For the farther he travelled the more crucial this question became. From forty-five to thirty-five he might still pass as Derwent Rose, but he could hardly do so from, say, forty-five to twenty. I had not a moment's doubt that it had indeed been he whom Madge had seen and had failed to recognise—nay, had unhesitatingly assumed to be another man. Also my housekeeper's suspicions that all was not as it should have been had also been thoroughly awakened. "It is Mr Rose, isn't it?" she had asked me with a puzzled look on the Friday midday; but by Sunday morning Julia and he had become "the lady and gentleman" who had had to be fetched in to breakfast. Old Mrs Truscott again had unhesitatingly set him down as years younger than Julia. If Trenchard had seen him before his departure he had probably been the last of us to do so. Trenchard, in short, was to tell me what Derry's diary had completely failed to tell me.
For that little shiny-backed pocket book had merely brought things to a more hideously complicated pass even than before. I shall return to this diary in a moment; for the present let it suffice that, like the publisher's offer, it seemed to me to have turned up just a few hours too late. I had hoped for a survey wide enough, simplified enough, to help me to his rate of progress. I had so far found nothing of the slightest use whatever. I was without the faintest idea of his present age. He might have been thirty, twenty-five, twenty, younger. He might even be sixteen, at which age he had said he would die.
Trenchard I found to be a black-haired, pleasant-voiced, very much alive fellow of a little under thirty. His rank, I believe, had been that of major, and even the atrocious crippling he had received at La Bassée did not destroy his look of perfect efficiency. He was just able to start up a car, and cars were his livelihood and he lived in them. I introduced myself, and he hobbled cheerfully about among his cups and bread-and-butter and methylated spirits.
"So," I concluded my introduction of myself, "as I'm settling up a few matters for him I wanted to know how you stood."
"Oh, everything's perfectly all right as far as I'm concerned," he laughed, filling the teapot. "Place left like a new pin, Bradburys in an envelope, and a quite unnecessary letter of thanks for what he calls my kindness. I was only too glad to have somebody in the place."
"Do you know what day he left?"
"Let me see. To-day's the ninth. He left on Monday, the fifth."
(Note: he had cleared out of Trenchard's place the day after I had seen him and Julia off at Haslemere Station.)
"He didn't say where he was going?"
He gave me a quick glance. "I say, this is all right, isn't it?" Then, laughing as I smiled, "Sorry, but one has to be careful, you know. No, he didn't say. Here's his note if you care to read it. I don't even know what to do with letters if any come for him."