The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [3778]
But I had another reason than this for urging her on. I had noticed how, at the sight of her slight figure descending the slope, some half-dozen men or so had separated themselves from this group, with every appearance of intending to waylay and question her. She noticed this too, and drawing up more closely to my side, exclaimed with marked feeling:
"Save me from these men and I will tell you something that no one--"
But here she stopped, here our very thoughts stopped. A shout had risen from the group at the water-edge; a shout which made us both turn, and even caused the men who had started to follow us to wheel about and rush back to the dock with every appearance of intense excitement.
"What is it? What can it be?" faltered my greatly-alarmed companion.
"They have found something. See! what is that the man in the boat is holding up? It looks like--"
But she was already half-way to the point, outstripping the very men whose importunities she had shrunk from a moment before. I was not far behind her, and almost immediately we found ourselves wedged among the agitated group leaning over the little object which had been tossed ashore into the first hand outstretched to receive it.
It was a second little shoe--filled with sand and dripping with water, but recognizable as similar to the one already found on the preceding day high up on the bank. As this fact was borne in on us all, a groan of pity broke from more than one pair of lips, and eye after eye stole up the hillside to that far window in the great pile above us where the mother's form could be dimly discerned swaying in an agitation caught from our own excitement.
But there was one amongst us whose glance never left that little shoe. The train she had been so anxious to take whistled and went thundering by, but she never moved or noticed. Suddenly she reached out her hand.
"Let me see it, please," she entreated. "I was her nurse; let me take it in my hand."
The man who held it passed it over. She examined it long and closely.
"Yes, it is hers," said she. But in another moment she had laid it down with what I thought was a very peculiar look.
Instantly it was caught up and carried with a rush up the slope to where Mrs. Ocumpaugh could be seen awaiting it with outstretched arms. But I did not linger to mark her reception of it. Miss Graham had drawn me to one side and was whispering in my ear:
"I must talk to you. I can not keep back another moment what I think or what I feel. Some one is playing with Mrs. Ocumpaugh's fears. That shoe is Gwendolen's, but it is not the mate of the one found on the bank above. That was for the left foot _and so is this one_. Did you not notice?"
II
"A FEARSOME MAN"
The effect of this statement upon me was greater than even she had contemplated.
"You thought the child had been stolen for the reward she would bring?" she continued. "She was not; she was taken out of pure hate, and that is why I suffer so. What may they not do to her! In what hole hide her! My darling, O my darling!"
She was going off into hysterics, but the look and touch I gave her recalled her to herself.
"We need to be calm," I urged. "You, because you have something of importance to impart, and I, because of the action I must take as soon as the facts you have concealed become known to me. What gives you such confidence in this belief, which I am sure is not shared by the police, and who is the _some one_ who, as you say, is playing upon Mrs. Ocumpaugh's fears? A short time ago it was as _the wretch_ you spoke of him. Are not _some one_ and _the wretch_ one and the same person, and can you not give him now a name?"
We had been moving all this time in the direction of the station and had now reached