"One moment," said Charlie, interrupting. His own voice was not very steady, and Eleanor, a look of dawning understanding in her eyes, was staring at him, greatly moved. "It was with Mrs. Hoover that you left your child when you went west under an assumed name, was it not? It was she who told you that she had died?"
"Oh, I lied to you—I lied to you!" wailed Maw Hoover, breaking down suddenly, and throwing herself at the feet of Mrs. Richards. "She wasn't dead. It was that wicked Mr. Holmes and Farmer Weeks who made me say she was."
"What?" thundered Richards. "She isn't dead? Where is she?"
"Bessie!" said Charlie, calling to her sharply. "Here is your daughter, Mrs. Richards, and a daughter to be proud of!"
And the next moment Bessie, Bessie King, the waif no longer, but Bessie Richards, was in her mother's arms!
"So Mr. Holmes was Bessie's uncle!" said Eleanor, amazed. "But why did he act so!"
"I can explain that," said Charlie, sternly. "It was he who set his father so strongly against his sister's marriage to Mr. Richards. He expected that he would inherit, as a result, her share of his father's estate, as well as his own. But his plans miscarried. Mrs. Richards and her husband had disappeared before her father's death, and, when he softened and was inclined to relent, he could not find them. But he knew they had a daughter, and he left to her his daughter's share of his fortune—over a million dollars. There was no trace of the child, however, and so there was a provision in the will that if she did not come forward to claim the money on her eighteenth birthday it should go to her uncle—to Holmes."
"I always said it was money that was making him act that way!" cried Dolly Ransom.
"Yes," said Jamieson. "He had squandered much of his own money—he wanted to make sure of getting Bessie's fortune for himself. So when he learned through Silas Weeks where the child was, he paid Mrs. Hoover to tell her parents she was dead, and then, after she had run away, he and Weeks did all they could to get her back to a place where there was no chance of anyone finding out who she was. They nearly succeeded—but I have been able to block their plans. And one reason is that they were greedy and they couldn't let Zara Slavin and her father alone. He is a great inventor and they profited by his ignorance of American customs."
"I only found out her name last night," said Eleanor. "I wondered if he could be the Slavin who invented the new wireless telephone—"