Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/313



ATE one afternoon in February, a policeman, standing on the corner of Thompson and West Fourth Streets, gazing abstractedly across Washington Square, felt something brushing against his trousers. Looking down, he saw a little child of scarcely three years holding something up to him.

"See! See!" she was saying.

The officer opened his eyes in amazement. In one little fist the baby held a fire opal as large as a robin's egg; in the other was a shriveled black hand.

He grabbed them from the child and questioned her; but her prattle was meaningless. Taking her carefully in charge, he hurried to the station-house and reported the incident to the sergeant at the desk.

Next morning the city papers "played up" the account of the astonishing affair, with a picture of the child, the officer, and the two extraordinary objects with which the baby was found. That afternoon the mother of the little girl came to claim her daughter but was unable to explain the incident. She lived in a tenement on a level with the elevated railroad, on West Third Street, and had missed little Elsa at five o'clock. Inquiries in the neighborhood elicited the fact that Elsa had been seen about four o'clock in the after- Rh