Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/71

Rh In a low, monotonous voice he bade me welcome, and pointed to a chair, himself remaining standing.

"My servant tells me you say your name is Hatteras?"

"That is so. My father was James Dymoke Hatteras."

He looked at me very sternly for almost a minute, not for a second betraying the slightest sign of surprise. Then putting his hands together, finger tip to finger tip, as I discovered later was his invariable habit while thinking, he said solemnly:

"James was my younger brother. He misconducted himself gravely in England and was sent abroad. After a brief career of spendthrift extravagance in Australia, we never heard of him again. You may be his son, but then on the other hand, of course, you may not. I have no means of judging."

"I give you my word," I answered, a little nettled by his speech and the insinuation contained in it, "but if you want further proof I've got a Latin book in my portmanteau with my father's name upon the fly leaf, and an inscription in his own writing setting forth that it was given by himself to me."

"A Catullus?"

"Exactly! a Catullus."

"Then I'll have to trouble you to return it to me at your earliest convenience. The book is my property: I paid eighteen-pence for it about eleven o'clock a. m. on the 3rd of July, 1833, in the shop of John Burns, Fleet Street, London. My brother took it from me a week later, and I have not been able to afford myself another copy since."

"You admit then that the book is evidence of my father's identity?"