Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/250

246 which had been left in a closet of the studio. He gathered the bonnet was of crepe, the kind often worn by widows.

That was all. The neighbors who might possibly have known the journalist were not to be found. Some people named Mygatt had gone to Paris. If there were friends, which no doubt there were, the detectives had not been able to trace them.

"Stupid fools!" exclaimed Robert Taylor. "There must be some way to find out more about my child. Why don't they look up birth certificates?" Then he remembered Rebecca told him she had been born on shipboard and perhaps the birth had not been reported. He was ignorant of the regulations in such matters. He wondered what had been the name of the vessel. Did Rebecca know?

He asked her one day quite casually, having led the conversation to ships, but she did not know. Another time he asked her if she had any idea as to what had become of the dancing lady whom she had called Mamma—where she was and what her stage name might be, if she had one, but Rebecca had no idea.

"She used to call herself Nell Morgan before she married Papa but she dropped that name, which wasn't her real name, and called herself