“How strange, how very strange!” said Mrs. Lanier, greatly troubled. “Why should she have changed her mind so suddenly? If she started to come to me, why didn’t she come?”
“The only reasonable solution to the problem is that she changed her mind and went on to New York by the night-train. She evidently did not go to a hotel, for I have looked over all the hotel registers of that time, and her name does not appear on any of them. So far there is nothing very mysterious; she might have taken the night-train.”
“Oh, Arthur, she probably did. Why do you say she might have?”
“Because you see I have a sequel to my story. You had a sequel to yours, a sequel of a box. Mine is a sequel of a bird—the blue heron I gave the little Lady Jane. I bought that same blue heron from a bird-fancier on Charter Street this very morning.”
“How can you be sure that it is the same bird, Arthur? How can you be sure?”
“Because it was marked in a peculiar way. It had three distinct black crosses on one wing. I knew the rogue as soon as I saw him, although he has grown twice the size, and—would you believe it?—he has the same leather band on his leg that I sewed on more than two years ago.”
“And you found out where the fancier bought him?” asked Mrs. Lanier breathlessly.
“Of course I asked, the first thing, and all the information I could get from the merchant was that he bought him from an Italian a few days before, who was very anxious to sell him. When I called the bird by his name, Tony, he recognized it instantly. So you see that he has always been called by that name.”
“The child must have lost him, or he must have been stolen. Then the box, the jewel-box here too. Good heavens! Arthur, what can it mean?”
“It means that Mrs. Churchill never left New Orleans,” said Arthur decidedly.