"We've found no record in any State in the Union," Whitelaw went on, "or in any Province in Canada, of a marriage between a Theodore Whitelaw and a Lucy Coburn or Speight. The search has been pretty thorough. Moreover, we find no birth recorded in The Bronx of any Thomas Whitelaw during all the decade between 1890 and 1900. No such birth is recorded in any other suburb of New York, or in Manhattan. In years past I've been on the track of three men of the name of Theodore Whitelaw, one in Portland, Maine, one in New Orleans, and one in Vancouver; but there's reason for thinking that all three were one and the same man. He was a Scotch sailor, who died on the Pacific coast, and was never known to be in or about New York longer than the two or three days in which his ship was in port."
He came to the circumstances, largely gathered from Tom himself, of the association of the woman with the child. She had harped on the statements, first, that she had not stolen him; secondly, that he was not to think that his name was Whitelaw. And yet on the night before her death she had not only given him that very name, but claimed it as legally her own. The boy—the man, as he was now—could remember that at different times she had called herself by different names, chiefly to escape detection for her thefts; but never before that night had she taken that of Whitelaw.
Those who had worked on the case, the most skilful investigators in the country, were driven to a theory. It was a theory based only on the circumstantial, but so broadly based that the one unproven point, that which absolutely showed identity, seemed to prove itself.
Lucy Coburn, feeble in mind from birth, half demented by the death first of her husband and then of her child, had prowled about the Park, looking for a baby that would satisfy her thwarted mother-love. Any baby would have done this, though she preferred a girl.
"My son, Henry Elphinstone Whitelaw, was born on September 24, 1896. He was eight months old when on May 10, 1897, he was wheeled into the Park by Miss Nash, who is still with us. What happened after, as she supposed, she wheeled him back, we all know about."
But the theory was that, at some minute when Miss Nash's attention was diverted, the prowling woman got possession of the child, through means which were still a matter of speculation. She had money, since it was known that five thousand dollars had been paid to her by a life-insurance company on her husband's death, and, therefore, the power of flitting about, and covering up her traces. Discovering that she had a boy and not a girl, she had given him the first name she could think of, which was that of her late husband. She could easily have learned from the papers that the child she had stolen was the son of Henry Theodore Whitelaw, though the full name may or may not have remained in a memory probably not retentive at its best. But on the night of her arrest, knowing that she was about to forsake the child for whom she had come to feel a passionate affection, she had made one last wild effort to connect him with his true inheritance. Why she had done this but partially was again a matter of conjecture. She may have given all of the name she remembered; she may have been kept from giving the full name through fear. It was impossible to tell. But she gave the name—with some errors, it was true—but still the name. The name taken with the extraordinary family resemblance—everyone would admit that—was one of the main points in the reconstruction of the history.
He reviewed a few more of the proofs and the half-proofs, asking at last, timidly, and as if afraid of the family verdict:
"Well, what does everyone say?"
The silence was oppressive. The only movement on anyone's part came when Lily stretched out her hand to a tray and with her little finger knocked off the ash from her cigarette. It seemed to Tom as if none of them would speak, as if he himself must speak first.
"I vote we take him in." This was Tad. "Since we all know you want him, father—well, that settles it. As far as I'm concerned I'll—I'll crawl down."