“We’ll hear what the old woman has to say on her own terms,” he said.  “She may have something to tell that is really of the greatest importance in this case:  she certainly has something to tell.  And, as Spargo says, she’ll probably drink herself to death in about as short a time as possible.  Come back—­let’s hear her story.”  So they returned to the gin-scented atmosphere, and a formal document was drawn out by which the proprietor of the Watchman bound himself to pay Mrs. Gutch the sum of three pounds a week for life (Mrs. Gutch insisting on the insertion of the words “every Saturday morning, punctual and regular”) and then Mrs. Gutch was invited to tell her tale.  And Mrs. Gutch settled herself to do so, and Spargo prepared to take it down, word for word.

“Which the story, as that young man called it, is not so long as a monkey’s tail nor so short as a Manx cat’s, gentlemen,” said Mrs. Gutch; “but full of meat as an egg.  Now, you see, when that Maitland affair at Market Milcaster came off, I was housekeeper to Miss Jane Baylis at Brighton.  She kept a boarding-house there, in Kemp Town, and close to the sea-front, and a very good thing she made out of it, and had saved a nice bit, and having, like her sister, Mrs. Maitland, had a little fortune left her by her father, as was at one time a publican here in London, she had a good lump of money.  And all that money was in this here Maitland’s hands, every penny.  I very well remember the day when the news came about that affair of Maitland robbing the bank.  Miss Baylis, she was like a mad thing when she saw it in the paper, and before she’d seen it an hour she was off to Market Milcaster.  I went up to the station with her, and she told me then before she got in the train that Maitland had all her fortune and her savings, and her sister’s, his wife’s, too, and that she feared all would be lost.”

“Mrs. Maitland was then dead,” observed Spargo without looking up from his writing-block.

“She was, young man, and a good thing, too,” continued Mrs. Gutch.  “Well, away went Miss Baylis, and no more did I hear or see for nearly a week, and then back she comes, and brings a little boy with her—­which was Maitland’s.  And she told me that night that she’d lost every penny she had in the world, and that her sister’s money, what ought to have been the child’s, was gone, too, and she said her say about Maitland.  However, she saw well to that child; nobody could have seen better.  And very soon after, when Maitland was sent to prison for ten years, her and me talked about things.  ‘What’s the use,’ says I to her, ’of your letting yourself get so fond of that child, and looking after it as you do, and educating it, and so on?’ I says.  ‘Why not?’ says she.  ‘Tisn’t yours,’ I says, ‘you haven’t no right to it,’ I says.  ‘As soon as ever its father comes out,’ says I,’ he’ll come and claim it, and you can’t do nothing to stop him.’  Well, gentlemen, if you’ll believe me, never did I see a woman look as she did when I says all that.  And she up and swore that Maitland should never see or touch the child again—­not under no circumstances whatever.”