“Ah, he has the twang, has he?”
“Of course he has. Derek couldn't help having it, could he, when he was brought up in Australia until he was quite grown-up? Last night he laughed over the way we used to chaff him about his accent.”
“Anything more about him that you can remember?”
“He's been dreadfully hurt. Two of his fingers were blown off his right hand. It gave me such a start when he shook hands with me.”
Paul Fordingbridge seemed to reflect for a moment or two on the information he had acquired.
“H'm!” he said at last, “It'll be difficult to establish his identity; that's clear. Face unrecognisable owing to wounds; voice altered, ditto; two fingers gone on right hand, so his writing won't be identifiable. If only we had taken Derek's fingerprints, we'd have had some sort of proof. As it is, there's very little to go on.”
Miss Fordingbridge listened scornfully to this catalogue.
“So that's all the thanks you give Derek for suffering so horribly for us all in the war?”
“Always assuming that this friend of yours is Derek. Don't you understand that I can't take a thing of this sort on trust? I'm in charge of Derek's property—assuming that he's still alive, I can't hand it over to the first claimant who comes along, and then, if Derek himself turns up, excuse myself by saying that the first fellow had a plausible yarn to tell. I must have real proof. That's simply plain honesty, in my position. And real proof's going to be mighty hard to get, if you ask me, Jay. You must see that, surely.”
“It is Derek,” Miss Fordingbridge repeated, obstinately. “Do you think I can't recognise my own nephew, when he's able to tell me all sorts of things that only we in the family could know?”