“I think I will borrow those new shoes,” Hewitt said on his return. “I think I should be disposed to investigate further in any case, for my own satisfaction. The thing interests me. By the way, Mrs. Seton, tell me, would these shoes be more likely to have been bought at a regular shoemaker’s or at a baby-linen shop?”
“Certainly I should say at a baby-linen shop,” Mrs. Seton answered; “they are of excellent quality, and for babies’ shoes of this fancy description one would never go to an ordinary shoemaker’s.”
“So much the better, because the baby-linen shops are fewer than the shoemakers’. I may take these, then? Perhaps before I go you had better make quite certain that there is nothing else about the child which is not your own.”
There was nothing, and with the shoes in his pocket Hewitt regained his cab and travelled back to his office. The case, from its very bareness and simplicity, puzzled him. Why was the child taken? Plainly not to keep, for it had been returned almost as it went. Plainly also not for the sake of reward or blackmail, for here was the child safely back, before the anonymous blackmailer had had a chance of earning his money. More, the advertised reward had not been claimed. Also it could not be a matter of malice or revenge, for the child was quite unharmed, and indeed seemed to have been quite happy. No conceivable family complication, previous to the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Seton, could induce anybody to take away and return the child, which was undoubtedly Mrs. Seton’s. Then who could be the “poor daddy” and “mummy”--not _“vis_ daddy” and not _“vis_ mummy”--that the child had been with? The Setons knew nothing of them. It was difficult to see what it could all mean.
Arrived at his office, Hewitt took a map, and, setting the leg of a pair of compasses on the site of the Setons’ house, described a circle, including in its radius all Willesden and Hampstead. Then, with the Suburban Directory to help him, he began searching out and noting all the baby-linen shops in the area. After all, there were not many--about a dozen. This done, Hewitt went home.
In the morning he began his hunt. His design was to call at each of the shops until he had found in which a pair of shoes of that particular pattern had been sold on the day of little Charley Seton’s disappearance. The first two shops he tried did not keep shoes of the pattern, and had never had them, and the young ladies behind the counter seemed vastly amused at Hewitt’s inquiries. Nothing perturbed, he tried the next shop on his list in the Hampstead district. There they kept such shoes as a rule, but were “out of them at present.” Hewitt immediately sent his card to the proprietress, requesting a few minutes’ interview.