a son to his parents. How kidnappers ever get caught is a mystery to me. I searched Marvis Bay like a bloodhound, but nobody came forward to claim the infant. You would have thought, from the lack of interest in him, that he was stopping there all by himself in a cottage of his own. It wasn’t till, by another inspiration, I thought to ask the sweet-stall man that I got on the track. The sweet-stall man, who seemed to have seen a lot of him, said that the child’s name was Kegworthy, and that his parents lived at a place called Ocean Rest.
It then remained to find Ocean Rest. And eventually, after visiting Ocean View, Ocean Prospect, Ocean Breeze, Ocean Cottage, Ocean Bungalow, Ocean Nook and Ocean Homestead, I trailed it down.
I knocked at the door. Nobody answered. I knocked again. I could hear movements inside, but nobody appeared. I was just going to get to work with that knocker in such a way that it would filter through these people’s heads that I wasn’t standing there just for the fun of the thing, when a voice from somewhere above shouted “Hi!”
I looked up and saw a round, pink face, with grey whiskers east and west of it, staring down at me from an upper window.
“Hi!” it shouted again. “You can’t come in.”
“I don’t want to come in.”
“Because—Oh, is that Tootles?”
“My name is not Tootles. Are you Mr. Kegworthy?