Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Issue 03 (1927-09).djvu/76

 tended inspection of the home's inmates the previous day.

"Morbleu," de Grandin muttered as he liberated the little one from her bonds, "another?"

"Mother Martin came for Betsy and tied her up," the child informed us as she raised herself to a sitting posture. "She told Betsy she would send her to heaven with her papa and mamma, but Betsy must be good and not make a fuss when her hands and feet were tied."

She smiled vaguely at de Grandin. "Why doesn't Mother Martin come for Betsy?" she demanded. "She said she would come and send me to heaven in a few minutes, but I waited and waited, and she didn't come, and the cloth over my face kept tickling my nose, and"

"Mother Martin has gone away on business, ma petite," the Frenchman interrupted. "She said she could not send you to your papa and maman, but if you are a very good little girl you may go to them some day. Meantime"—he fished in his jacket pocket, finally produced a packet of chocolates—"here is the best substitute I can find for heaven at this time, chérie."

, old chap, I'll certainly have to admit you went right to the heart of the matter," I congratulated as we drove homeward through the paling dawn, "but I can't for the life of me figure out how you did it."

His answering smile was a trifle wan. The horrors we had witnessed at the matron's cottage had been almost too great a strain for even his iron nerve. "Partly it was luck," he confessed wearily, "and partly it was thought.

"When first we arrived at the home for orphans I had nothing to guide me, but I was convinced that the little ones had not wandered off voluntarily. The environment seemed too good to make any such hypothesis possible. Everywhere I looked I saw evidences of loving care, and faces which could be trusted. But somewhere, I felt, as an old wound feels the coming changes of the weather, there was something evil, some evil force working against the welfare of those poor ones. Where could it be, and by whom was it exerted? 'This is for us to find out,' I tell me as I look over the attendants who were visible in the chapel.

"Gervaise, he is an old woman in trousers. Never would he hurt a living thing, no, not even a fly, unless it bit him first.

"Mère Martin, she was of a saintly appearance, but when I was presented to her I learn something which sets my brain to thinking. On the softness of her white hands are stains and callouses. Why? I hold her hand longer than convention required, and all the time I ask me, 'What have she done to put these hardnesses on her hands?'

"To this I had no answer, so I bethought me perhaps my nose could tell what my sense of touch could not. When I raised her hand to my lips I made a most careful examination of it, and also I did smell. Trowbridge, my friend, I made sure those disfigurements were due to HCl—what you call hydrochloric acid in English.

Morbleu, but this is extraordinary,' I tell me. 'Why should one who has no need to handle acid have those burns on her skin?'

That are for you to answer in good time,' I reply to me. And then I temporarily forget the lady and her hands, because I am sure that Monsieur Gervaise desires to know what we say to the young children. Eh bien, I did do him an injustice there, but the wisest of us makes mistakes, my friend, and he gave me much reason for suspicion.

"When the little Betsy was an-