“I DON’T want to fatigue you with my whole family history,” commenced Major Kent apologetically, “so I will tell you as briefly as I can how things stand.
“You heard me speak just now of my son Adrian. Twenty-five years ago my wife, with whom I was very deeply in love, died in giving birth to him. We’d been very happily married for two years, and when she died I felt—well, I needn’t go into that. I retired from the army and left England, leaving the child in the care of an old woman, a cousin of mine. I could hardly bear to set eyes on him, feeling that his birth had caused my wife’s death. For ten years I wandered about the earth, doing nothing in particular, leading a life that was adventurous and not specially creditable. I had no wish to marry again, and my chief interest was in starting to make a small collection of paintings, which is still my hobby.
“At the end of ten years I heard that the cousin to whom I had intrusted my son had died, and I returned to England to make new arrangements for him, but with no particular interest in seeing him again.
“On arriving in England I went to the small country town where my cousin had lived. I found her house, which was a large gloomy Victorian affair surrounded by a garden full of depressing-looking shrubs and gravel paths. An elderly parlourmaid informed me that Master Adrian was in the garden, and feeling a little conscience-stricken at the idea of a child living in such an atmosphere, I went in search of him. He was sitting, dressed in deep black, in an ivy-covered arbour with a drawing book on his knee, and when he raised his head he showed me a face of such strange intelligence and faunlike beauty, a face which bore so strong a resemblance to that of my dead wife that I stood silent and afraid in front of him. However, he was very polite, and got up and shook hands with me with a kind of Victorian courtesy, saying that I must be his father, and had I had any tea?
“I took him away from that horrible house the same night, and we spent three months together on the Norfolk Broads in a yacht. We had a good time, and I was very happy watching him gradually throw off the influence of his upbringing and develop into a creature of great physical bravery and spontaneous gaiety, combined with remarkable intelligence for a child of his age. He had a talent for drawing which was unmistakable, and which I determined to encourage.
“From that day onward we were seldom separated, never willingly, and I think the fact that we met as strangers helped us to be friends in a way that father and son seldom are.”
Major Kent was silent, and Paul felt that his own presence was forgotten. He sat quietly waiting, until with an effort the old man went on.
“Six months ago we quarrelled, with a bitterness only possible for people as close to each other as we were. My son had been commissioned to paint the portrait of a certain woman. I never met her, as she did not come to my son’s studio, preferring, he told me, to be painted in her own surroundings. One day he came to me and told me that he had fallen passionately in love, and was anxious to marry her. He had brought her finished portrait to show me, which he unwrapped and placed carefully on an easel. He took my arm and led me up to it, full of pride and enthusiasm, and trembling with excitement. Can you imagine my horror when I saw that the original was a woman whose photograph had been in every newspaper about ten years ago as the chief character in a particularly unsavoury divorce case? I had reason to remember her, for this case had involved the disgrace and ultimate suicide of a man in my old regiment, a great friend of mine. My revulsion of feeling was so great that I was speechless. When I turned to my son I saw him gazing at the painting with such adoration that I lost my head and heaped abuse upon this woman. I told him all I knew about her, sparing no detail, and then suddenly realized as I caught sight of his face that he did not believe a word I was saying. It nearly broke my heart and I continued more and more fiercely, trying to justify myself. We said terrible things to each other—he accused me of trying to poison his mind against her.
“The end of it all was that he rushed from the house and I have not seen him since.
“Soon after my son disappeared I had the first of a series of bad heart attacks, and my doctors tell me I may have only a year to live. I have made every possible effort to trace my son, with no success, and as I am forbidden to travel I feel almost despairing, for I am convinced he is not in England. A week or so ago I believed I had a clue to his whereabouts. I had a letter from the Leinster Galleries asking me to come round and see some paintings which had just arrived from Paris, the work of a young English artist named Adelaide Moon, which they thought would interest me. I went along, and in looking through the paintings I saw one of a group of people at a café table in the south of France. It was dated July of this year—only a month ago—and one of the figures I felt certain I recognized as that of my son, from the very typical attitude in which he is seated. I immediately got into touch with Miss Moon’s Paris dealer, only to hear that she had gone off on a painting expedition in France and Italy, leaving no address. They have promised to let me know immediately she returns, but apparently she is erratic, and sometimes goes off for months at a time.
“Then, this morning I received a typewritten envelope, posted in London, and inside it another envelope addressed in my son’s handwriting.”
Major Kent felt in his pocket and brought out a letter, which after a moment’s hesitation he handed to Paul.
“Perhaps you’ll read it,” he said. “As you will see, it gives me no clue as to where he is. It explains better than I can the terrible mess the boy has got into.”
