"Then he knows the children are thereabouts?"
"No, he does not. But has been pushing researches. He has learnt who is the boy's probable father, and where he lives—at a place called Meriton. He came to Meriton to get the father's foreign address, and when the butler refused it, he called on me."
"I see." Mr. Hucks nodded. "And you refused it too?"
"I did better. I gave it to him—"
"Eh?"
"—at the same time taking care that the father—his name is Chandon, by the way, and he's a baronet—should get a wire from me to come home by the first train he can catch. By this means, you see, I not only get Glasson out of the neighbourhood, where he might have run against the children, or picked up news of them, but I send him all the way to the South of France expressly to find his bird flown. It's cruel, I grant you; but I've no tenderness for blackmailers—especially when they keep Orphanages."
"You're right there. You've no call to waste any pity on Glasson.
But the question is, Will he come? The father, I mean."
"Certainly, since I tell him," Miss Sally answered with composure.
"And him a bart—a bloomin' bart—what the Tichborne chap used to call a bart of the B.K.!"
Mr. Hucks stared at his visitor with rounded eyes, drew a long breath, puffed out his cheeks and emitted it, and wound up by removing his hat and laying it on the ledge of the desk.