Part 22 (1/2)

”That took him aback, but not unduly; so then I added, 'I'm an inquiry agent with a very delicate case in hand, and if you'll tell me it may solve as heart-breaking a mystery as I've ever handled.' I was treating him like a gentleman, but I believe in that; there's no shorter cut to whether a man is one or not.”

”Well, his face had lit up, and a very fine face it is; it hadn't blackened for the fifth of a second; but I had a disappointment in store.

'I'd tell you his name with all my heart,' he said, 'only I don't really know it myself. He said it was John Green-but his handkerchiefs were marked ”A. A. U.” ' ”

”Tony's initials!” cried Tony's father.

”But it never was Tony under a false name,” his sister vowed. ”That settles it for me, Mr. Thrush.”

”Not even if he'd got into some sc.r.a.pe or adventure, Miss Upton?”

”He would never give a name that wasn't his.”

”Suppose he felt he had disgraced his name?”

”My brother Tony wouldn't do it!”

”He might feel he had?”

”He might,” the father agreed, ”even if he'd done no such thing; in fact, he's just the kind of boy who would take an exaggerated view of some things.” His mind went back to his last talk with Horace on the subject.

”Or he might feel he was about to do something, shall we say, unworthy of you all?” Thrush made the suggestion with much delicacy.

”Then I don't think he'd do it,” declared loyal Lettice.

”Let us hear what you think he did,” said Mr. Upton.

”It's not what I think; it's what this man Baumgartner thinks, and his story that you ought to hear.”

And that which they now heard at second-hand was in fact a wonderfully true version-up to a point-of poor Pocket's condition and adventures-with the sleep-walking and the shooting left out-from the early morning of his meeting with Baumgartner until the late afternoon of that day.

Baumgartner had actually described the boy's long sleep in his chair; it was with the conversation when he awoke that the creative work began in earnest.

”That's a good man!” said Mr. Upton, with unimaginable irony. ”I'd like to take him by the hand-and those infernal Knaggses by the scruff of their dirty necks-and that old hag Harbottle by the hair!”

”I think of dear darling Tony,” said Lettice, in acute distress; ”lying out all night with asthma-it was enough to kill him-or to send him out of his mind.”

”I wonder if it could have done that,” remarked Thrush, in a tone of serious speculation which he was instantly called upon to explain.

”What are you keeping back?” cried Lettice, the first to see that he had been keeping something all this time.

”Only something he'd kept back from them,” replied Thrush, with just a little less than his usual aplomb. ”It was a surprise he sprang on them after waking; it will probably surprise you still more, Mr. Upton. You may not believe it. I'm not certain that I do myself. In the morning he had spoken of the Australian voyage as though you'd opposed it, but withdrawn your opposition-one moment, if you don't mind! In the evening he suddenly explained that he was actually sailing in the _Seringapatam,_ that his baggage was already on board, and he must get aboard himself that night!”

”I don't believe it, Thrush.”

”No more do I, father, for a single instant. Tony, of all people!”

Thrush looked from one to the other with a somewhat disingenuous eye. ”I don't say I altogether accept it myself; that's why I kept it to the end,”

he explained. ”But we must balance the possibilities against the improbabilities, never losing sight of the one incontestable fact that the boy has undoubtedly disappeared. And here's a man, a well-known man, who makes no secret of the fact that he found him wandering in the Park, in the early morning, breathless and dazed, and drove him home to his own house, where the boy spent the day; they took a hansom, the doctor tells me, than which no statement is more quickly and easily checked. Are we to believe this apparently unimpeachable and disinterested witness, or are we not? He was most explicit about everything, offering to show me exactly where he found the boy, and never the least bit vague or unsatisfactory in any way. If you are prepared to believe him, if only for the sake of argument, you may care to hear Dr. Baumgartner's theory as to what has happened.”

Lettice shook her head in scorn, but Mr. Upton observed, ”Well, we may as well hear what the fellow had to say to you; we must be grateful to him for taking pity on our boy, and he was the last who saw him; he may have seen something that we shouldn't guess.”