Paul read:
DEAR DAD:
I find it very hard to write to you, for I don’t see that anything can make any difference now after the awful things I said to you before I went away. Sometimes I think we will forget about it one day and our life will go on as it used to.
Of course you were absolutely right about Luela. I loved her for months and was terribly unhappy most of the time. I couldn’t leave her for a long time, even after I was unhappy. She seemed to make me mad, so that I forgot everything. She wouldn’t let me paint, except sometimes she would want me to paint her. I used to think she was interested in my work, but I realized after a bit she would have much preferred nude photographs of herself. One day we had a terrible row and I went away. For a month I was very happy—I felt as if I’d recovered from some horrible disease. I started to work again, and made up my mind I would stay abroad for a few months painting until I had done some decent things I could bring back to you. I hadn’t any money, but I was able to pawn my cigarette case and a few other things. Then one day I got very low and I sold that jewel Luela had given me when I was painting her portrait. By bad luck the jeweller I sold it to recognized it, and knew Luela and wrote to her. She immediately came to see me and begged me to come away with her. It was all horrible and disgusting, and I refused. She continued to come and see me, and then one day got into a terrible passion and said unless I would come she would denounce me to the police as a jewel thief. She went away and I didn’t hear any more for several weeks. Yesterday I had a letter from her saying she would give me one last chance to come to her, and if I didn’t she would carry out her threat. I am going to see her about it, and if she won’t relent I shall disappear for a few months, by which time she will have started a new affaire and forgotten. So please don’t try to get in touch with me. I am not coming back until this business is all over and done with. And then—if you can possibly forget it all—how about that trip to the Pacific we promised ourselves?
All my love,
ADRIAN.
Paul finished reading, and sat for a few moments sucking at his pipe and staring at the letter in his hand. He felt puzzled and embarrassed, profoundly sorry for the old man whose story he had listened to, yet both shy and hesitant of offering sympathy or advice. He glanced up and caught the wistful and eager eye of Major Kent, who leant forward.
“You must forgive me for inflicting on you the troubles of an absolute stranger,” he said. “I was feeling rather desperate this evening and felt that the only thing left for me to do was to go to an inquiry agency and employ a man to look for my son. Much as I loathed the thought of it, I felt I couldn’t go on any longer in a state of suspense. By an accident I find myself instead in your rooms, just as you are starting for that very part of the world where I feel my son to be, or at least where news of him could be had. You’ve been so very good already in entertaining a perfect stranger and allowing him to take up your whole evening, that I am almost ashamed to go on.”
“Look here, sir,” said Paul earnestly, “if you think there’s anything I can do, please go ahead and don’t hesitate for a moment.”
“Find the boy for me!” said the old man, stretching out his hand in a kind of vague appeal. “I must see him—I must—and if he is in any danger from the police, as he imagines, I must help him. He does not know I am ill, and unless I get in touch with him soon I may never see him again.”
He pulled himself together, and continued more quietly: “Could you possibly look upon it as a job to combine with your holiday? It would give you an object, and might lead you into places you would not otherwise see. Let me pay all your expenses; go and make inquiries among the colony of painters in different villages in the South for my son and for this Miss Adelaide Moon. You may fail, in which case there’s no harm done, and meanwhile—well, I should feel a different man if I knew a real effort was being made. And I don’t believe you would fail. . . .”
Paul stood in the doorway, with his hands in the pockets of his Burberry, watching the tail light of Major Kent’s taxi disappear down the road through a deluge of rain. The storm had burst, and Paul sniffed the rain appreciatively, watching the skyline of Great James Street, the Georgian fronts and plane trees illuminated by great flashes of lightning, with a loud accompaniment in the bass. It was glorious after the dusty, sunbaked days and stuffy nights and Paul felt wildly exhilarated. He was committed to all kinds of adventure, he felt, and grinned as he thought of himself in his new character of sleuth. His holiday, which until now he’d thought of as an opportunity for doing a lot of reading, walking, and swimming, had taken on new and exciting colours. What was more, it wasn’t going to cost him a penny, for Major Kent had insisted on paying all his expenses, and was seeing him off at Victoria in the morning with a large check, a letter to Adrian, and a photograph whereby Paul might identify him.
He went in, shut the door, and ran upstairs in the best of spirits. His foot kicked against something as he reached the landing, sending it flying with a clink of metal. He groped on the floor until he found it. It was a key. He stood looking at it for a moment. Then he said aloud: “When we notice the brass tab attached to the key, my dear Watson, we realize that our fellow detectives up above have been making investigations in an hotel.” He slipped the key into the pocket of his Burberry, thinking that he must remember to give it to the caretaker in the morning, and went off to bed feeling that his career as a detective was launched.