[Illustration: “ON THE SOFA FACING THE DOOR SAT A LADY, VERY PALE, AND EXHIBITING PLAIN SIGNS OF GRIEF.”]
“This is Mr. Martin Hewitt, you know,” Mr. Raikes here put in--“of whom I was speaking.”
Mrs. Seton inclined her head, and with a very obvious effort began. “It is my child, you know, Mr. Hewitt--my little boy Charley; we can’t find him.”
“Mr. Raikes has told me so. When did you see the child last?”
“Yesterday morning. His nurse left him sitting on the floor in a room we call the small morning-room, where we sometimes allowed him to play when nurse was out, because the nursery was out of hearing, except from the bedrooms. I myself was in the large morning-room, and as he seemed to be very quiet I went to look, and found he was not there.”
“Yes; but he was nowhere in the house, and none of the servants had seen him. At first I supposed that his nurse had gone back to the small morning-room and taken him with her--I had sent her on an errand--but when she returned I found that was not the case.”
“Oh, yes, he can walk quite well. But he could scarcely have come out from the room without my hearing him. The two rooms, the morning-room and the small sitting-room, are on opposite sides of the same passage.”
“No; the door of the small room is farther up the passage than the other. But in any case he was nowhere in the house.”
“But if he left the room he must have got out somehow. Is there no other door?”
“Yes, there is a French window, with the lower panels of wood, in the room; it gives on to a few steps leading down into the garden; but that was closed and bolted on the inside.”
“You found no trace whatever of him, I take it, on the whole premises?”
“Not a trace of any sort, nor had anybody about the place seen him.”
“Did you yourself actually see him in this room, or have you merely the nurse’s word for it?”
“I saw her put him there. She left him playing with a box of toys. When I went to look for him the toys were there, scattered on the floor, but he had gone.” Mrs. Seton sank on the arms of her maid and her breast heaved.
“I’m sure,” Hewitt said, “You’ll keep your nerves as steady as you can, Mrs. Seton: much may depend on it. If you have nothing else to tell me now, I think I will come to your house at once, look at it, and question your servants myself. Meantime, what has been done?”