. His tiny hand clung to her. The picture was a pretty one. Hatch made up his mind.
"Well, you'd better pack up," he said. "I'll go with you to New York and do all I can."
It was on the New York-bound train several hours later that Hatch turned to Mrs. Francis with an odd smile.
"Why didn't you load that revolver?" he asked.
"Because I was horribly afraid some one would get hurt with it," she replied laughingly.
She was gay with that gentle happiness of possession which blesses woman for the agonies of motherhood, and glanced from time to time at the berth across the aisle where her baby was asleep. Looking upon it all, Hatch was content. He didn't know his exact position in law; but that didn't matter, after all.
Hutchinson Hatch's exclusive story of the escape to Europe of Mrs. Francis and her boy was remarkably complete; but all the facts were not in it. It was a week or so later that he detailed them to The Thinking Machine.
"I knew it," said the scientist at the end. "Francis came to me, and I interested myself in the case, practically knowing every fact from his statement. When you heard me speak in the house where you were a prisoner I was there merely to convince myself that the mother did have the baby. I heard it call her and went away satisfied. I knew you were there, too, because you had failed to 'phone me the second time as I expected, and I knew intuitively what you would do when you got the real facts about Mrs. Francis and her baby. I went away so that the field might be clear for you to act. Francis himself is a detestable puppy. I told him so."
And that was all that was ever said about it.
PROBLEM OF THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER.
With coffee cup daintily poised in one hand, Mrs. Lingard van Safford lifted wistful, bewitching eyes towards her husband, who sat across the breakfast table partially immersed in the morning papers.
"Are you going out this morning?" she inquired.
Mr. van Safford grunted inarticulately.