“How do you know?”

“Enough that I know.  And now, Mrs. Hoyt, this thing must come to an end, and there is not an instant to be lost.  Has Pinky Swett, as she is called, been told where the baby came from?”

“Not by me.”

“By anybody?”

“That is more than I can say.”

“What has become of the woman I gave it to?”

“She’s about somewhere.”

“When did you see her?”

Mrs. Hoyt pretended to think for some moments, and then replied: 

“Not for a month or two.”

“Had she the baby then?”

“No; she was rid of it long before that.”

“Did she know this Pinky Swett?”

“Yes.”

“Curse the brat!  If I’d thought all this trouble was to come, I’d have smothered it before it was half an hour old.”

“Risky business,” remarked Mrs. Hoyt.

“Safer than to have let it live,” said Mrs. Dinneford, a hard, evil expression settling around her mouth.  “And now I want the thing done.  You understand.  Find this Pinky Swett.  The police are after her, and may be ahead of you.  I am desperate, you see.  Anything but the discovery and possession of this child by Edith.  It must be got out of the way.  If it will not starve, it must drown.”

Mrs. Dinneford’s face was distorted by the strength of her evil passions.  Her eyes were full of fire, flashing now, and now glaring like those of a wild animal.

“It might fall out of a window,” said Mrs. Hoyt, in a low, even voice, and with a faint smile on her lips.  “Children fall out of windows sometimes.”

“But don’t always get killed,” answered Mrs. Dinneford, coldly.

“Or, it might drop from somebody’s arms into the river—­off the deck of a ferryboat, I mean,” added Mrs. Hoyt.

“That’s better.  But I don’t care how it’s done, so it’s done.”

“Accidents are safer,” said Mrs. Hoyt.

“I guess you’re right about that.  Let it be an accident, then.”

It was half an hour from the time Mrs. Dinneford entered this house before she came away.  As she passed from the door, closely veiled, a gentleman whom she knew very well was going by on the opposite side of the street.  From something in his manner she felt sure that he had recognized her, and that the recognition had caused him no little surprise.  Looking back two or three times as she hurried homeward, she saw, to her consternation, that he was following her, evidently with the purpose of making sure of her identity.

To throw this man off of her track was Mrs. Dinneford’s next concern.  This she did by taking a street-car that was going in a direction opposite to the part of the town in which she lived, and riding for a distance of over a mile.  An hour afterward she came back to her own neighborhood, but not without a feeling of uneasiness.  Just as she was passing up to the door of her residence a gentleman came hurriedly