CHAPTER XXVIII

A WOMAN'S CONFESSION

"The wicked are overthrown and are not; but the house of the righteous shall stand."--Prov. xii, 7

After making their way from the perilous swamp in which they had seen the hog-farmer engulfed, the detectives, with Wayne, made all haste to the Grimes farm, hoping they might find the kidnapped child there unharmed.

Their interview with Maria, however, had been bitterly disappointing. When she told of Mollie's venture into the swamp, with little Doris strapped on her back, Wayne collapsed and had to be taken home.

The horrible death of Grimes which he had just witnessed, convinced him that a similar fate must have overtaken his baby. The pictures his imagination conceived as to what took place after the children had passed beyond Maria's range of vision were more than any father could endure with stoicism.

Maria, when they told her of Peter's tragic end, manifested no trace of grief or affection. She dropped down on the door-step with a sigh that was plainly one of relief. The wild, hunted look which had for so many years dwelt in her eyes, giving her an aspect of fierceness which she was far from feeling, gave place to the stupid dullness and placidity that had been hers before Peter Grimes ever walked into her life and home.

"Then I reckon I kin tell yo'-all jist how mean he war," she remarked in a voice that was not unpleasant. "Thar wa'n't a dangder scoundrel ever trod shoe leather. He needed killin'. He war jus' nachully mean. Ary man, woman er child on earth thet went contrary ter him he'd fling in th' bog es quick es scat. Ef I be alive ter-day hit air becus I allus done whut he sed. Many's th' time I'd a-gi'n them young-uns sumpin' ter eat ef I didn't know he'd pitch me inter th' bog fer doin' hit. Thet thar Mollie war th' bes' leetle gal on earth. I knowed th' dawg hain't a-goin' ter harm 'em when I sic'd 'im onter them. But Pete tol' me ter do hit an' I knowed I mus'."

Poor thing. She was actually trembling.

Fourteen years of living under such a strain would have told upon a stronger mentality than Maria's.

"An' I got thet brat," she went on, indicating Ambrose. "When he war leetle I thunk mebbe he'd grow up ter be a good son ter me, but he's jes' like his Pappy an' orter be put away whar he cain't do nobody no harm. I'm mos' es skeered o' him es I war o' Pete."

"All right," interrupted the Chief, "we'll look after him for you. It isn't safe for the community to have such people at large. The greatest kindness their own folks can ever do them is to put them some place where they will be cared for and treated like human beings but kept from doing harm to anybody. They're mental cripples. In other words, their heads are twisted inside just like some people have a mis-shapen arm or leg which keeps them from using it. These fellows with twisted, warped brains shouldn't be expected to use them, either. They can't use them right and when they try to use them, they only commit crimes. And now Mrs. Grimes,--"

Maria raised her head to say morosely: "Doan yo' call me thet name no mor'. I hain't Mrs. Grimes. I don't never wanter hyar th' name spoke. I'm Maria Honeycut, ole Am. Honeycut's datter an' this hyar farm es my place that my Pappy giv me."

There was a trace of pride in the poor woman's tone which had not been there before and which demanded respect as well as pity. She, too, had suffered under the domination of the ogre.

She and Ambrose, however, accompanied the officers to headquarters to make what statements were necessary before a notary and to arrange for the boy's admittance to an institution. There was so much to tell and, for Maria, conversation was difficult. After the first sudden outpouring of the fear and resentment she had nursed for years she retreated into her usual shell of reticence and responded only to questioning.

But when the Chief entered the big room at headquarters he stood for an instant as if transfixed. What on earth, he wondered, had been brought in? A kindergarten? It looked like it. There were children on all sides of him and, squarely facing him, the brightest-eyed little girl just entering upon her teens that he had ever seen. She wore her hair in two long braids that fell below her waist, was bare-footed and hatless and clad mostly in rags. She, as well as the other children, were soiled and disheveled and drenched with rain. It was plain they had been out in the storm that had passed. But the child that particularly riveted the Chief's gaze was the curly-headed, winsome baby in the oldest girl's arms.

He turned to the lieutenant at the desk. "Where'd you find her?" he asked, in evident relief.

"Who--which--Oh, that one?" returned the man at the desk. "She came in with the bunch. Captain Carey brought 'em. He found 'em cruising down the river on a motor launch. He's up-stairs. Shall I call him down? He's got a report to make about a couple of fellows who jumped overboard."

The Chief wanted very much to see Captain Carey and said so. A moment later he and the river captain were closeted in his private office comparing notes regarding the launch, the kidnappers, all of whom seemed to have met death within a few moments of one another, Mollie's remarkable story and the recovery of Wayne's little girl.

"Of course, you'll get the reward," the Chief told the captain, as he reached for the telephone to notify the distracted father that his baby was safe.

"I don't see it that way," the captain instantly retorted. "I didn't find her. It was that little girl. From what she says and you've just told me, if she hadn't taken the child and fled with her into the swamp, keeping her up in the trees, that fellow Grimes would have flung her in the bog two or three hours before the other fellows got there looking for her."

"That's right," said the Chief. "I'll mention that to Wayne. What we've done has only been in the line of duty, just what we'd do for anybody in trouble."

"That's right," echoed the captain.

Connection with the Wayne establishment was quickly secured but the telephone was answered by the butler. Mr. Wayne was ill and unable to speak to anyone, he said.

