IX

Sir Henry Prothero was a distinguished exception to the rule that a prophet has no honour among his own people. He had had a brilliant career in India. He had governed a province with great wisdom and tact. And he was now, in retirement, the recognized repository for all family secrets, and the accepted stand-by in family quarrels, alliances, or disasters. He had rooms in St James’ Street and a cottage at Laydon Sudbury. His tastes were music, golf, and Indian history. He was a widower of many years’ standing, and Lacy was his only child.

His large, clean-shaven face was grave as he talked with his son-in-law in a comfortable, shabby room which had a great many books in it. The roar of the traffic sounded faintly here at the back of the house. There was a fire in the grate. Outside a dense fog pressed against the windows and made the fire a very pleasant thing.

Sir Henry Prothero sat forward in a big leather arm-chair, elbow on knee and chin in hand. Manning, on the arm of the other chair, swung a restless foot.

“Of course,” Sir Henry said meditatively, “as far as the personal factor goes, I stand right outside the problem. I think the Laydon boys were about twelve when I saw them last, and I’ve no real recollection of what they looked like. It’s just as well—yes, it’s just as well. You say you and Lacy can’t find anything to take hold of?”

Manning struck his knee; the swinging foot shot out.

“He has me beat,” he said. “I don’t mind saying so. Honestly, sir, he makes my head go round. It’s always ‘We did this,’ and ‘We did that.’ Then if you press him, he’ll say ‘Jack Laydon did so and so,’ or ‘Jim Laydon went somewhere else.’ You can’t get past it. One minute he’s talking as if he were both of ’em, and the next as if they were two separate people—pals of his. He’s so infernally cool and detached. Lacy now”—Manning chuckled—“she was absolutely certain she was going to recognize him as soon as he’d been shaved and tidied up a bit. She said a lovely piece all about woman’s intuition and childhood’s memories, and as good as told me that, as a mere man, I was naturally no use when it came to the finer shades of intelligence.” He laughed again. “Well, he came in in Hooker’s clothes; and she had a good look at him, and hadn’t a word to say—Lacy without a word to say is really a most edifying sight. She swears now that he isn’t either Jack or Jim. So that’s that!” He broke off, and Sir Henry said quickly:

“I don’t value Lacy’s opinion—she’ll probably have a different one every time she sees him; I want yours. Do you see a likeness?”

“Nothing to speak of.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well—I mean—no.” He shook his head, frowning. “It’s jolly difficult to say. When I look at him, he’s a stranger. When he’s talking, he’s Laydon all right; but I couldn’t, for the life of me, tell you which Laydon. He’s got something that neither Jim nor Jack had; and that’s what puzzles me all the time. They were just boys—awful nice boys too—, and he’s a grown man. And whichever one he was, he’s something different now. We may be able to identify him, but we can’t turn him back into one of those jolly youngsters again. He’s different; he’s new; he’s himself; and, by Jove, he’s a cool hand.”

“Yes?”

“I went with him to the War Office this morning. They put him through his paces pretty sharply, and he didn’t turn a hair. It seems four of them went up that day—the two Laydons, Jim Field, and a man called Thursley. Thursley was the only one who came back. Well, they got Thursley on the ’phone—he’s at Farnborough—, and he came up. They didn’t tell Laydon of course—sent us to wait in another room. After an abominably long time they had us in—room full of people, bad light, beastly fog. Well, Laydon took a good look round; then he walked across the room, clapped Thursley on the shoulder, and said—‘Hullo! Hullo! Where did you spring from, Jobbles?’ Sensation in court; the blushing Thursley explaining to a lot of brass hats that Jobbles was a nickname of his unregenerate youth. He didn’t like it a bit. After that they wanted to know whether he recognized Laydon as either Jack or Jim.” Manning shrugged his shoulders. “He got rattled, and hedged for all he was worth—said it might be Jack, three stone heavier; and then again it might just as easily be Jim, only his voice was different. When they wanted to know how it was different, he said he didn’t know, and got frightfully tied up—a perfectly hopeless witness. Laydon never turned a hair the whole time. Mind you, sir, it’s like seeing a fellow riding a horse on the curb; there’s something about it that makes you feel sick. I believe he’s having a perfect hell of a time.” Manning jumped down from the arm of his chair, went to the fire, and pushed the embers with his foot. After a moment he turned round again. “We put in Anna Blum’s statement and came away. You’ve got your copy?”

Sir Henry nodded.

“Is there anything that strikes you specially?”

Sir Henry took out a sheaf of typewritten pages, turned the leaves, and put a large, white forefinger down in the middle of a line.

“Yes,” he said, “the identity disc. She mentions it specially, I see—says she put it with his clothes at the edge of the stream above the fall. What happened to it?”

“She doesn’t know. I thought we ought to send someone down to make inquiries on the spot.”

“Yes,” said Sir Henry, “certainly.” The large finger jabbed the page again; the rather colourless eyes looked mildly at Manning. “Yes, certainly. But hasn’t it occurred to you, my boy, that this Anna Blum must have seen the name on the disc? She took it off him, handled it—she must have seen the name.”

