“Cambridge man, usual style, nothing particular about him, but an awfully good sort. His eldest sister told me that he got a gold medal for poetry this spring, but you’d never think it to look at him.”
“A gold medal? Not for an English poem? I was there myself, and there was no Smith in. My young brother got a medal for a Greek epigram, and he was so keen on my seeing him in all his glory that I ran down for the day. Took the opportunity to get half a page of sketches for the ‘Daily Plastic,’ too, as the affair isn’t much known. They keep the date dark lest the men should get in and rag—so my brother told me. Now what was the chap’s name who got the English medal? It was a St Saviour’s man, and the Master was so proud he talked of nothing else for a week.”
“Miss Smith told me her brother got it,” said Wylie, in the tone which implies that there is no more to be said.
“But there must be a mistake somewhere. Look here; I believe I have that very sketch-book in my room. I’ll get it, and we can see the fellow’s name.”
He vanished indoors, and presently returned breathless, flicking over the leaves of a well-filled sketch-book.
“Here it is!” he cried. “Teffany! I knew there was something queer about the name.” He put the book into his companion’s hands, and Wylie found himself confronted with an unmistakable portrait of Maurice in cap and gown, wearing a rather strained smile, and gripping a roll of paper very tight. In close proximity was a sketch of Professor Panagiotis, all alert attention, bending forward to listen.
“Why, that’s Smith!” cried Wylie, “and this——”
“Yes, it’s awfully rummy, isn’t it? That’s the old johnny who hangs out at Kallimeri, close here. It gave me quite a shock when I met him in the street, but then I remembered that my brother told me he was some Greek bigwig. Then my man is your man, after all? I say, this is something like a joke!”
“But what possible reason can he have had for changing his name?” cried Wylie, trying to recall anything that ought to have prepared him for the discovery.
“And there’s another thing,” said the artist, who was enjoying himself hugely. “He’s got a sister too many. Teffany has only one, I know. She came up to Girtham at the same time that he entered at St Saviour’s, and they were called ‘The Orphans’ everywhere, because they used to go about together in deep mourning. It was for their grandfather, though. Their father was killed in the Soudan years before, and their mother died from the shock. So where does the other girl come in?”