The Camera Fiend Part 22

"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."

"Exactly!" exclaimed Eugene Thrush; "he saw, or at any rate he now thinks he saw, enough to build up a pretty definite theory on the foundation of fact supplied by me. He didn't know the boy had come up to see a doctor and been refused a lodging for the night; he understood he had come up to join his ship, and suspected he had been on a sort of mild spree-if Miss Upton will forgive me!" And he turned deferential lenses on the indignant girl.

"I don't forgive the suggestion," said she; "but it isn't yours, Mr.

Thrush, so please go on."

"It's an idea that Dr. Baumgartner continues to hold in spite of all I was able to tell him, and we mustn't forget, as Mr. Upton says, that he was the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes the boy did meet with some misadventure that night in town; that he had been ill-treated or intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons; perhaps threatened with blackmail; at any rate imbued with the conviction that he is not more sinned against than sinning. That, I think, is only what one expects of these very conscientious characters, particularly in youth; he was taking something or somebody a thousandfold more seriously than a grown man would have done. Afraid to go back to school for fear of expulsion, ashamed to show his face at home! What's to be done? He thinks of the ship about to sail, the ship he hoped to sail in, and in his desperation he determines to sail in her still-even if he has to stow away!"

"My G.o.d!" cried Mr. Upton, "he's just the one to think of it. His head was full of those trashy adventure stories!"

But Lettice shook hers quietly.

"To think of it, but not to do it," said she, with a quiet conviction that rather nettled Mr. Thrush.

"But really, Miss Upton, he must have done something, you know! And he actually talked to Dr. Baumgartner about this; not of doing it himself, but of stowaways in general, a propos of his voyage; and how many pounds of biscuit and how many ounces of water would carry one alive into blue water. There's another thing, by the way! He told Baumgartner the ship touched nowhere between the East India Docks and Melbourne; he would be out of the world for three whole months."

"And she only sailed yesterday?" cried Mr. Upton, coming furiously to his feet. "And you let her get through the Straits of Dover and out to sea while you came down here to tell me this by inches?"

Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole gla.s.ses.

"I'm letting her go as far as Plymouth," said he, "where one or both of us will board her to-morrow if she's up to time!"

"You said she didn't touch anywhere between the docks and Melbourne?"

"No; your son said that, Mr. Upton, and it was his one mistake. They don't usually touch, but a son of one of the owners happens to have gone round in the ship to Plymouth for the trip. I got it first from an old boatswain of the line who's caretaker at the office, and the only man there, of course, yesterday afternoon; but I've since bearded one of the partners at his place down the river, and had the statement confirmed and amplified. One or two pasengers are only going aboard at Plymouth, so she certainly won't sail again before to-morrow noon, even if she's there by then. You will be in ample time to board her-and I've got a sort of search-warrant from the partner I saw-if you go down by the 12.15 from Paddington to-night."

The ironmaster asked no more questions; that was good enough for him, he said, and went off to tell a last lie to his wife, with the increasing confidence of one gradually mastering the difficulties of an uncongenial game. He felt also that a happy issue was in sight, and after that he could tell the truth and liberate his soul. He was pathetically sanguine of the solution vicariously propounded by Eugene Thrush, and prepared to rejoice in a discovery which would have filled him with dismay and chagrin if he had not been subconsciously prepared for something worse. It never occurred to Mr. Upton to question the man's own belief in the theory he had advanced; but Lettice did so the moment she had the visitor to herself in the smoking-room, where it fell to her to do certain honours _vice_ Horace, luckily engaged at the works. "And do you believe this astounding theory, Mr. Thrush?"

Thrush eyed her over his tumbler's rim, but completed his draught before replying.

"It's not my province to believe or to disbelieve, Miss Upton; my job is to prove things one way or the other."

"Then I'll tell you just one thing for your guidance: my brother is absolutely incapable of the conduct you ascribe to him between you."

Thrush did not look as though he were being guided by anybody or anything, beyond the dictates of his own appet.i.tes, as he sat by the window of the restaurant car, guzzling new potatoes and such Burgundy as could be had in a train. But he was noticeably less garrulous than usual, and his companion also had very little to say until the train was held up inexplicably outside Willesden, when he began to fume.

"I never knew such a thing on this line before," he complained; "it's all the harder luck, for I never was on such an errand before, and it'll just make the difference to me."

"You'll have time," said Thrush, consulting his watch as the train showed signs of life at last.

"Not for what I want to do," said Mr. Upton firmly. "I want to shake that man's hand, and to hear from his own lips about my boy!"

"I'm not sure that you'll find him at home," Thrush said, after a contemplative pause.

"I'll take my chance of that."

"He said something about their both going out of town to-day-meaning niece and self. I heard her playing just before I left, and that seemed to remind him of it."

"Well, Thrush, I mean to risk it."