“She says she didn’t. I put the point to her when we had her over to get her statement properly taken down; it occurred to me at once, and I rather urged it. She only said the light was bad, and she hadn’t thought of reading the name. When I pressed her she shrugged her shoulders and came out with ‘Na, Herr Major, do you not think I had enough on my mind without prying into matters that did not concern me? Why should I care what his name was? For all I knew, he was going to die. And whether he lived or died, it was likely enough to be a stone wall and some German bullets for me, as you yourself have said. It seemed to me that already I knew too much.’ And when you come to think of it, sir, she wasn’t far wrong.”

Sir Henry turned the pages on his knee, nodded, and folded the papers again.

“Well,” he said, “we’ve been talking about everyone except the one person who matters most. We’ve got to consider Evelyn’s position, you know, Monkey. What exactly have you done about Evelyn?”

“I wrote from Cologne—said I was coming over and wanted to see her—, and I’ve had a wire to say she is getting back to her flat to-night. I’ve written and told her what’s happened; and I enclosed a copy of Anna Blum’s statement.”

“You’ve written?” There was a shade of surprise in Sir Henry’s voice.

Manning pulled viciously at his moustache.

“Yes,” he said. “Evelyn ’ll get it first thing to-morrow. I wrote because I thought she wouldn’t want anyone there for a bit—not at the first go off, you know. I thought, better give her time to pull herself together, and then either you or I could go round and talk it over.”

Sir Henry was sensible, not for the first time, of the fact that his son-in-law was possessed of unexpected delicacies and those intuitions asserted by Lacy to be the special gift of Woman with a capital W.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I think you’re right. Then if you will go and see Evelyn, I’ll go down to Laydon Manor and tell Cotterell.”

Manning made a most hideous face.

“Don’t you think you’d better see Evelyn?” He didn’t look at Sir Henry, but pushed the fire again and scowled at the falling embers.

“I don’t think so,” said Sir Henry, leaning back. “For one thing, you’re nearer Evelyn’s age. I don’t mean to say that the actual years count for anything. But you talk the same language—play the game of life, in fact, by the same rules. It’s all a convention of course; and the strange part is that it is just in moments of catastrophe that these conventions count for most. I know it’s not the commonly accepted idea; but it’s a fact for all that. I’ve seen lives ruined because, in a moment of great emotion, the people concerned were unable to understand each other’s conventions. If novelists are to be believed, the early Victorian woman played a swoon where the modern girl plays a piece of neo-Georgian slang. I don’t suppose their feelings differ at all; but the swoon convention and the slang convention won’t mix. No, my boy, you shall see Evelyn, and I’ll tell Cotterell. By the way, Monkey, someone ought to let Cotty Abbott know; he’s very directly concerned.”

“Poor old Cotty! I should think he was. Yes, he ought to be told. But I think old Gregory might do that.”

“Yes, he offered to when I saw him this morning. I thought he ought to see the statement, and also I wanted to get clear as to the legal position. I had, I may say, horrifying visions of a cause célèbre. Mercifully, we’re saved from any danger of that by the fact that neither the estate nor the personal property involved is entailed. As Gregory pointed out, if Sir Cotterell Laydon accepts this man as his grandson, he has only to alter his will in order to leave him anything he chooses. And I must say it was an enormous relief to me to hear it. Oh, whilst we’re on the subject of Gregory,—he laid tremendous stress on our preventing Evelyn from committing herself in any way. I agree with him, though I rather suspect you’ll have your work cut out to make her see it.”

“What do you mean by ‘Evelyn committing herself’?”

“Well, Gregory proposes what, in fact, amounts to a family council. He thinks he ought to be there as legal adviser to the family, and he says Cotty Abbott should be invited. Laydon would meet the whole family, and they could talk things over and see whether they couldn’t come to some conclusion. And what Gregory lays great stress on is that Evelyn shouldn’t compromise herself or the family by seeing him alone first.”

Manning swung round with a jerk.

“Oh, I say, sir!”

“He laid great stress on it. You see, Evelyn might be as undecided as you are yourself. But on the other hand,”—he raised a large, white finger—“she’ll naturally be in a state of very considerable emotional disturbance; and we don’t want her emotions to hurry her into a recognition which couldn’t afterwards be substantiated.”

“Yes, I see the point,” said Manning angrily. “But it’s pretty cold-blooded to expect her to meet him under Cotty Abbott’s eye, for instance.”

“I don’t think either Gregory or myself would insist on Cotty Abbott,” said Sir Henry. His lips relaxed a little, and a faint twinkle appeared momentarily. “No, I don’t think we need insist on Cotty Abbott. But I thought, and Gregory thought, that Sir Cotterell and myself should be present.”

“Evelyn,” said Manning, “will kick.”

“Evelyn is the most reasonable woman I know,” said Sir Henry.

“No woman is really reasonable,” said Manning in tones of profoundest gloom.