“I merely wanted to get your views,” said Baron stiffly as he rose to go. “I didn’t care to send for the police until——”
Thornburg got up, too. “Don’t understand that I wash my hands of her,” he hastened to say. “It might not hurt me any for the public to know that I didn’t do anything, under the circumstances, but it would certainly be a boost for me to have it known that I went out of my way to do a good deed. Of course if you won’t keep her——”
Baron turned and looked at him and waited.
“Look here, Baron, I’m going to be frank with you. When you took her home, I was sore at you. Especially after you told me something about her. I like them—children, I mean. You had taken her off my premises. I thought about the big house I’ve got, and not a child in it, and never to be, and I figured I might as well have taken her myself. But there’s difficulties.” His expression became troubled. “Once before I tried to take a child into the house and Mrs. Thornburg objected. It was my own child, too.” He paused. “You know I’ve been married twice.”
Baron’s thoughts went back a few years to the somewhat unpleasant story of Thornburg’s divorce from an actress with whom he had spent only a little more than one troubled year. The facts had been public property. He made no reply.
Thornburg continued: “I’m in doubt as to how my wife would look at it if I suggested that I’d like to bring this waif home. Of course, it’s just possible she might not want to take a child of mine, and still be willing to take in some outsider. You know what strange creatures women are.”
Baron waited. Was Thornburg being quite frank with him—at last?
“You see the difficulty. The—the wife is likely to suspect that Bonnie May is the same little girl I wanted to bring home before—that she’s mine. She never saw the little daughter. I’d have to be careful not to make her suspicious.”
“But the circumstances ... I don’t see how she could suspect anything,” argued Baron.
“Not if I don’t seem too much interested. That’s the point. I’ll tell you, Baron—you come out and see us. Me and my wife. Come to-night. State the case to us together. Tell the plain truth. Explain how you got hold of Bonnie May, and tell my wife your people have changed their minds. That ought to make the thing clear enough.”