e 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 as heart-breaking a mystery as I've ever handled.' I 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