Abduction -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories; New York (State) -- Fiction
"They have found something. See! what is that the man in the boat is
holding up? It looks like--"
But she was already half-way to the point, outstripping the very men
whose importunities she had shrunk from a moment before. I was not far
behind her, and almost immediately we found ourselves wedged among the
agitated group leaning over the little object which had been tossed
ashore into the first hand outstretched to receive it.
It was a second little shoe--filled with sand and dripping with water,
but recognizable as similar to the one already found on the preceding
day high up on the bank. As this fact was borne in on us all, a groan of
pity broke from more than one pair of lips, and eye after eye stole up
the hillside to that far window in the great pile above us where the
mother's form could be dimly discerned swaying in an agitation caught
from our own excitement.
But there was one amongst us whose glance never left that little shoe.
The train she had been so anxious to take whistled and went thundering
by, but she never moved or noticed. Suddenly she reached out her hand.
"Let me see it, please," she entreated. "I was her nurse; let me take it
in my hand."
The man who held it passed it over. She examined it long and closely.
"Yes, it is hers," said she. But in another moment she had laid it down
with what I thought was a very peculiar look.
Instantly it was caught up and carried with a rush up the slope to where
Mrs. Ocumpaugh could be seen awaiting it with outstretched arms. But I
did not linger to mark her reception of it. Miss Graham had drawn me to
one side and was whispering in my ear:
"I must talk to you. I can not keep back another moment what I think or
what I feel. Some one is playing with Mrs. Ocumpaugh's fears. That shoe
is Gwendolen's, but it is not the mate of the one found on the bank
above. That was for the left foot _and so is this one_. Did you not
notice?"
II
"A FEARSOME MAN"
The effect of this statement upon me was greater than even she had
contemplated.
"You thought the child had been stolen for the reward she would bring?"
she continued. "She was not; she was taken out of pure hate, and that is
why I suffer so. What may they not do to her! In what hole hide her! My
darling, O my darling!"
She was going off into hysterics, but the look and touch I gave her
recalled her to herself.
"We need to be calm," I urged. "You, because you have something of
importance to impart, and I, because of the action I must take as soon
as the facts you have concealed become known to me. What gives you such
confidence in this belief, which I am sure is not shared by the police,
and who is the _some one_ who, as you say, is playing upon Mrs.
Ocumpaugh's fears? A short time ago it was as _the wretch_ you spoke of
him. Are not _some one_ and _the wretch_ one and the same person, and
can you not give him now a name?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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