Mr. Gryce felt a qualm of conscience.  The child really was too simple to be made game of.  Besides, he felt sure that she had spoken the truth, so far as she herself was concerned.  She didn’t know where her erratic aunt had gone; and any further questioning would only frighten her without winning him the knowledge he sought.  He therefore took the parcel back, said some soothing words and made his way across the walk to his taxi.  But the number he gave the chauffeur was that of the house where this little girl lived.

He arrived there first.  To him, waiting in the parlor and very near the window, her shrinking little figure looked pathetic enough, as glancing in at the taxi, and finding it empty, she realized who might be awaiting her under her mother’s eye.  He remembered his grandchild, and made up his mind, as she slid nervously in, that no matter what happened he would keep this innocent child out of trouble.

The lady who presently came in to receive him was one who called him instinctively to his feet in respect and admiration.  She was an American and of the best type, a woman who, if she told a lie, would not tell it for her own comfort or gain, but to help some one else to whom she owed fealty or love.  But would she lie for anyone?  As he studied her longer, taking in, in his own way, the candid expression of her eye and the sweet but firm set of her lips, he began to think she would not, and the interest with which he proceeded to address her was as much due to herself as to the knowledge he hoped to gain from her.

“Mrs. Duclos?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.  And you?”

“I am a member of the New York police.  My errand is one which you can probably guess.  You have a sister-in-law, the widow of your husband’s brother.  As her testimony is of the utmost importance in the inquiry which is to be made into the cause and manner of her daughter’s death, I should be very glad to have a few minutes’ talk with her if, as we have every reason to believe, she is in this house at the present moment.”

Mrs. Edward Duclos was a strong and upright woman, but this direct address, this open attack, was too much for her.  However, before replying, she had a question of her own to put, and she proceeded to ask it firmly, quietly and apparently with every expectation of its being answered: 

“How did you learn that Mr. Duclos had a brother and that this brother had left a widow?”

“Not from you, madam,” he smiled.  “Nor from your husband.  I very much wish we had.  We have been waiting for some such word ever since our advertisement appeared.  It has not come.”

She gave him a quick interrogating glance, folded her hands and answered without further hesitation: 

“We had our reasons for silence, reasons which we thought quite justifiable.  But they don’t hold good if we are to be brought into conflict with the police.  Mr. Duclos told me this morning that if we were driven to speak we must do so with complete honesty and without quibble.  What do you want to know?”