"Oh, yes, it would check."
"Well, then. You have only to stow away on the Ira Jones out of Westover instead of going for a day trip to Dieppe, et voila!"
"How do you know there was a ship called the Ira Jones at Westover about then?"
"'About then'! You do me scant justice, amigo. There was a ship of that repellent title at Westover the day the boy disappeared. I know because I spent most of the day painting her. On canvas, not on her plates, you understand. And the old scow went out before I had finished; bound for the Channel Islands. All my ships go out before I have finished painting them."
There was silence for a little.
"It's in your lap, Farrar."
"So is my table napkin."
"A fortune. A charming small estate. Security. A — "
"Security, did you say?"
"After the initial gamble, of course," Loding said smoothly.
The light eyes that looked at him for a moment held a faint amusement.
"Hadn't it occurred to you at all, Mr. Loding, that the gamble was yours?"
"Mine?"
"You're offering me the sweetest chance for a double-cross that I ever heard of. I take your coaching, pass the exam, and forget about you. And you wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. How did you figure to keep tabs on me?"
"I hadn't. No one with your Ashby looks could be a double-crosser. The Ashbys are monsters of rectitude."
The boy pushed away the glass.
"Which must be why I don't take kindly to the idea of being a phoney. Thank you for my lunch, Mr. Loding. If I had known what you had in mind when you asked me to lunch with you, I wouldn't have — "
"All right, all right. Don't apologise. And don't run away; we'll go together. You don't like my proposition: very good: so be it. But you, on the other hand, fascinate me. I can hardly take my eyes off you, or believe that anything so unique exists. And since you are sure that my improper proposal to you has nothing of the personal in it, there is nothing against our walking as far as the Underground together."
Loding paid for their lunch, and as they walked out of the Green Man he said: "I won't ask where you are living in case you think I want to hound you. But I shall give you my address in the hope that you will come to see me. Oh, no; not about the proposition. If it isn't your cup of tea then it isn't your cup of tea; and if you felt like that you certainly wouldn't make a success of it. No, not about the proposition. I have something in my rooms that I think would interest you."
He paused artistically while they negotiated a street crossing.
"When my old home, Clare, was sold-after my father's death- Nancy bundled together all the personal things in my room and sent them to me. A whole trunkful of rubbish, which I have never had the energy to get rid of, and a large proportion of it consists of snapshots and photographs of the companions of my youth. I think you would find it very interesting."
He glanced sideways at the uncommunicative profile of his companion.
"Tell me," he said as they stopped at the entrance to the Underground, "do you play cards?"
"Not with strangers," said the young man pleasantly.
"I just wondered. I had never met the perfect poker face until now, and I should be sorry if it was being wasted on some nonconformist abstainer. Ah, well. Here is my address. If by any chance I have fled from there the Spotlight will find me. I am truly sorry I couldn't sell you the idea of being an Ashby. You would have made an excellent master of Latchetts, I feel. Someone who was at home with horses, and used to an outdoor life."
The young man, who had made a gesture of farewell and was in the act of turning away, paused. "Horses?" he said.
"Yes," Loding said, vaguely surprised. "It's a stud, you know. Very well thought of, I understand."
"Oh." He paused a moment longer, and then turned away.
Loding watched him as he went down the street. "I missed something," he was thinking. "There was some bait he would have risen to, and I missed it. Why should he have nibbled at the word horse? He must be sick of them."
Ah, well; perhaps he would come to see what his double looked like.
4
The boy lay on his bed in the dark, fully dressed, and stared at the ceiling.
There were no street lamps outside to illuminate this back room under the slates; but the faint haze of light that hangs over London at night, emanation from a million arcs and gas-lights and paraffin lamps, shone ghost-like on the ceiling so that its cracks and stains showed like a world map.
The boy was looking at a map of the world too, but it was not on the ceiling. He was examining his odyssey; conducting a private inventory. That meeting to-day had shaken him. Somewhere, it seemed, there was another fellow so like him that for a moment they could be mistaken for each other. To one who had been very much alone all his life that was an amazing thought.
Indeed, it was the most surprising thing that had happened to him in all his twenty-one years. In a way it was as if all those years that had seemed so full and exciting at the time had been merely leading up to that moment when the actor chap had caught himself short in the street and said: "Hello, Simon."
"Oh! Sorry!" he had said at once. "Thought you were a friend of — " And then he had stopped and stared.
"Can I do something for you?" the boy had asked at last, since the man showed no sign of moving on.
"Yes. You could come and have lunch with me."
"Why?"
"It's lunch-time, and that's my favourite pub behind you."
"But why me?"
"Because you interest me. You are so like a friend of mine. My name is Loding, by the way. Alec Loding. I act a bad part in a bad farce at that very bad old theatre over there." He had nodded across the street. "But Equity, God bless them, has ordained a minimum fee for my labours, so the hire is considerably better than the part, I rejoice to say. Do you mind telling me your name?"
"Farrar."
"Farrell?"
"No. Farrar."
"Oh." The amused, considering look was still in his eye. "Is it long since you came back to England?"
"How did you know I had been out of it?"
"Your clothes, my boy. Clothes are my business. I have dressed too many parts not to recognise American tailoring when I see it. Even the admirably conservative tailoring that you so rightly wear."
"Then what makes you think I'm not American?"
At that the man had smiled quite broadly. "Ah, that," he said, "is the eternal mystery of the English. You watch a procession of monks in Italy and your eye singles out one and you say: 'Ha! An Englishman. You come across five hoboes wrapped in gunny sacks sheltering from the rain in Wisconsin, and you notice the fifth and think: 'Dear goodness, that chap's English. You see ten men stripped to the buff for the Foreign Legion doctor to pass judgement on, and you say — But come to lunch and we can explore the subject at leisure."
So he had gone to lunch, and the man had talked and been charming. But always behind the lively puffy eyes there had been that quizzical, amused, almost unbelieving look. That look was more eloquent than any of his subsequent argument. Truly he, Brat Farrar, must be like that other fellow to bring that look of half-incredulous amusement into someone's eyes.
He lay on the bed and thought about it. This sudden identification in an unbelonging life. He had a great desire to see this twin of his; this Ashby boy. Ashby. It was a nice name: a good English name. He would like to see the place too: this Latchetts, where his twin had grown up in belonging quiet while he had bucketed round the world, all the way from the orphanage to that moment in a London street, belonging nowhere.