The Journeying Boy by Michael Innes Page A

wished the two strangers away. If they had the compartment to themselves he could surely have it out with the lad and come to a definite conclusion one way or another – and this without doing any great damage supposing him to be indeed the true Humphrey Paxton. But now there was no chance of that. Preston was behind them. Their two fellow passengers were seemingly bound for Ireland. Not till they were on the steamer would he have a chance of getting the boy to himself. And by the time he could come to any determination on his problem they would be at sea. Mr Thewless frowned. Then, recollecting himself, he smiled benevolently both on his pupil and on the calamitous Miss Liberty. For good measure, he even smiled on the bearded man, who was fiddling with a fishing-rod, and who received this gratuitous emotional display with some signs of confusion. Whereupon Mr Thewless looked out through the window, surveyed a landscape which was now just beginning to admit the shades of evening, and fell to a more mature consideration of his predicament.
    Suppose, once more, that this was indeed Humphrey Paxton. The boy had been living in a world of oppressive fantasies, until he had reached a state of hallucinating himself with terrifying day-dreams. But now he was making a break; a change of environment lay before him; in his new tutor he had one who would at least handle the situation as intelligently and conscientiously as he could. Moreover, Miss Liberty had not, perhaps, been an unmitigated pest. Her cheerful talk about thrillers and spy stories had produced in Humphrey – if Humphrey it was! – what seemed a healthy response; it was as if he had succeeded for the time in reducing his fantasies to their original status of exciting make-believe. Perhaps, indeed, the lady had unconsciously provided something like a key for dealing with him. But now suppose that Mr Thewless broke through this make-believe with an actual and sober challenge so the lad’s identity – such a challenge as the lad on his part had uttered when at his most disturbed at Euston. Could he really do this without the risk of inflicting serious nervous shock? On second thoughts, and without the advantage of professional knowledge on such matters, Mr Thewless doubted it. It would be a step of the utmost gravity. And prompting it there might be nothing more solid than a vagary of his own mind – one induced by those very vagaries in his pupil which in accepting his present employment he had given an implied assurance of his ability to cope with!
    But now consider again the other side of the picture. What if, in London, the first stages of an audacious and atrocious crime had indeed accomplished themselves? Humphrey Paxton was to be taken by a tutor who had never set eyes on him to visit relations who were in precisely the same case. His father had been prevented from accompanying him to the railway station; presumably, therefore, Humphrey had set out for it alone. Had he ever got there? Could more favourable circumstances for a ruthless kidnapping be conceived? For the criminals had only to be provided with a colourable pseudo-Humphrey and they had a chance of achieving something altogether out of the way – nothing less than a kidnapping unsuspected until they chose to reveal it at their own convenience; an abduction unsucceeded by the slightest hue-and-cry! And in this scheme Mr Thewless, the unsuspecting tutor pottering through Caesar or Virgil with the pseudo-Humphrey in the depths of Ireland, would be the prime if unconscious instrument.
    It was an intolerable thought. Moreover, if he really believed his suspicions to have any substance he had a clear duty to act. Not to do so would be to concur weakly in a train of events leading to none could tell what degree of horror. But what could he do? Insist upon returning to London at once? Communicate his fantastic suspicion to Sir Bernard Paxton and request that somebody be sent to identify the boy? But Sir