“Yes, sah; I find out who that woman spy is, but ain’t no one else knows! I can’t tell a white lady all that story what ain’t noways fitten’ fo’ ladies to listen to, but––but somebody got to tell her, somebody that knows jest how much needs tellen’, an’ how much to keep quiet––somebody she trusts, an’ somebody what ain’t no special friend o’ the Lorings. Fo’ God’s sake, Mahsa Captain, won’t yo’ be that man?”
Monroe eyed him narrowly for an instant, and then tossed away the cigar.
“No fooling about this business, mind you,” he said, 308 briefly; “what has Madame Caron to do with any spy? And what has Matthew Loring?”
“Madame not know she got anything to do with her,” insisted Pluto, eagerly, “that gal come heah fo’ maid to Madame Caron, an’ then ole Nelse (what Lorings use to own) he saw her, an’ that scare her plum off the place. An’ the reason why Mahsa Loring is in it is ’cause that fine French maid is a runaway slave o’ his––or maybe she b’long to Miss Gertrude, I don’ know rightly which it is. Any how, she’s Margeret’s chile an’ ought to a knowed more’n to come a ’nigh to Loring even if she is growd up. That why I know fo’ suah she come back fo’ some special spy work––what else that gal run herself in danger fo’ nothen’?”
“You’d better begin at the beginning of this story, if it has one,” suggested Monroe, who could see the man was intensely in earnest, “and I should like to know why you are mixing Madame Caron in the affair.”
“She bought my baby fo’ me––saved him from the trader, Mahsa Captain,” and Pluto’s voice trembled as he spoke. “Yo’ reckon I evah fo’get that ar? An’ now seems like as how she’s got mixed up with troubles, an’ I come to yo’ fo’ help ’cause yo’ a Linkum man, an’ ’cause yo’ her frien’.”
It was twenty minutes later before Pluto completed his eager, hurried story, and at its finish Monroe knew all old Nelse had told Delaven, and more, too, for confidential servants learn many hidden things, and Rosa––afterwards Pluto’s wife––knew why Margeret’s child was sent to the Larue estate for training. Mistress Larue, whose conscience was of the eminently conventional order, seldom permitting her to contest any decision of her husband, yet did find courage to complain somewhat of the child’s charge and her ultimate destination––to complain, not on moral, but on financial grounds––fully convinced that so wealthy a 309 man as Matthew Loring could afford to pay more for her keeping than the sum her husband had agreed to, and that the youth, Kenneth McVeigh, to whose estate the girl was partly sold, could certainly afford more of recompense than his guardian had agreed to.
Pluto told that portion of the story implicating his master with considerable reluctance, yet felt forced to tell it all, that Monroe should be impressed with the necessity of absolute secrecy to every one except Madame Caron, and she, of course, must not hear that part of it.
“Name o’ God, no!” burst out Pluto, in terror of what such a revelation would mean. “What yo’ reckon Madame Caron think o’ we all ef she done heah that? Don’t reckon his own ma evah heard tell a whisper o’ that ar; all Mahs Matt Loring’s doin’s, that sale was––must a been! Mahs Ken wan’t only a boy then––not more’n fifteen, so yo’ see––”
Monroe made no comment, though he also had a vision of what it would mean if Madame Caron––she of all women!––should hear this evidently true story just as Pluto related it.