So deeply intent was he upon the solution of this uncanny mystery, so entirely absorbed by his thoughts of the girl, that when he crossed to St Luke’s that evening, and found a letter at Madame Nicolas’ house from Jan Repton, he felt a pang of guilt on discovering that he had almost entirely neglected the mission on which he was supposed to have come.
Repton’s letter ran thus:—
“Dear B.,—Southerley’s going to punch your head for you when you get back, and I think you jolly well deserve it. Here have we been waiting for the wire you promised to send as soon as you found out who it was that landed us with this brat; and I’m ready to bet you’ve forgotten all about us, and it and everything but your own affairs!
“I hate a fellow who can’t think of anything else when he’s got a love-affair on hand! Why, I can manage half a dozen at a time, and never miss an appointment or forget to post a letter!
“I don’t say Southerley isn’t as bad as you. And there’s another thing. He’s got it into his head that this Miss Merriman is moping because you’re away; so if you get off with a whole bone in your body when he’s done with you, you may think yourself lucky. And I jolly well hope you won’t, for I know very well it was you got us into this mess, and here you’ve left us to bear the brunt of it, and the chaff, and the rest of it! The way that minx Susan grins and cheeks us now is intolerable. And she has the impudence to run up when there’s a Punch and Judy show in the street to ask if we would like her to tell the man to give a show ‘to please the baby!’
“And there’s some idiot who’s got a room on the top floor, who will sit with his door open singing some doggerel about ‘Molly and I and the baby!’ at the top of his voice as soon as he hears us on the stairs.
“Southerley pretends he doesn’t care, and I don’t suppose he would care as long as he had an excuse to go down and talk to Miss Merriman under pretence of seeing the brat—‘the co-operative kid’ as he calls it. But Miss Merriman seems to be getting rather anxious at our not hearing from you, so I suppose she’s getting tired of the bother of the animal, and no wonder!
“What we’re going to do with it when she refuses to look after it any longer I don’t know. But unless I get a wire from you within forty-eight hours, I shall take it to the workhouse myself in a brown-paper parcel and give your name with it. So look out! Yours till the breaking of heads,
“Jan R.”
Bayre did not quite place implicit confidence in Jan’s veracity, or pay too much heed to his dark threats. But he thought it best to send a telegram of a reassuring but vague character, and then he reflected that he had really better be pushing his inquiries in the direction Jan desired.
So on the following morning he went to the house of the Vazons, and getting inside by a ruse, with a boy who was delivering logs for fuel, he found himself in the presence not only of Marie Vazon of the sly eyes, but of the baby.
And having perhaps become both more suspicious, more observant, and more experienced of late in the matter of infants, he had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the baby in the cradle was not his cousin, but was a peasant’s child of an age more tender than that of the hero of their adventure.
He jumped at once to the conclusion that Marie was passing this child off as old Monsieur Bayre’s for the sake of the payment she got from him. It was strange that a father could be thus deceived, he thought; but old Mr Bayre was not an ordinary man, so that it was perhaps too much to expect that he should be an ordinary father.
“What has become of Monsieur Bayre’s child?” he asked the girl point-blank, seeing at once, by the guilty look in her eyes, that she knew she was found out.
“This is M. Bayre’s son, monsieur,” said she, promptly.
“Oh, no, it’s not. I don’t suppose this child is more than ten or twelve months old,” hazarded he, making a guess which was still over the mark. “And this child’s hair is red, what there is of it, while Mr Bayre’s son has hair almost flaxen.”