A smart maid, the only modern thing which we had seen in the house, had brought in some tea. As she was serving it the door opened and a youth entered the room. He was a remarkable lad, pale-faced and fair-haired, with excitable light blue eyes which blazed into a sudden flame of emotion and joy as they rested upon his father. He rushed forward and threw his arms round his neck with the abandon of a loving girl.

“Oh, daddy,” he cried, “I did not know that you were due yet. I should have been here to meet you. Oh, I am so glad to see you!”

Ferguson gently disengaged himself from the embrace with some little show of embarrassment.

“Dear old chap,” said he, patting the flaxen head with a very tender hand. “I came early because my friends, Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, have been persuaded to come down and spend an evening with us.”

“Is that Mr. Holmes, the detective?”

“Yes.”

The youth looked at us with a very penetrating and, as it seemed to me, unfriendly gaze.

“What about your other child, Mr. Ferguson?” asked Holmes. “Might we make the acquaintance of the baby?”

“Ask Mrs. Mason to bring baby down,” said Ferguson. The boy went off with a curious, shambling gait which told my surgical eyes eyes that he was suffering from a weak spine. Presently he returned, and behind him came a tall, gaunt woman bearing in her arms a very beautiful child, dark-eyed, golden-haired, a wonderful mixture of the Saxon and the Latin. Ferguson was evidently devoted to it, for he took it into his arms and fondled it most tenderly.

“Fancy anyone having the heart to hurt him,” he muttered as he glanced down at the small, angry red pucker upon the cherub throat.

It was at this moment that I chanced to glance at Holmes and saw a most singular intentness in his expression. His face was as set as if it had been carved out of old ivory, and his eyes, which had glanced for a moment at father and child, were now fixed with eager curiosity upon something at the other side of the room. Following his gaze I could only guess that he was looking out through the window at the melancholy, dripping garden. It is true that a shutter had half closed outside and obstructed the view, but none the less it was certainly at the window that Holmes was fixing his concentrated attention. Then he smiled, and his eyes came back to the baby. On its chubby neck there was this small puckered mark. Without speaking, Holmes examined it with care. Finally he shook one of the dimpled fists which waved in front of him.

“Good-bye, little man. You have made a strange start in life. Nurse, I should wish to have a word with you in private.”

He took her aside and spoke earnestly for a few minutes. I only heard the last words, which were: “Your anxiety will soon, I hope, be set at rest.” The woman, who seemed to be a sour, silent kind of creature, withdrew with the child.

“What is Mrs. Mason like?” asked Holmes.

The Growler and the Masher were waiting for him in the drawing-room of the Hotel Franklin, a small family-hotel near the Trocadero. Mme. Mergy had not yet written to him.

"Oh," he said, "I can trust her! She will hang on to Daubrecq until she is certain."

However, toward the end of the afternoon, he began to grow impatient and anxious. He was fighting one of those battles - the last, he hoped - in which the least delay might jeopardize everything. If Daubrecq threw Mme. Mergy off the scent, how was he to be caught again? They no longer had weeks or days, but only a few hours, a terribly limited number of hours, in which to repair any mistakes that they might commit.

He saw the proprietor of the hotel and asked him:

"Are you sure that there is no express letter for my two friends?"

"Quite sure, sir."

"Nor for me, M. Nicole?"

"No, sir."

"That's curious," said Lupin. "We were certain that we should hear from Mme. Audran."

Audran was the name under which Clarisse was staying at the hotel.

"But the lady has been," said the proprietor.

"What's that?"

"She came some time ago and, as the gentlemen were not there, left a letter in her room. Didn't the porter tell you?"

Lupin and his friends hurried upstairs. There was a letter on the table.

"Hullo!" said Lupin. "It's been opened! How is that? And why has it een cut about with scissors?"

The letter contained the following lines:

"Daubrecq has spent the week at the Hotel Central. This morning he had his luggage taken to the Gare de --- and telephoned to reserve a berth in the sleeping-car --- for ---

"I do not know when the train starts. But I shall be at the station all the afternoon. Come as soon as you can, all three of you. We will arrange to kidnap him."

"What next?" said the Masher. "At which station? And where's the sleeping-car for? She has cut out just the words we wanted!"

"Yes," said the Growler. "Two snips with the scissors in each place; and the words which we most want are gone. Who ever saw such a thing? Has Mme. Mergy lost her head?"

Lupin did not move. A rush of blood was beating at his temples with such violence that he glued his fists to them and pressed with all his might. His fever returned, burning and riotous, and his will, incensed to the verge of physical suffering, concentrated itself upon that stealthy enemy, which must be controlled then and there, if he himself did not wish to be irretrievably beaten.

He muttered, very calmly:

"Daubrecq has been here."

"Daubrecq!"

"We can't suppose that Mme. Mergy has been amusing herself by cutting out those two words. Daubrecq has been here. Mme. Mergy thought that she was watching him. He was watching her instead."

"How?"

"Doubtless through that hall-porter who did not tell us that Mme. Mergy had been to the hotel, but who must have told Daubrecq. He came. He read the letter. And, by way of getting at us, he contented himself with cutting out the essential words."

"We can find out... we can ask... "