The girl from Scotland Yard
“Are there many baby farmers in England?”
“Thousands,” said the officer, and her heart sank. “They’re supposed
to be under police supervision, but of course they’re not. There is no
law to prevent anybody adopting a child, though the actual adoption is
not recognized in law.”
“There is no list of them?”
He shook his head.
“There may be a few hundred on the books. You would know that better
yourself, Miss Maughan, as you’re at the Yard.”
And then, unconsciously extinguishing her last lingering hope:
“I was once asked to trace a little baby that had been handed over to
a ‘farmer,’ but it is like looking for a needle in a haystack, trying
to find an ‘adopted child’ after trace has been lost of it,” he said.
“A few of them drift into the workhouse schools; most of them die. It
doesn’t pay the kind of woman who makes a living out of that sort of
thing to feed them properly. There should be a State institution where
unwanted children could be taken and cared for and become an asset to
the country.”
He had been gone half an hour when the Plymouth call came through and
the news was not especially helpful. Martha Druze had qualified as a
maternity nurse in the years ’89-’90, and had left the hospital to
take up a private position as a general nurse. It was believed she had
gone abroad, but there was no actual evidence of this fact except that
the present matron, who remembered her, had received a postal card
mailed at Port Said a month or two after Martha had gone away. There
was also a rumour that she had married very well, to somebody who was
variously described as a carpenter of Cape Town and a rancher in
Australia. There was only one clue which was faintly promising. Martha
was known to have registered herself in the books of a London agency,
the name of which Leslie jotted down.
As soon as the conversation was through, she searched the telephone
directory for the nurses’ agency. It was not there; possibly it had
been overwhelmed by competition and had died, as so many other
agencies die, from sheer inanition. To make absolutely sure on this
point she called up one well-known woman agent and asked her a
question.
“Ashley’s Agency? Oh, yes. It is now called the Central Nurses’
Bureau--in fact, we are Ashley’s Agency, though we never use that
title!”
Leslie explained who she was and what she required.
“If you’ll come round, we will show you the old books; we still have
them,” was the encouraging reply.
Leslie Maughan put on her hat and coat and went out at once. Halfway
down she remembered Mr. Coldwell’s gift and went back to buckle on a
most uncomfortable garter. The premises of the agency were off Regent
Street, no great distance to walk, and she was there in five minutes.
The secretary, who had replied to her telephone message, was already
selecting the books for her inspection, and by great good fortune the
first of these she had discovered contained the very information that
the girl had asked for.
“Yes, we have her on our books--Martha Druze. She applied to us before
she left Plymouth Hospital apparently, for that is her original
address, and we placed her in a situation in the early part of 1891.”
The secretary had opened the book and her finger pointed to a line.
Leslie read; she found herself gripping tight to the edge of the
table. Looking at her, the secretary saw that her eyes were blazing
and wondered what there was in this simple record to engender such
excitement.
“It was the only job we ever got for her----” she began.
Leslie shook her head.
“She would not want another,” she said.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE TELLTALE PERFUME
When Lady Raytham had begun a letter to her husband the district
messenger arrived with Leslie’s note. His lordship, in his aimless
way, had gone on to Bombay, and was suffering from an old trouble of
his; had written a very long letter describing minutely his many
symptoms, and had expressed--this was unexpected--the desire that she
should go out to him.
She read Leslie’s note:
Dear Jane: Won’t you come round and see me? I’ve got the whole day
off, and there is a tremendous lot that I want to talk to you about,
not as a poor apology for a policewoman, but as a very human girl who
would love to smooth over some of the rough road you are treading.
Lucretia has orders to say that I’m out and to admit nobody. I can
give you a home-made lunch, and can promise that you will suffer no
ill effects therefrom. Or we can lunch regally at or near the Carlton.
Please come.
Jane scribbled a note which was delivered to the waiting messenger,
locked away her half-finished letter in the bureau, and went up into
her room to change. Lucretia had no sooner ushered Jane in to Leslie
when she burst out talking.
“Did you see Peter? What happened? I’m so worried about it. I nearly
called you up this morning.”
“I shouldn’t have known,” said Leslie. “At least, I should have known
he’d been arrested----”
“Arrested?”
This was obviously news to Jane Raytham, for her face went white.
Leslie explained what had happened.
“How could she? How could she?” demanded Jane Raytham vehemently. “It
was wicked! But how like her! Poor Peter! He lives everlastingly in
rough seas.”
And then the note of anger in her voice turned to one of anxiety.
“Did Anita tell him anything?”
“Not what he wanted to know,” replied Leslie.
The visitor was quick to understand the meaning of that reply.
“Do you know why he went?”
“He went to find his child.”
The beautiful face of Jane Raytham flushed a delicate pink, and paled
again.
“My child,” she said, in a low voice. “I suppose you despise me, don’t
you?”
Leslie shook her head.
“No, why should I? If I despised every woman who had a baby----”
“I don’t mean that. But I allowed them to take it away. I didn’t want
to, Leslie. Will you believe that? I wanted to keep the child with me.
I fought hard for him. The compromise was a desperately weak one, but
at least I gained that point.”
