She dropped him in the centre of London and, going on to Scotland Yard, interviewed her chief and received permission from him to take a day off. Her first step was to get into telephonic communication with the chief detective of Plymouth, who promised to call her up as soon as his inquiries were completed. Though she was on holiday, there were many official interruptions. First there came the man who had arrested Mrs. Inglethorne to tell her that that unrepentant lady had been remanded, and to expose the red-faced woman’s shocking history. Her maiden name had been Zamosser; she was of Dutch origin, though her parents had lived for many years in England; and with the exception of a very short interval she had been either in the hands or under the observation of the police. She was a receiver, and worse; had been convicted of shoplifting, and, except for one interval in her early youth when she seemed to have lived so respectable a life that the police had no trace of her, she had been in and out of prison since she was a child.
“What about the children?” asked Leslie, anticipating the reply.
The sergeant laughed.
“One of them’s hers; the others are what she calls ‘adopted.’ That is to say, they have been inconvenient children of whom she has taken charge for a small weekly sum or for a larger payment cash down. The only one we have been able to trace is a little boy.”
For a moment wild hopes had surged up into Leslie’s heart, but they were to die at his words.
“Oh, you’ve traced the boy?” she said. She remembered the wizened little fellow who had looked up at her with big, sleepy eyes, when she had made her incursion to the kitchen.
“Well, we’ve found his mother, at any rate. The other children mostly belong to poor little working-class girls.”
“Are there many baby-farmers in England?”
“Hundreds,” said the officer. “They’re supposed to be under police supervision, but, of course, they’re not. There is no law to prevent anybody adopting a child, though the actual adoption is not recognized in law.”
“In England, then, there must be hundreds?” she said, her heart sinking.
“Thousands.”
“There is no list of them?”
He shook his head.
“There may be a few hundreds on the books. You would know that better yourself, Miss Maughan, as you’re at the Yard.” And then, unconsciously extinguishing her last lingering hope: “I was once asked to trace a little baby that had been handed over to a ‘farmer,’ but it is like looking for a needle in a haystack, trying to find an ‘adopted child’ after trace has been lost of it,” he said. “A few of them drift into the workhouse schools; most of them die. It doesn’t pay the kind of woman who makes a living out of that sort of thing to feed them properly. There should be a State institution where unwanted children could be taken and cared for and become an asset to the country.”
He had been gone half an hour when the Plymouth call came through, and the news was not especially helpful. Martha Druze had qualified as a maternity nurse in the years ’89-’90, and had left the hospital to take up a private position as a general nurse. It was believed she had gone abroad, but there was no actual evidence of this fact except that the present matron, who remembered her, had received a postal card mailed at Port Said a month or two after Martha had gone away. There was also a rumour that she had married very well, to somebody who was variously described as a carpenter of Cape Town and a rancher in Australia. There was only one clue which was faintly promising. Martha was known to have registered herself in the books of a London agency, the name of which Leslie jotted down.
As soon as the conversation was through, she searched the telephone directory for the nurses’ agency. It was not there; possibly it had been overwhelmed by competition and had died, as so many other agencies die, from sheer inanition. To make absolutely sure on this point she called up one well-known woman agent and asked her a question.
“Ashley’s Agency? Oh yes. It is now called the Central Nurses Bureau—in fact, we are Ashley’s Agency, though we never use that title.”
Leslie explained who she was and what she required.
“If you’ll come round, we will show you the old books; we still have them,” was the encouraging reply.
Leslie Maughan put on her hat and coat and went out at once. Halfway down she remembered Mr. Coldwell’s gift, and went back to buckle on a most uncomfortable garter. The premises of the agency were off Regent Street, no great distance to walk, and she was there in five minutes.
The secretary, who had replied to her telephone message, was already selecting the books for her inspection, and by great good fortune the first of these, she had discovered, contained the very information that the girl had asked for.
“Yes, we have her on our books—Martha Druze. She applied to us before she left Plymouth Hospital apparently, for that is her original address, and we placed her in a situation in the early part of 1891.”
The secretary had opened the book, and her finger pointed to a line. Leslie read—she found herself gripping tight to the edge of the table. Looking at her, the secretary saw that her eyes were blazing and wondered what there was in this simple record to engender such excitement.
“It was the only job we ever got for her,” she began.
Leslie shook her head.
“She would not want another,” she said.
XV
Lady Raytham had begun a letter to her husband when the district messenger arrived with Leslie’s note. His lordship, in his aimless way, had gone on to Bombay, and was suffering from an old trouble of his; he had written a very long letter describing
