The young man regarded him more carefully, as he went on: “How do I know that? Because an enquiry there would be your natural first step. Had you found a birth certificate, you would not have pursued the course you have. In fact, only a curiously determined person would have persisted in a quest for someone who had no official existence. So, I said to my. elf: When this persistence in the face of reason addresses itself to me I will try to resolve the mystery.”
The young man frowned.
“You imply that you said that before you had my letter?”
“My dear fellow, Harshom is not a common name an unusual corruption of Harvesthome, if you are interested in such things and, indeed, I never yet heard of a Harshom who was not traceably connected with the rest of us. And we do, to some extent, keep in touch. So, quite naturally, I think, the incursion of a young man entirely unknown to any of us, but persistently tackling us one after another with his enquiries regarding an unidentifiable Harshom, aroused our interest. Since it seemed that I myself came low on your priority list I decided to make a few enquiries of my own. I...”
“But why should you judge yourself low on a list,” Cohn Trafford interrupted.
“Because you are clearly a man of method. In this case, geographical method. You began your enquiries with Harshoms in the central London area, and worked outwards, until you are now in Herefordshire. There are only two furtherflung Harshoms now on your list, Peter, down in the toe of Cornwall, and Harold, a few miles from Durhamam I right?”
Cohn Trafford nodded, with a trace of reluctance.
“You are,” he admitted.
Dr. Harshom smiled, a trifle smugly.
“I thought so. There is” he began, but the young man interrupted him again.
“When you answered my letter, you invited me here, but you evaded my question,” he remarked.
“That is true. But I have answered it now by insisting that the person you seek not only does not exist, but never did exist.”
“But if you’re quite satisfied on that, why ask me here at all?”
“Because” The doctor broke off at the sound of a gong. “Dear me, Phillips allows one just ten minutes to wash. Let me show you your room, and we can continue over dinner.”
A little later when the soup was before them, he resumed: “You were asking me why I invited you here. I think the answer is that since you feel entitled to be curious about a hypothetical relative of mine, I feel no less entitled to be curious about the motives that impel your curiosity. Fair enough? as they say.”
“Dubious,” replied Mr Trafford after consideration. “To enquire into my motives would, I admit, be not unreasonable if you knew this person to exist but, since you assure me she does not exist, the question of my motives surely becomes academic.”
“My interest is academic, my dear fellow, but none the less real. Perhaps we might progress a little if I might put the problem as it appears from my point of view?”
Trafiord nodded. The doctor went on: “Well, now, this is the situation: Some seven or eight months ago a young man, unknown to any of us, begins a series of approaches to my relatives. His concern, he says, is to learn the whereabouts, or to gain any clues which may help him,, to trace the whereabouts of a lady called Ottilie Harshom. She was born, he believes, in 1928, though it could be a few years to either side of that and she may, of course, have adopted another surname through marriage.
“In his earlier letters there is an air of confidence suggesting his feeling that the matter will easily be dealt with, but as one Harshom after another fails to identify the subject of his enquiries his tone becomes less confident though not less determined. In one or two directions he does learn of young Harshom ladies none of them called Ottilie, by the way, but he nevertheless investigates them with care. Can it be, perhaps, that he is as uncertain about the first name as about everything else concerning her? But apparently none of these ladies fulfils his requirements, for he presses on. In the face of unqualified unsuccess, his persistence in leaving no Harshom stone unturned begins to verge upon the unreasonable. Is he an eccentric, with a curious obsession?
“Yet by all the evidence he was until the spring of 1953, at any rate, a perfectly normal young man. His full name is Cohn Wayland Trafford. He was born in 1921, in Soilhull, the son of a solicitor. He went to Chartowe School 1934. Enlisted in the army 1939. Left it, with the rank of Captain 1945. Went up to Cambridge. Took a good degree in Physics 1949. Joined ElectroPhysical Industries on the managerial side that same year. Married Della Stevens 1950. Became a widower 1951. Received injuries in a laboratory demonstration accident early in 1953. Spent the following five weeks in St Merryn’s Hospital. Began his first approaches to members of the Harshom family for information regarding Ottilie Harshom about a month after his discharge from hospital.”
Cohn Trafford said coldly: “You are very fully informed, Dr Harshom.”
The doctor shrugged slightly.
“Your own information about the Harshoms must by now be almost exhaustive. Why should you resent some of us knowing something of you?”
Cohn did not reply to that. He dropped his gaze, and appeared to study the tablecloth. The doctor resumed: “I said just now has he an obsession? The answer has appeared to be yes since sometime last March. Prior to that, there seems to have been no enquiry whatever regarding Miss Ottilie Harshom.
“Now when I had reached this point I began to feel that I was on the edge of a more curious mystery than I had expected.” He paused. “I’d like to ask you, Mr Trafford, had you ever been aware of the name Ottilie Barshorn before January last?”
The young man hesitated. Then he said, uneasily: “How can one possibly answer that? One encounters a myriad names on all sides. Some are remembered, some seem to get filed in the subconscious, some apparently fail to register at all. It’s unanswerable.”
“Perhaps, so. But we have the curious situation that before January Ottilie Harshom was apparently not on your mental map, but since March she has, without any objective existence, dominated it. So I ask myself, what happened between January and March..
“Well, I practise medicine. I have certain connections, I am able to learn the external facts. One day late in January you were invited, along with several other people, to witness a demonstration in one of your Company’s laboratories. I was not told the details, I doubt if I would understand them if I were: the atmosphere around the higher flights of modern physics is so rare field but I gather that during this demonstration something went amiss. There was an explosion, or an implosion, or perhaps a matter of a few atoms driven berserk by provocation, in any case, the place was wrecked. One man was killed outright, another died later, several were injured. You yourself were not badly hurt. You did get a few cuts, and bruises nothing serious, but you were knocked out right out.
“You were, indeed, so thoroughly knocked out that you lay unconscious for twenty-four days “And when at last you did come round you displayed symptoms of considerable confusion more strongly, perhaps, than would be expected in a patient of your age and type, and you were given sedatives. The following night you slept restlessly, and showed signs of mental distress. In particular you called again and again for someone named Ottilie.
“The hospital made what enquiries they could, but none of your friends or relatives knew of anyone called Ottilie associated with you.
“You began to recover, but it was clear you had something heavily on your mind. You refused to reveal what it was, but you did ask one of the doctors whether he could have his secretary try to find the name Ottilie Barshorn in any directory. When it could not be found, you became depressed. However, you did not raise the matter again at least, I am told you did not until after your discharge when you set out on this quest for Ottilie Harshorn, in which, in spite of completely negative results, you continue.