"Much the shortest and straightest route. Just fancy you're takin' a nasty dose of medicine for the good of your health. I guess this is a case where I can't work in the dark." "Have you ever noticed an elderly woman, seated in the court of the Palace Hotel--immensely stout?" "I should say I had. One of the sights of S.F. Why--of course--she's your mother-in-law!" "Has there been any talk about her!" "Some comment on her size. And her childlike delight in watchin' the show." "Nothing else? No one has claimed to recognize her?" Spaulding sat up straight, his nose pointing. "Recognize her? What d'you mean?" "I mean that I overheard a conversation--one-sided--to-day on the California Street dummy, in which Bisbee accused Madame Delano practically of what I have told you. At least that is the way I interpreted it. He called her Marie, alluded in an unmistakable manner to a disgraceful past in which he had known her intimately, and was confident that he recognized her in spite of her flesh and white hair. I am positive that she recognized him, although she was clever enough not to reply." "Jimminy! The plot thickens. That scoundrel never forgot a face in his life. I don't train with him--not by a long sight--so if there's been any talk in his bunch, I naturally wouldn't have heard it. You say her name is Marie now?" "Yes." "And Perrin is her real name?" "She comes of a well-known family of Rouen of that name. She lived there with her child for at least thirteen years before her return to California. Of that I am certain. Her daughter is now twenty. I wish to know where she kept that child during the first five years of its life. I have reason to think it was in the Ursuline Convent at St. Peter." "That's easy settled. And you think the father's first name was Jim?" "She told me that his name was James Delano. Also that he died within the first year of their marriage, when the child was two months old, during the voyage to Japan. That may be, but I can see no reason for her returning here unless he died more recently and the settlement of his estate demanded her presence." "Pretty good reasoning, particularly if you are sure she stayed here until the child was five. Some of them have pretty decent instincts. She may have made up her mind to give the kid a chance, and returned to her relations. Of course we must assume that they knew nothing of her life." "I am positive they did not. But there had been some sort of estrangement. I have been given to understand that it was because she married an American. Of course she may not have written to them at all for six or seven years. Her story is that she was visiting other relatives in a place called Holbrook Centre, Vermont, and met this man and married him. Then that he was detained by business in San Francisco for several months, and the child born here."