“What was the compromise?”
Lady Raytham smiled faintly.
“If you didn’t despise me before, you’ll despise me now,” she said.
She was at the fireplace in her old attitude: arm along the mantel,
forehead resting on the back of her hand, her eyes fixed on the fire.
“They agreed to that. If it was a girl I should keep her; if it was a
boy, he should go away. A mad, wicked idea, so grossly unfair to the
child! But I’m terribly tender toward girls. I can’t see a girl suffer
without experiencing a shrivelled-up feeling inside. I wonder if you
know what my girlhood was. If it had been a girl I should have kept
her with me and braved everything. But it was a boy--a wonderful
boy--they told me of it afterward. I wish I’d seen him, known him, if
only for a day, but then I should never, never have allowed him to
go.”
She turned her face away and her shoulders shook. Leslie sat at the
desk and drew fantastic, meaningless arabesques upon her blotting pad;
and when that storm of sobbing had died down she said:
“I suppose it is absurd to ask you if there is any clue by which the
child could be traced? Of course you’ve explored every avenue. You’ve
discovered nothing?”
Jane was manipulating her handkerchief, her back toward her, and there
was finality in the shake of her head.
“No. I’ve already tried. I didn’t tell Anita, but for months I’ve had
detectives searching. I thought he was in a happy home, you know; I
never dreamed that he’d been left.”
She could not go on. It was quite a long time before she mastered her
emotion.
“Druze told me that night--that horrible night she went away. Laughed
in my face when I asked her where the child was. That is why I went
after her. I guessed that she had gone to Anita’s, and when I found
her dead on the path I was frantic. I thought she must have some
hidden paper that would tell me. But when I searched, there was
nothing--nothing!”
Jane Raytham turned her face away from the girl.
“I have no justification--none,” she said. “I was just wickedly
selfish. Even if he’d been illegitimate I could not be excused.
Illegitimate!” She smiled bitterly. “Thank God I’ve had no children
since I married Raytham! He was not keen about children, or about me
for the matter of that. Our married life has been a sort of--modified
celibacy!”
She took down a photograph from a mantelshelf and looked at it.
“This is Mr. Coldwell, isn’t it?”
Leslie nodded.
“It would be a great feather in his cap if he--arrested me for
bigamy.”
“Mr. Coldwell is not frantically keen on feathers of that kind, Jane,”
said the girl loyally.
Jane put down the photograph and dropped into the nearest armchair,
curling her legs up under her.
“I’m a beast! I’m putting the worst construction on everything; taking
the most uncharitable view of everybody.”
She smiled pitifully, reached out her hand for her bag that lay on the
table, and snapped open a diamond-encrusted cigarette case.
“I tried drugging once,” she said; “a white powder you sniff up your
nose. For some reason it made me deathly sick, and I didn’t pursue the
practice. But I envy people who can find relief and forgetfulness.”
“Another good way,” said Leslie brutally, “is to put your head on a
railway track when a large, fat freight train is due! You’d accomplish
the same result, and give much less trouble to other people. And
presently, when your boy emerges from the mist, as he will, he would
come to a mother who was hardly worth finding.”
Jane was laughing quietly.
“You’re a weird girl. How old are you?”
Leslie told her.
“I wish Peter was in love with you. He must find happiness somewhere
or other.”
“Do I come into this?” asked Leslie dryly. “Or are Peter and you the
only two people in the world whose feelings count?”
She stopped Jane’s penitence with a laughing gesture.
“I’ll tell you something, Jane. I’m rather in love with Peter; do you
feel faint?”
“I’m not a little bit faint.” But Jane was more than a little bit
curious. “You’re not jesting?”
“I decided this morning that I was very much in love with him,” said
Leslie calmly, “but I’ve thought a long time about it, and have
reached the conclusion that it is rather my maternal instinct that is
operating. I’m loving him in a motherly fashion, in fact. Sooner or
later that boy of yours is going to be found, and then you’ve got to
go to your husband and tell him the truth.”
She was watching Jane’s face closely, ready to note and spring upon
the first visible sign of repugnance. But Jane was listening; and
listening, the girl realized her heart sinking with approval.
“And then Lord Raytham must give you up, and Peter and you must start
afresh.”
Here was the first note of dissent. Jane shook her head.
“Peter is different,” she said. “I realized it when I saw him last
night. He’s not the same man. And can you wonder? Leslie, I never
loved him. You’ll think that’s a horrible thing to say of the father
of my child. He represented--I don’t know, curiosity, I
suppose--adventure--the grand hairpin turn of life, where so much is
upset and smashed, so many hopes and ideals die. And he never loved
me. He was infatuated and he was fond of me, and had a wonderful
chivalrous feeling that he was rescuing me from something. That is
half his trouble now, that he knows he didn’t love me, and it makes
him feel ugly and ashamed. You think the child may bring us together.
I’m becoming quite a thought reader! But that sort of thing really
doesn’t happen, does it? Children really do not determine very much.
Half the women who are divorced have children who love them and whom
they love, but it didn’t prevent--things happening. I think Peter and
I might be good friends, and the boy might love us both, even though