A LIKELY STORY
At that moment help was as far away as it had been near the day before,
when Eugene Thrush was closeted in the doctor’s dining-room; for not
only had Mr. Upton decamped for Leicestershire, without a word of
warning to anybody, on the Saturday afternoon, but Thrush himself had
followed by the only Sunday train.
A bell was ringing for evening service when he landed in a market town
which reversed the natural order by dozing all summer and waking up for
the hunting season. And now the famous grass country was lying in its
beauty-sleep, under a gay counterpane of buttercups and daisies, and
leafy coverts, with but one blot in the sky-line, in the shape of a
permanent plume of sluggish smoke. But the works lay hidden, and the
hall came first; and Thrush, having ascertained that this was it,
abandoned the decrepit vessel he had boarded at the station, and
entered the grounds on foot.
A tall girl, pacing the walks with a terribly anxious face, was
encountered and accosted before he reached the house.
“I believe Mr. Upton lives here. Can you tell me if he’s at home? I
want to see him about something.”
Lettice flushed and shrank.
“I know who you are! Have you found my brother?”
“No; not yet,” said Thrush, after a pause. “But you take my breath
away, my dear young lady! How could you be so sure of me? Is it no
longer to be kept a secret, and is that why your father bolted out of
town without a word?”
“It’s still a secret,” whispered Lettice, as though the shrubs had
ears, “only I’m in it. Nobody else is—nobody fresh—but I guessed, and
my mother was beginning to suspect. My father never stays away a Sunday
unless he’s out of England altogether; she couldn’t understand it, and
was worrying so about him that I wired begging him to come back if only
for the night. So it’s all my fault, Mr. Thrush; and I know everything
but what you’ve come down to tell us!”
“That’s next to nothing,” he shrugged. “It’s neither good nor bad. But
if you can find your father I’ll tell you both exactly what I have
found out.”
In common with all his sex, he liked and trusted Lettice at sight,
without bestowing on her a passing thought as a person capable of
provoking any warmer feeling. She was the perfect sister—that he felt
as instinctively as everybody else—and a woman to trust into the
bargain. It would be cruel and quite unnecessary to hide anything from
that fine and unselfish face. So he let her lead him to a little
artificial cave, lined and pungent with pitch-pine, over against the
rhododendrons, while she went to fetch her father quietly from the
house.
The ironmaster amplified the excuses already made for him; he had
rushed for the first train after getting his daughter’s telegram,
leaving but a line for Thrush with his telephone number, in the hopes
that he would use it whether he had anything to report or not.
“As you didn’t,” added Mr. Upton, in a still aggrieved voice, “I’ve
been trying again and again to ring you up instead; but of course you
were never there, nor your man Mullins either. I was coming back by
the last train, however, and should have been with you late to-night.”
“Did you leave the motor behind?”
“Yes; it’ll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.”
“It may have to do more than that,” said Thrush, spreading his full
breadth on the pitch-pine seat. “I’ve found out something; how much or
how little it’s too soon to tell; but I wasn’t going to discuss it
through a dozen country exchanges as long as you wanted the thing a
dead secret, Mr. Upton, and that’s why I didn’t ring you up. As for
your last train, I’d have waited to meet it in town, only that wouldn’t
have given me time to say what I’ve got to say before one or other of
us may have to rush off somewhere else by another last train.”
“Do for God’s sake say what you’ve got to say!” cried Mr. Upton.
“Well, I’ve seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!”
“Alive?”
“And perfectly well—but for his asthma—on Thursday.”
The ironmaster thanked God in a dreadful voice; it was Lettice who
calmed him, not he her. Her eyes only shone a little, but his were
blinded by the first ray of light.
“Where was it?” he asked, when he could ask anything.
“I’ll tell you in a minute. I want first to be convinced that it really
was your son. Did the boy take any special interest in Australia?”
“Rather!” cried Lettice, the sister of three boys.
“What kind of interest?”
“He wanted to go out there. It had just been talked about.” She looked
at her father. “I wouldn’t let him go,” he said. “Why?”
“I want to know just how it came to be talked about.”
“A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.”
Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied.
“Did he recommend any particular vessel?”
“Yes, a sailing ship—the _Seringapatam_— an old East Indiaman they’ve
turned into a kind of floating hospital. I wouldn’t hear of the beastly
tub.”
“Do you know when she was to sail?”
“I did know,” said Lettice. “I believe it was just about now.”
