“What shall I do, Rebecca?” asked Jason.
“When he was a tiny thing, only just born, Martin Moreland took my baby,” she said. “I only had him once for a minute. Make him give him back to me before I must die.”
Jason stood looking in a dazed way from Martin Moreland to Rebecca. Then he looked at Mahala as she spoke: “For the love of God, Martin Moreland, tell Rebecca what you did with her baby!”
She dropped on her knees beside the couch and again gathered to her breast the hand that Rebecca was reaching to Martin Moreland.
Jason lifted his head. He shook it, and his shoulders twitched as he stepped forward, his face ashen and cut deep in lines of torture. Throwing out his arms, he pushed back the other men and closed on the old banker. With a powerful hand he gripped one of his arms and drew him nearer to Rebecca. There was something terrible in his voice, something final and ultimate, something discernibly deadly as he ground out the question: “Is this woman’s child living or dead?”
Martin Moreland was pulling back. He had taken one look at Jason’s face, and what he had seen appalled him. His lips were white and stiff; it was only a whisper, the answer he made: “Living.”
Then Jason demanded: “Do you know where he is?”
The banker nodded.
Jason gripped him more firmly. He drew him closer and then he said in tones of finality: “You shall tell Becky where her child is.”
Martin Moreland shook his head.