"Seemed insane, you think?" asked Keene, in his quick, short manner.
"Not like that," answered Annie, with mild wonder at the gentleman's pertinacious curiosity, "but a little out of her mind—you've heard of people being melancholy mad, sir."
"Yes, oh, yes," said Keene, "and so you said good-by to this interesting little widow yesterday at about between eleven and twelve o'clock, and she left here and took the steamer for Liverpool?"
"She did go away at that time, sir, but I told her good-by earlier as my duties called me to another part of the building. She told nobody good-by. Indeed, all the waiters in the house—she always had a kind word for them, ye see—they all wondered they did not see her go out, and so missed saying good-by to her."
"But her baggage, Annie? How did her baggage go down?"
"Oh! her passage was taken, and her baggage sent to the steamer, yesterday."
"Yes; thank you, Miss Annie, and I believe that is all I want to ask you this evening."
Senator Winans supplemented Keene's thanks with a banknote, and Annie went bowing and smiling back to the regions whence she came.
The three men looked at each other, Keene breaking the ominous silence that had fallen:
"This is what I came to tell you, Senator Winans. Mrs. Moreland is on the ocean with your little boy. I have already telegraphed to Liverpool to have her stopped when she lands there. I have found that a woman answering her description left on the steamer yesterday with a child answering the description of yours; with the cunning of insanity that poor creature probably saw the child at the moment of leaving, and kidnapped it with the thought that it was her own."