"I come on a serious matter, Mr. Thrush-a very serious matter to me!"

"Pardon me if I seem anything else for a moment; as it happens, you catch me dabbling, or rather meddling, in a serious case which is none of my business, but strictly a matter for the police, only it happens to have come my way by a fluke. I am not a policeman, but a private inquisitor.

If you want anything or anybody ferreted out, that's my job and I should put it first."

"Mr. Thrush, that's exactly what I do want, if only you can do it for me!

I had reason to fear, from what I heard this morning, that my youngest child, a boy of sixteen, had disappeared up here in London, or been decoyed away. And now there can be no doubt about it!"

So, in about one of the allotted minutes, Thrush was trusted on grounds which Mr. Upton could not easily have explained; but the time was up before he had concluded a briefly circ.u.mstantial report of the facts within his knowledge.

"When can I see you again?" he asked abruptly of Thrush.

"When? What do you mean, Mr. Upton?"

"The four minutes must be more than up."

"Go on, my dear sir, and don't throw good time after bad. I'm only dining with a man at his club. He can wait."

"Thank you, Mr. Thrush."

"More good time! How do you know the boy hasn't turned up at school or at home while you've been fizzing in a cloud of dust?"

"I was to have a wire at the hotel I always stop at; there's nothing there; but the first thing they told me was that my boy had been for a bed which they couldn't give him the night before last. I did let them have it! But it seems the manager was out, and his understrappers had recommended other hotels; they've just been telephoning to them all in turn, but at every one the poor boy seems to have fared the same. Then I've been in communication with these infernal people in St. John's Wood, and with the doctor, but none of them have heard anything. I thought I'd like to do what I could before coming to you, Mr. Thrush, but that's all I've done or know how to do. Something must have happened!"

"It begins to sound like it," said Thrush gravely.

"But there are happenings and happenings; it may be only a minor accident.

One moment!"

And he returned to the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins was still pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master said was inaudible in the library, but the man hurried out in front of him, and was heard clattering down the evil stairs next minute.

"In less than an hour," explained Thrush, "he will be back with a list of the admissions at the princ.i.p.al hospitals for the last forty-eight hours.

I don't say there's much in it; your boy had probably some letter or other means of easier indentification about him; but it's worth trying."

"It is, indeed!" murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed.

"And while he is trying it," exclaimed Eugene Thrush, lighting up as with a really great idea, "you'll greatly oblige me by having a whisky-and-soda in the first place."

"No, thank you! I haven't had a bite all day. It would fly to my head."

"But that's its job; that's where it's meant to fly," explained the convivial Mr. Thrush, preparing the potion with practised hand. Baited with a biscuit it was eventually swallowed, and a flagging giant refreshed by his surrender. It made him like his new acquaintance too well to bear the thought of detaining him any more.

"Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!"

"Thank you, I prefer to keep you now I've got you, Mr. Upton! My man begins his round by going to tell my pal I can't dine with him at all.

Not a word, I beg! I'll have a bite with you instead when Mullins gets back, and in a taxi that won't be long."

"But do you think you can do anything?"

The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate thanks.

"If you give me time, I hope so," was the measured answer. "But the needle in the hay is nothing to the lost unit in London, and it will take time. I'm not a magazine detective, Mr. Upton; if you want a sixpenny solution for soft problems, don't come to me!"

At an earlier stage the ironmaster would have raised his voice and repeated that this was a serious matter; even now he looked rather reproachfully at Eugene Thrush, who came back to business on the spot.

"I haven't asked you for a description of the boy, Mr. Upton, because it's not much good if we've got to keep the matter to ourselves. But is there anything distinctive about him besides the asthma?"

"Nothing; he was never an athlete, like my other boys."

"Come! I call that a distinction in itself," said Mr. Thrush, smiling down his own unathletic waistcoat. "But as a matter of fact, nothing could be better than the very complaint which no doubt unfits him for games."

"Nothing better, do you say?"

"Emphatically, from my point of view. It's harder to hide a man's asthma than to hide the man himself."

"I never thought of that."

It was impossible to tell whether Thrush had thought of it before that moment. The round gla.s.ses were levelled at Mr. Upton with an inscrutable stare of the marine eyes behind them.

"I suppose it has never affected his heart?" he inquired nonchalantly; but the nonchalance was a thought too deliberate for paternal perceptions quickened as were those of Mr. Upton.

"Is that why you sent round the hospitals, Mr. Thrush?"

"It was one reason, but honestly not the chief."

"I certainly never thought of his heart!"

"Nor do I think you need now, in the case of so young a boy," said Thrush earnestly. "On the other hand, I shouldn't be surprised if his asthma were to prove his best friend."

"It owes him something!"

"Do you know what he does for it?"

"Yes, I do," said Mr. Upton, remembering the annoying letter he seemed to have received some weeks before. "He smokes, against his doctor's orders."

"Do you mean tobacco?"

"No-some stuff for asthma."

"In cigarettes?"

"Yes."

"Do you know the name?"

"I have it here."

The offensive letter was not only produced, but offered for inspection after a precautionary glance. Thrush was on his feet to receive it in outstretched hand. Already he looked extraordinarily keen for his bulk, but the reading of the letter left him alive and alert to the last superfluous ounce.

"But this is magnificent!" he cried, with eyes as round as their gla.s.ses.