"I do not know how Mrs. Ocumpaugh feels at present. But I know what her dearest wish is--to see her child again alive and well. That wish I shall do my best to gratify. It is true that I am not a police detective, but I have an agency of my own, well-known to both Mrs. and Mr. Ocumpaugh. All its resources will be devoted to this business and I hope to succeed, madam. If, as I suspect, you are on your way to Mrs. Ocumpaugh, please tell her that Robert Trevitt, of Trevitt and Jupp, hopes to succeed." "I _will_," she emphasized. Then stepping back to me in all the grace of her thrilling personality, she eagerly added: "If there is any information I can give, do not be afraid to ask me. I love children, and would give anything in the world to see Mrs. Ocumpaugh as happy with Gwendolen again as I am with my little nephew. Are you quite sure that there is any possibility of this? I was told that the child's shoe has been found in the river; but almost immediately following this information came the report that there was something odd about this shoe, and that Mrs. Ocumpaugh had gone into hysterics. Do _you_ know what they meant by that? I was just going over to see." I did know what they meant, but I preferred to seem ignorant. "I have not seen Mrs. Ocumpaugh," I evasively rejoined. "But _I_ don't look for the child to be drawn from the water." "Nor I," she repeated, with a hoarse catch in her breath. "It is thirty-six hours since we lost her. Time enough for the current to have carried her sweet little body far away from here." I surveyed the lady before me in amazement. "Then _you_ think she strayed down to the water?" "Yes; it would madden me to believe otherwise; loving her so well, and her parents so well, I dare not think of a worse fate." Taking advantage of her amiability and the unexpected opportunity it offered for a leading question, I hereupon ventured to say: "You were not at home, I hear, when she vanished from the bungalow." "No; that is, if it happened before three o'clock. I arrived from the station just as the clock was striking the hour, and having my little nephew with me, I was too much occupied in reconciling him to his new home, to hear or see anything outside. Most unfortunate!" she mourned, "most unfortunate! I shall never cease reproaching myself. A tragedy at my door"--here she glanced across the shrubbery at the bungalow--"and I occupied with my own affairs!" With a flush, the undoubted result of her own earnestness, she turned as if to go. But I could not let her depart without another question: