Mr. Masters laughed genially. “I like a good liar. You don’t want to tell me anything about yourself. Very likely you are wise, but all the same I am very curious to know all about you—who you are, and how you came to the Astons, and who was your mother, and when and where Aymer met her. You see,” he added confidentially, “I used to be about with Aymer a good bit and I thought I knew all––” He stopped abruptly. If he were being purposely tactless he realised he had gone far enough.
“I do not think Aymer ever met my mother. I am certain you haven’t. Mr. Aston used to know her, and suggested Aymer’s adopting me when he heard I was left stranded in a workhouse. I was just a workhouse boy. Now, are you satisfied as to my private history, sir?”
“No,” retorted the inquisitor good-humouredly as ever, “you must have had a father, you know.”
“It seems possible. I do not remember him.”
He began to resign himself to fate and this Juggernaut of a man who rolled other people’s feelings flat with no more compunction than a traction engine.
“Fathers are useful. You may want to remember, some-day.”
“I’m quite satisfied at present.”
“I’m not suggesting you have anything to complain of. Aymer doesn’t do things by halves. Christopher is as much a family name as Aston, for example.”
Something in his tone caught Christopher’s attention and he looked at him sharply. Peter Masters 196 was gazing straight before him with that same cynical smile on his face it had worn when Christopher was first introduced to him six years ago.
“I wonder why on earth they did that?” ruminated the Juggernaut. “Cousin Charles is capable of any unworldly folly, but Aymer was a man of the world once. It looks like colossal bluff.”