“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 answering my questions, she tells me that she has seen a ‘white lady,’ tall and with flowing robes, like an angel, come into the dormitory where she and her companions slept on many occasions, and I have ascertained from previous questions that no one enters those sleeping quarters after the lights are out unless there is specific need for a visit. What was I to think? Had the little one dreamed it, or has she seen this so mysterious ‘white lady’ on her midnight visits? It is hard to say where recollection stops and romance begins in children’s tales, my friend, as you well know, but the little Betsy was most sure the ‘white lady’ had come only on those nights when her little companions vanished.

“Here we had something from which to reason, though the morsel of fact was small. However, when I talk further with the child, she informed me it was Mère Martin who had warned her against us, saying we would surely cut her tongue with a knife if she talked to us. This, again, was worthy of thought. But Monsieur Gervaise had been smelling at the door while we were interrogating the children, and he had also disapproved of our seeing them alone. My suspicion of him would not die easily, my friend; I was stubborn, and refused to let my mind take me where it would.

“So, as you know, when we had posted the four-footed sentry inside the children’s door, I made sure we would catch a fish in our trap, and next morning I was convinced we had, for did not Gervaise wear his arm in a sling? Truly, he did.

“But at the laundry they showed me no torn pajamas of his, while I found the gowns of both Mademoiselle Bosworth and Madame Martin torn as if the dog had bitten them. More mystery. Which way should I turn, if at all?