“She sailed yesterday,” said Thrush, impressively; “and your brother,
if it was your brother, talked a good deal about her to this man. He
told him all about your having always been in favour of it, Miss Upton,
and his father not. I’m bound to say it sounds as though it may have
been the boy.”
Thrush seemed to be keeping something back; but the prime and absorbing
question of identity prevented the others from noticing this.
“It must have been!” cried Mr. Upton. “Who was the man, and where
exactly did he see him?”
“First on Thursday morning, and last on Thursday night. But perhaps I’d
better tell you about my informant, since we’ve only his word for
Thursday, and only his suspicions as to what has happened since. In the
first place he’s a semi-public man, though I don’t suppose you know his
name. It’s Baumgartner—Dr. Otto Baumgartner—a German scientist of some
distinction.”
The ironmaster made a remark which did him little credit, and Thrush
continued with some pride: “There was some luck in it, of course, for
he was the very first man I struck who’d bought d’Auvergne Cigarettes
since Wednesday; but I was on his doorstep well within twenty-four
hours of hearing that your son was missing; and you may chalk that up
to A. V. M.! I might have been with him some hours sooner still, but I
preferred to spend them getting to know something about my man. I tried
his nearest shops; perfect mines! One was a chemist, who didn’t know
him by sight, and had never heard of the cigarettes, but remembered
being asked for them by an elderly gentleman last Thursday morning!
That absolutely confirmed my first suspicion that Baumgartner himself
was not the asthmatic; if he had been, the nearest chemist would have
known all about him. Yet he had gone to the nearest chemist first!”
“The nearest butcher was next door; but he was so short about
Baumgartner that I scented a true-green vegetarian. It was a false
scent, Mr. Upton; not to mention the baker and the candlestick-maker,
there’s a little restaurant in the same row, which was about the fifth
place where I began by asking if they knew where a Dr. Baumgartner
lived in that neighbourhood. The little Italian boss was all over me on
the spot! The worthy doctor proved to be his most regular customer,
having all his meals sent in hot from the restaurant in quite the
Italian manner. I don’t suppose you see how very valuable this was to
me. Germans love Italy, the little man explained; but I said that was
the one point on which I should never yield to Germany—and I thought I
was going to be kissed across the counter! It seems the good doctor
lives alone with his niece (not always even her), and keeps no servants
and never entertains. Yet on Friday, for the first time since the
arrangement was made, the old chap went to the restaurant himself to
complain of short commons; there had not been enough for them to eat on
the Thursday night!”
“Had they been alone?” asked Mr. Upton, with a puzzled face.
“That’s the whole point! My little Florentine understood they were, but
I deduced one extra, and then conceived a course that may astonish you.
It was the bold course; but it nearly always pays. I lunched at my
leisure (an excellent Chianti my little friend keeps) and afterwards
went round and saw the doctor himself. The niece opened the door—I wish
I’d seen more of her—but she fetched her uncle at once and I begged for
an interview on an urgent matter. He consented in a way that, I must
say, impressed me very favourably; and the moment we were alone I said,
‘I want to know, Doctor, who you bought those asthma cigarettes for
last Thursday!’”
“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 at heart-breaking a mystery as I’ve ever handled.’ Is 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 scrape 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 God!” 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, à 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 glasses.
“I’m letting her go as far as Plymouth,” said he, “where one or both of
us will board her tomorrow 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 appetites, 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.”
“And losing the train?”
“I can motor down to Plymouth; there’s plenty of time. I might take him
with me, as well as you?”
“Better,” said Thrush, after another slight pause. “I’d rather you
didn’t count on me for that trip, Mr. Upton.”
“Not count on you”?
“One of us will be quite enough.”
“Have you some other case to shove in front of mine, then?” cried the
ironmaster, touched on the old raw spot.
“I shouldn’t put it like that, Mr. Upton.”
“All right! I’ll take your man Mullins instead; but I’ll try my luck at
that German doctor’s first,” he growled, determined to have his own way
in something.
“I’m afraid you can’t have Mullins,” said Thrush, gently.
“Want him yourself do you?”
“I do; but I’m afraid neither of us can have him just now, Mr. Upton.”
“Why not? Where is he.”
Thrush leant across as they swam into the lighted terminus.
“In prison.”
“In prison! Your man Mullins?”
“Yes, Mr. Upton, he’s the man they arrested yesterday on suspicion of
complicity in this Hyde Park affair!”