“Didn't he ask to have the baby?”
“Never mentioned such a thing. All he wanted was the article of value which the poor girl left here.”
Jane Riggs also looked relieved. “Outlandish people are queer,” she said.
But the next morning she rushed into Von Rosen's room when he had barely finished dressing, sobbing aloud like a child, her face rigidly convulsed with grief, and her hands waving frantically with no effort to conceal it.
Chapter IV
The little Syrian baby had disappeared. Nobody had reckoned with the soft guile of a race as supple and silent as to their real intentions as cats. There was a verandah column wound with a massive wistaria vine near the window of the baby's room. The little nurse girl went home every night, and Jane Riggs was a heavy sleeper. When she had awakened, her first glance had been into the baby's crib. Then she sprang, and searched with hungry hands. The little softly indented nest was not warm, the child had been gone for some hours, probably had been taken during the first and soundest sleep of the household. Jane's purse, and her gold breast pin, had incidentally been taken also. When she gave the alarm to Von Rosen, a sullen, handsome Syrian boy was trudging upon an unfrequented road, which led circuitously to the City, and he carried a suit-case, but it was held apart, by some of the Eastern embroideries used as wedges, before strapping, and from that came the querulous wail of a baby squirming uncomfortably upon drawn work centre pieces, and crepe kimonas. Now and then the boy stopped and spoke to the baby in a lovely gentle voice. He promised it food, and shelter soon in his own soft tongue. He was carrying it to his wife's mother, and sullen as he looked and was, and thief as he was, love for his own swayed him, and made him determined to hold it fast. Von Rosen made all possible inquiries. He employed detectives but he never obtained the least clue to the whereabouts of the little child. He, however, although he grieved absurdly, almost as absurdly as Jane, had a curious sense of joy over the whole. Life in Fairbridge had, before birth and death entered his home, been so monotonous, that he was almost stupefied. Here was a thread of vital gold and flame, although it had brought pain with it. When Doctor Sturtevant condoled with him, he met with an unexpected response. “I feel for you, old man. It was a mighty unfortunate thing that it happened in your house, now that this has come of it,” he said.
“I am very glad it happened, whatever came of it,” said Von Rosen. “It is something to have had in my life. I wouldn't have missed it.”
Fairbridge people, who were on the whole a good-natured set, were very sympathetic, especially the women. Bessy Dicky shed tears when talking to Mrs. Sturtevant about the disappearance of the baby. Mrs. Sturtevant was not very responsive.
“It may be all for the best,” she said. “Nobody can tell how that child would have turned out. He might have ended by killing Mr. von Rosen.” Then she added with a sigh that she hoped his poor mother had been married.
“Why, of course she was since there was a baby,” said Bessy Dicky. Then she rose hastily with a blush because Doctor Sturtevant's motor could be heard, and took her leave.