It developed that Rokoff, fearing to take the child aboard the
Kincaid by day, had hidden it in a low den where nameless infants
were harboured, intending to carry it to the steamer after dark.
His confederate and chief lieutenant, Paulvitch, true to the long
years of teaching of his wily master, had at last succumbed to
the treachery and greed that had always marked his superior, and,
lured by the thoughts of the immense ransom that he might win
by returning the child unharmed, had divulged the secret of its
parentage to the woman who maintained the foundling asylum. Through
her he had arranged for the substitution of another infant, knowing
full well that never until it was too late would Rokoff suspect
the trick that had been played upon him.
The woman had promised to keep the child until Paulvitch returned
to England; but she, in turn, had been tempted to betray her trust
by the lure of gold, and so had opened negotiations with Lord
Greystoke's solicitors for the return of the child.
Esmeralda, the old Negro nurse whose absence on a vacation in America
at the time of the abduction of little Jack had been attributed
by her as the cause of the calamity, had returned and positively
identified the infant.
The ransom had been paid, and within ten days of the date of
his kidnapping the future Lord Greystoke, none the worse for his
experience, had been returned to his father's home.
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