Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/222

“How ever do you propose to do this idiotic thing?”

“Oh—choose a handy desert, preferably near a gold mine so as to give a motive for crossing it; talk hard at one side about walking across and turn up at the other as someone quite different. There’ll be people enough to remember that I was going (especially as I’ll say I’m Lord Trent) and everyone will know I’ve died of thirst. Meanwhile, the new man Jones can start off comfortably on a new career.”

“It is absolutely the maddest idea I have ever heard. Tony, you’re not to do it. It’s wicked.”

“Why? Why shouldn’t I? It’s my own name, and I don’t owe it anything. I don’t love it. I shan’t be hurting anybody. I’ve told you, and you’ll tell the Professor, but nobody else shall know. I wondered whether I should tell you, and then I thought you’d rather———”

“I should think so, if you really mean it, and it isn’t all a horrible joke. Are you quite heartless?”

He looked rather grim. “For all practical purposes, yes,” he said. “That’s to say, I don’t see how my heart comes in. You say I’m mad, and yet you can’t say where the harm is. I’m not hurting anyone, not even myself. Where is the wrong?”

“I don’t like tricks, and it seems to me rather—cowardly. It’s an evasion of responsibilities.”

“Oh, excuse me, Alison—rot! Do you really think it’s my duty to go back and play at being a peer?”

“I do.”

“Really? Well, I don’t. To begin with, in all human justice this belongs to the girl. In the second place, I’d make an inf—an infinitely bad peer—well, a useless one, and in the third, I’d chafe my head off in a week. And nobody would want me, and we’d all be supremely wretched. So I shall go away and leave it to her. Did I tell you that she refuses to go back if I’m there?”