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 the 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 about the child which is not your own.” 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 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.