"I knew that there was wealth and power behind the mystery. There was a profitable scandal in the background. Unknown to Mrs. Cable, I began investigations of my own. She had made little or no effort to discover the parents of the child. She could have had no purpose in doing so, I'll admit.... [Here he gave in detail the progress of his investigations at the Foundlings' Home, at the health office, at certain unsavory hospitals and in other channels of possibility.] ...At last, I found the doctor, and then the nurse. After that, it was easy to unearth the records of a child's birth and of a mother's death--all in New York City.... Droom can tell you the names of Jane's parents, substantiating the names I have just given to you. He did not know that they had been married nearly two years prior to the birth of the child. It was a clandestine marriage.... I went straight to the father of the foundling. He was then but little more than twenty-one years of age--a wild, ruthless, overbearing, heartless scoundrel, who had more money but a much smaller conscience than I.... To-day he is a great and, I believe, respected gentleman, for he comes of good stock.... I had him trembling on his knees before me. He told me the truth. Egad, my son, I am rather proud of that hour with him. "It seems that this young scion of a wealthy house had lost his insecure heart to the daughter of a real aristocrat. I say real, because her father was a pure Knickerbocker of the old school. He was, naturally, as poor as poverty itself. With his beautiful daughter he was living in lower New York--barely subsisting, I may say, on the meagre income that found its way to him through the upstairs lodgers in the old home. Here lived Jane's mother, cherishing the traditions of her blood, while her father, sick and feeble, brooded over the days when he was a king in Babylon. The handsome, wayward lover came into her life when she was nineteen. They were married secretly in the city of Boston. "The young husband imposed silence until after he had attained his majority. There was a vast fortune at stake. In plain words, his father had forbidden the marriage. He had selected another one to be the wife of his son.... Jane was born in the second year of their wedded life. It was, of course, important that the fact should be kept secret. I am inclosing a slip of paper containing the names of the minister, the doctor and the nurse who afterwards attended her, together with the record of death. It is more convenient to handle than this bulky letter--which I trust you will destroy. You will also find the name of the hospital in which Jane was born and where her mother died, ten days later. I may say, in this connection, that not one of the persons mentioned knew the true name of the young mother, nor were they sure of the fact that she was a wife. Her gravestone in the old cemetery bears the name of the maiden, not the wife. Her father never knew the truth....