Fumbling, Margaret and Sarah moved towards the gate when they heard a sound; they both stood still straining their ears.

‘It can’t be,’ said Mrs Wallow.

‘If it is, it’s a miracle,’ murmured Sarah.

Margaret moved towards the gate. ‘Hi!’ she called. ‘Hi! Are you a cab?’

Out of the murkiness came a fruity voice. ‘I am. Where was you wanting to go?’

Margaret told him. ‘Oh, please take us.’

The cabby climbed down from his box. ‘All right then, in you go.’

He opened the cab door, shoved Margaret inside and slammed the door.

‘I’m going too,’ Sarah called out.

The cabman gave her a push which sent her sprawling back across the pavement, then he climbed up to his seat and, disregarding the row going on in his cab, he drove off.

Margaret did her best to scream but something was shoved into her mouth. She fought like a savage to open the cab door but she could not release her hands from an iron grip.

Then a voice spoke – a voice she had never forgotten.

‘No good fighting, Margaret Thursday. I still have my strength but I’ve you to thank for losing me everything else, so now you’re going to pay for it.’

After they were well clear of the square the driver pulled up his cab and opened the cab door. Then he tied Margaret up. He put strong rope round her legs and wrists and the small gag was taken from her mouth and a larger evil-tasting one shoved in its place and then securely bandaged into position.

‘Throw her on the floor,’ said the voice Margaret now knew as being Matron’s. ‘She won’t be seen there and I can keep my feet on her and give her a kick if she moves.’

Back at the theatre, anxious consultations were taking place. The police were told, and came round at once to learn what they could from Sarah, but Sarah had not always listened to what she called Margaret’s tales.

‘I don’t know where the orphanage is where Margaret was, though she told me often enough. Do you remember, Miss Katie? She must have told you.’

‘She did,’ Katie agreed, ‘but I am afraid it won’t help. It was called St Luke’s and was a home for one hundred boys and girls of Christian background.’

‘She never mentioned a town, Miss?’ the constable asked.

Katie tried to remember. ‘I don’t think she knew a place. The orphans were marched to school so I suppose there was a village, but she never said what it was called.’

‘What she did talk of was where Lord and Lady Corkberry lived,’ Sarah remembered. ‘She had some tale about Miss Lavinia – Lord Delaware’s granddaughter, that is – being a scullery maid there, but I always thought it was just one of Margaret’s tales.’

‘It wasn’t,’ said Katie. ‘It was true, Lavinia told me herself and she told me about the wicked Matron and—’

The constable stopped her. ‘It’s that Matron we are anxious to interview. If we knew where that orphanage is we might find it’s there she has taken the little girl.’