‘— And I would very much like to see Bonita Granville,’ continued the youth. ‘I find she has been borrowed by your studio.’

They had been walking toward the production office and it took Pat a minute to grasp what the young man had said.

‘You’re my what?’ he asked.

‘Your putative son,’ said the young man, in a sort of sing-song. ‘Legally I am the son and heir of the Rajah Dak Raj Indore. But I was born John Brown Hobby.’

‘Yes?’ said Pat. ‘Go on! What’s this?’

‘My mother was Delia Brown. You married her in 1926. And she divorced you in 1927 when I was a few months old. Later she took me to India, where she married my present legal father.’

‘Oh,’ said Pat. They had reached the production office. ‘You want to see Bonita Granville.’

‘Yes,’ said John Hobby Indore. ‘If it is convenient.’

Pat looked at the shooting schedule on the wall.

‘It may be,’ he said heavily. ‘We can go and see.’

As they started toward Stage 4, he exploded.

‘What do you mean, “my potato son”? I’m glad to see you and all that, but say, are you really the kid Delia had in 1926?’

‘Putatively,’ John Indore said. ‘At that time you and she were legally married.’

He turned to his uncle and spoke rapidly in Hindustani, whereupon the latter bent forward, looked with cold examination upon Pat and threw up his shoulders without comment. The whole business was making Pat vaguely uncomfortable.

When he pointed out the commissary, John wanted to stop there ‘to buy his uncle a hot dog’. It seemed that Sir Singrim had conceived a passion for them at the World’s Fair in New York, whence they had just come. They were taking ship for Madras tomorrow.

‘— whether or not,’ said John, sombrely. ‘I get to see Bonita Granville. I do not care if I meet her. I am too young for her. She is already an old woman by our standards. But I’d like to see her.’

It was one of those bad days for showing people around. Only one of the directors shooting today was an old timer, on whom Pat could count for a welcome — and at the door of that stage he received word that the star kept blowing up in his lines and had demanded that the set be cleared.

In desperation he took his charges out to the back lot and walked them past the false fronts of ships and cities and village streets, and medieval gates — a sight in which the boy showed a certain interest but which Sir Singrim found disappointing. Each time that Pat led them around behind to demonstrate that it was all phony Sir Singrim’s expression would change to disappointment and faint contempt.

‘What’s he say?’ Pat asked his offspring, after Sir Singrim had walked eagerly into a Fifth Avenue jewellery store, to find nothing but carpenter’s rubble inside.

‘He is the third richest man in India,’ said John. ‘He is disgusted. He says he will never enjoy an American pic............