Spaulding followed him immediately.

"Howdy," he said genially, as he pushed his own hat on the back of his
head and bit hungrily at the end of a cigar. "Suppose you've been
impatient--unless too busy to think about it."

"I'd like to know what you've found out as quickly as you can tell me."

"Well, to begin with the kid. I had some trouble at the convent. They're
a close-mouthed lot, nuns. But I frightened them. Told them it was a
property matter, and unless they answered my questions privately they'd
have to answer them in court. Then they came through."

"Well?"

Spaulding lit his cigar and handed the match to Ruyler, who ground it
under his heel.

"Just about nineteen years ago a Frenchwoman, giving her name as Madame
Dubois, arrived one day with a child a year old and asked the nuns to
take care of it, promising a fancy payment. The child had been on a farm
with a wet-nurse (French style), but Madame Dubois wanted it to learn
from the first to speak proper English and French, and to live in a
refined atmosphere generally from the time it was able to take notice.
She said she was on the stage and had to travel, so was not able to give
the kid the attention it should have, and the doctor had told her that
traveling was bad for kids that age, anyhow. Her lawyers would pay the
baby's board on the first of every month--"