Stolen Away

“Is the baby still at this address?”

“Yes.”

Breckinridge was standing, next to me, now. He said to Cayce, “Was Red Johnson involved?”

“Involved, as seen.”

“Was the nurse, Betty Gow, involved?”

“Not directly.”

“Who else?”

“A woman named Belliance.”

That name rang no bells with me.

I took over for Breckinridge. “Who guards the baby now?”

“The woman and two men who are now at home.”

“Where?”

“Follow my instructions,” he said testily, “and you will be led to the child.”

“I know New Haven well,” Breckinridge said. “I’ve never heard of Cordova. Can you tell us through what channels Scharten Street might be located?”

“By going to the street! If the name’s on it, that’s a right good mark!”

Breckinridge looked at me with wide eyes and I shrugged.

“Follow my instructions and you will find the child. We are through.”

“Where…” Breckinridge began, but Mrs. Cayce gently moved between him and Cayce. She was shaking her head, no, raising a palm to us both, in a stop motion.

She bent forward over her husband and murmured something, to bring him out of it.

A few moments later, Cayce drew a long, deep breath and his eyes popped open. He sat up. He yawned, stretching his arms.

“Did you get everything down?” he asked his secretary.

Miss Davis bobbled her pretty blonde head.

He stood. With utter certainty, he said to Breckinridge, “Follow what you heard—whatever it was I said—and you’ll get that child back.”

Dazed, Breckinridge said, “Well…thank you. We’ll follow up on everything we heard here, today.”

Cayce beamed, patted Breckinridge on the shoulder. “Splendid. My secretary will send you a carbon of the transcription. Do let me know how it comes out. We like to follow up on these things.”

He might have been talking about some kid’s cough he prescribed a poultice for.

“What do we owe you, Mr. Cayce?” Breckinridge said.

Here it comes, I thought. Here it finally comes.

“We normally charge twenty dollars for a reading,” he said. “I wish it weren’t necessary to charge at all.”

Twenty bucks? That was chicken feed for a racket like this.

“But in this case,” Cayce said somberly, “I will make an exception.”

Ah! Now comes the sting—he knows he’s dealing with dough—Lindbergh and Breckinridge and Anne Lindbergh’s wealthy family, the Morrows….

“Pay me nothing,” he said. “And please, as to the press…”

That was it, then—he wanted the publicity.

He waggled a finger, like a schoolteacher. “Not a word to them. I don’t want the notoriety. I don’t want to be involved in criminal cases again. Much too unpleasant.”

I felt like I’d been whacked by a psychic two-by-four. With a mystic nail in it.

Mrs. Cayce served us supper in her cozy kitchen, before we left; it was pot roast and potatoes and carrots, much like the meal at the Lindberghs—only the meat was tender and the side dishes delicious, in the best country manner.

“Some day you gentlemen will have to have life readings,” Cayce said, helping himself to a heaping portion of mashed potatoes. “Would you be interested in who and what you were in a former life?”

“Reincarnation, Mr. Cayce?” Breckinridge smiled. “I thought you were a Christian.”

“There is nothing in the Bible to refute reincarnation,” he said. “Although I can do a reading on Mr. Heller without going to sleep.”

“Oh, really?” I said, lifting a fork of food. “What was I in my previous life?”

“An idealist,” he said, blue-gray eyes sparkling. “All cynics were idealists, once. More pot roast, Mr. Heller?”

In the Dusenberg, I asked Breckinridge what he’d made of all that.