“It is, indeed!” murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed. “And while he is trying it,” exclaimed Eugene Thrush, lighting up as with a really great idea, “you’ll greatly oblige me by having a whisky-and-soda in the first place.” “No, thank you! I haven’t had a bite all day. It would fly to my head.” “But that’s its job; that’s where it’s meant to fly,” explained the convivial Mr. Thrush, preparing the potion with practised hand. Baited with a biscuit it was eventually swallowed, and a flagging giant refreshed by his surrender. It made him like his new acquaintance too well to bear the thought of detaining him any more. “Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!” “Thank you, I prefer to keep you now I’ve got you, Mr. Upton! My man begins his round by going to tell my pal I can’t dine with him at all. Not a word, I beg! I’ll have a bite with you instead when Mullins gets back, and in a taxi that won’t be long.” “But do you think you can do anything?” The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate thanks. “If you give me time, I hope so,” was the measured answer. “But the needle in the hay is nothing to the lost unit in London, and it will take time. I’m not a magazine detective, Mr. Upton; if you want a sixpenny solution for soft problems, don’t come to me!” At an earlier stage the ironmaster would have raised his voice and repeated that this was a serious matter; even now he looked rather reproachfully at Eugene Thrush, who came back to business on the spot. “I haven’t asked you for a description of the boy, Mr. Upton, because it’s not much good if we’ve got to keep the matter to ourselves. But is there anything distinctive about him besides the asthma?” “Nothing; he was never an athlete, like my other boys.” “Come! I call that a distinction in itself,” said Mr. Thrush, smiling down his own unathletic waistcoat. “But as a matter of fact, nothing could be better than the very complaint which no doubt unfits him for games.” “Nothing better, do you say?” “Emphatically, from my point of view. It’s harder to hide a man’s asthma than to hide the man himself.” “I never thought of that.” It was impossible to tell whether Thrush had thought of it before that moment. The round glasses were levelled at Mr. Upton with an inscrutable stare of the marine eyes behind them. “I suppose it has never affected his heart?” he inquired nonchalantly; but the nonchalance was a thought too deliberate for paternal perceptions quickened as were those of Mr. Upton. “Is that why you sent round the hospitals, Mr. Thrush?” “It was one reason, but honestly not the chief.” “I certainly never thought of his heart!” “Nor do I think you need now, in the case of so young a boy,” said Thrush earnestly. “On the other hand, I shouldn’t be surprised if his asthma were to prove his best friend.” “It owes him something!” “Do you know what he does for it?”