"Tell him," said the Chief, "that his little girl is safe, well, unharmed and happy down at police headquarters. I think that news will make him get well at once."

No better restorative could have been administered to Harris Wayne. Within ten minutes after the message came over the wire he was on his way to town. A regiment of doctors and nurses could not have deterred him. When he dashed into the room at headquarters and saw little Doris in Mollie's arms his impetuous rush almost frightened the child.

After her one glad cry of "Daddy!" she flung her arms about Mollie's neck as if fearing to be taken away.

"Muh-Mollie! Muh-Mollie!" she repeated over and over. Mollie held her firmly, reluctant to release her even into her father's arms. Realizing that the baby she so adored was going to be taken from her and out of her sight, Mollie made one last desperate stand.

"She wants me--an' I love her," she declared, with tears in her big, lustrous eyes. "Ef she hain't got no mammy she needs me ter look arter her, so's she won't git stol'd ag'in."

But the father's thoughts were, for the moment, solely for his child. "That's all right about the reward, Chief," he found time to say. "Give it to this girl. She deserves credit. But give me my baby and let me get away. I'm all in."

The baby was taken from Mollie's arms and given to her father. As he carried her from the room she waved her chubby hand in farewell.

"Bye-bye, muh-Mollie--bye-bye, muh-Mollie!"

Mollie buried her head in her hands and sobbed aloud.

The lieutenant at the desk was speaking over the telephone. "Have they got the body?" he asked. "Yes. Black mustache, eh! You say Burke identified him as the fellow called Bailey? All right. Send down any letters or papers you may find on him."

He turned to the Chief, who was trying to make friends with Leathy, for as yet none of the children would talk. The sight of Mollie in tears impressed them with the idea that she was being abused and they must each stand by her.

"They've got that fellow Bailey's body," the lieutenant remarked. "There was an unmailed letter in his pocket addressed to some woman. They're sending it down."

A messenger soon arrived with the expected packet. After the Chief examined it, a look of amazed incredulity overspread his face. "Well, I'll be darned!" he ejaculated. Then he called one of his men, gave the latter a brief message to deliver and told him to go in civilian clothes. "Don't attract any attention," he said, "and fetch her right back with you. Take a cab."

An hour or so later, after he had been talking for a long time in his private office with a woman whose identity no one knew, the Chief sent for a notary. And after the latter, as well as the woman had gone, he put papers in the safe which he said would be the means of proving Mollie's identity.

Meanwhile the matron was instructed to make the little waifs comfortable for the night. Mollie, alone, refused to be comforted or comfortable. She shivered in her wet clothes and gratefully accepted a policeman's coat in lieu of a jacket, but refused to part with the bottle in which she had thoughtfully carried milk for her "Honey-baby" when they traversed the death-haunted swamps. Bolt upright she sat, listening, listening for the summons which her love and intuition knew would come.

It was nearing midnight when the messenger came. Mollie was on her feet instantly. She had never seen James, Wayne's chauffeur, before, but she sensed that he had come for her. "Mr. Wayne sent me down to fetch up the girl, Mollie," said the man. "The baby wants her."

Mollie started forward, the bottle that had once contained corn liquor gripped tightly in her hands. A policeman handed her a newspaper. She tore off a piece, wrapped it about the bottle and hurried out the door with the chauffeur.

It was not her first ride in an automobile. They had driven up from the river in the police patrol only that afternoon. Before the Wayne residence was reached Mollie had told the chauffeur of the thrilling experience and learned all the principal points of difference between the Wayne limousine and the "black Maria."

The car had hardly paused before Mollie was out and running up the steps, brushing past the astonished butler who opened the door, and tearing on through the house as if she had entered it many times before. Straight up the stairs she sped, her queer little figure with its bare feet and legs extending rather startlingly from below a policeman's coat, appearing an incongruous note in the harmony of that stately, sumptuous mansion. The nursery door was open and Mollie, hearing the baby's voice, dashed in.

"Muh-Ma-Mollie!" cried the little one, extending her arms and fairly leaping into Mollie's embrace.

"She wouldn't take her bottle--she wouldn't do anything," explained the poor little rich girl's father, by way of excuse for having sent for Mollie.

The latter examined the bottle they had been trying to persuade little Doris to accept. It was modern and extremely sanitary. Mollie inspected it and put it contemptuously aside.

"She knowed it wa'n't hern," she remarked, with great dignity. "I reckon she wanted this'n," and to Harris Wayne's horror she took from out its newspaper wrappings the corn liquor relic, partially filled with a lacteal fluid evidently procured by some kindly policeman from the open can of a delicatessen store, and, after first testing the milk herself, placed the improvised rubber top of the bottle in his child's mouth. The baby accepted it with gurgles of joy. The child's nurse cried out in horror. Mollie sniffed.

"She doan know nawthin' 'bout babies," she remarked, of the nurse. "She hain't hed th' sperience I've hed."

Neither Wayne nor Mollie knew that down at police headquarters, securely locked in the safe, were papers that told of Mollie's family and the fortune, rightfully hers, that was invested through his own bank and remitted in monthly sums, supposedly for her education and maintenance, through the medium of a woman connected with a fashionable private school.

Mollie's story had been corroborated. Bailey's sister had confessed.