“Did you recognise his voice?” he demanded. Miss Fordingbridge seemed to make an effort to recall the tones she had heard: “It was Derek's voice, of course,” she said, with a faint hesitation in her manner. “Of course, it wasn't quite the voice I'd been expecting. His mouth was hurt in those awful wounds he got. And his tongue was damaged, too; so his voice isn't the same as it used to be. It's husky instead of clear; and he has difficulty in saying some words, I noticed. But at times I could quite well imagine it was Derek speaking just as he used to do, with that Australian twang of his that we used to tease him about.” “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?” Her brother regarded her rather ruefully. “I believe you'd go into the witness-box and take your oath that it's Derek,” he said, gloomily. “You'd made up your mind that Derek was coming back sooner or later; and now you're prepared to recognise anything down to a chimpanzee as your long-lost nephew, rather than admit you're wrong. Damn this spiritualism of yours! It's at the root of all the trouble. It's led you to expect Derek; and you mean to have a Derek of some sort.” He paused for a moment, as though following out a train of thought; then he added: