“What do you mean by that, Miss Dillard?” Vance stood by the window watching her covertly.
“I—don’t know—what I mean,” she answered brokenly. “But only yesterday afternoon Lady Mae spoke to me about Adolph and the—wall. . . .”
“Oh, did she, now?” Vance’s tone was more indolent than usual, but every nerve in his body was, I knew, vigilantly alert.
“On my way to the tennis courts,” the girl went on, in a low, hushed voice, “I walked with Lady Mae along the bridle path above the playground—she often went there to watch Adolph playing with the children,—and we stood for a long time leaning over the stone balustrade of the wall. A group of children were gathered around Adolph: he had a toy aeroplane and was showing them how to fly it. And the children seemed to regard him as one of themselves; they didn’t look upon him as a grown-up. Lady Mae was very happy and proud about it. She watched him with shining eyes, and then she said to me: ‘They’re not afraid of him, Belle, because he’s a hunchback. They call him Humpty Dumpty—he’s their old friend of the story-book. My poor Humpty Dumpty! It was all my fault for letting him fall when he was little.’ . . .” The girl’s voice faltered, and she put her handkerchief to her eyes.
“So she mentioned to you that the children called Drukker Humpty Dumpty.” Vance reached slowly in his pocket for his cigarette-case.
She nodded, and a moment later lifted her head as if forcing herself to face something she dreaded.
“Yes! And that’s what was so strange; for after a little while she shuddered and drew back from the wall. I asked her what was the matter, and she said in a terrified voice: ‘Suppose, Belle—suppose that Adolph should ever fall off of this wall—the way the real Humpty Dumpty did!’ I was almost afraid myself; but I forced a smile, and told her she was foolish. It didn’t do any good, though. She shook her head and gave me a look that sent a chill through me. ‘I’m not foolish,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t Cock Robin killed with a bow and arrow, and wasn’t Johnny Sprig shot with a little gun—right here in New York?’ ” The girl turned a frightened gaze upon us. “And it did happen, didn’t it—just as she foresaw?”
“Yes, it happened,” Vance nodded. “But we mustn’t be mystical about it. Mrs. Drukker’s imagination was abnormal. All manner of wild conjectures went through her tortured mind; and with these two other Mother-Goose deaths so vivid in her memory, it’s not remarkable that she should have turned the children’s sobriquet for her son into a tragic speculation of that kind. That he should actually have been killed in the manner she feared is nothing more than a coincidence. . . .”
He paused and drew deeply on his cigarette.
“I say, Miss Dillard,” he asked negligently; “did you, by any chance, repeat your conversation with Mrs. Drukker to any one yesterday?”