“I can’t say,” replied Butler dubiously. “I rather think we have found something that may have a bearing on the case. You know Miss Haversham, Veronica Haversham?”
“The actress and professional beauty? Yes—at least I have seen her. Why?”
“We hear that Morton Hazleton knows her, anyhow,” remarked Butler dryly.
“Well?”
“Then you don’t know the gossip?” he cut in. “She is said to be in a sanitarium near the city. I’ll have to find that out for you. It’s a fast set she has been traveling with lately, including not only Hazleton, but Dr. Maudsley, the Hazleton physician, and one or two others, who if they were poorer might be called desperate characters.”
“Does Mrs. Hazleton know of—of his reputed intimacy?”
“I can’t say that, either. I presume that she is no fool.”
Morton Hazleton, Jr., I knew, belonged to a rather smart group of young men. He had been mentioned in several near-scandals, but as far as I knew there had been nothing quite as public and definite as this one.
“Wouldn’t that account for her fears?” I asked.
“Hardly,” replied Butler, shaking his head. “You see, Mrs. Hazleton is a nervous wreck, but it’s about the baby, and caused, she says, by her fears for its safety. It came to us only in a roundabout way, through a servant in the house who keeps us in touch. The curious feature is that we can seem to get nothing definite from her about her fears. They may be groundless.”