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uneasily how right Esmeralda was about her aunt.
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Chapter Four
Sweet Reason
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    Sir john wylie, looking more blackly massive than ever, smoking a pipe and so providing a screen for his red-rimmed, tired eyes, was by himself in the living-room-cum-study. There was no sign of Jane or the baby. From the direction of the bedroom, which was approached from a passage leading to the kitchen and bathroom, there came the faint sound of crooning; it was the first lullaby that had ever been heard in Rollison’s flat.
    â€œHallo,” Rollison greeted, “is your wife playing mother?”
    â€œThat’s about it,” said Wylie, and took out his pipe and pointed it at Esmeralda. “Go and see if you can help her.” No Victorian father could ever have been more emphatic with a daughter whom he wanted out of earshot, and for some reason best known to herself, Esmeralda went off meekly. Wylie put the pipe back between his full lips, and regarded his host through a grey haze of smoke. Then he said: “Hmm.”
    â€œYou could be more explicit,” murmured Rollison.
    â€œI am trying,” announced Wylie, heavily. “Man of few words y’know. Very ticklish situation. My wife” – he pondered, chewing the stem of his pipe, and then he struck oil – “believes right’s right,” he finished.
    â€œHear, hear,” approved Rollison.
    â€œNo joking matter,” Wylie said. “She’s outraged.”
    â€œNot, I trust, literally.”
    â€œPositively. Very difficult situation for me,” went on Wylie. “Embarrassing. Fact is, Jane—”
    â€œLet me try to make it a little easier for you,” suggested Rollison kindly, “your wife can’t imagine why anyone should dump a baby on my doorstep—”
    â€œCouch.”
    â€œCouch, if we must be literal.”
    â€œImportant difference,” declared Wylie.
    Rollison looked baffled and felt baffled. It was as if he had been fighting against unknown forces from the moment he had agreed to bring this little party here. Had he come alone, had he discovered the sleeping infant himself, it would have been bad enough, and the pencilled note would not have made it any easier; but if the situation wasn’t quickly corrected, it could get out of hand. Wylie’s erratic manner of speech did nothing to help, and whenever Rollison thought of Esmeralda it was a little uneasily, for there was old devil mischief in the child. Child?
    It would be easy for Rollison to lose patience; but not wise.
    â€œWhere is the important difference?” he asked patiently.
    â€œDoorstep, couch.”
    â€œI was speaking figuratively.”
    Wylie contemplated him as if he, not Wylie, was being obtuse.
    â€œMy wife is a literal woman,” he announced, at last. “No kinder-hearted woman in the world, but—never mind. Literal, logical and highly intelligent. A baby on the doorstep is one thing. No key required. A baby on the couch in a locked apartment—key required.” Wylie paused as if for breath, and Rollison waited, admiration mingling with apprehension. “Who would have a key?” inquired Wylie, and then made almost desperate circles in the air with his pipe. “No offence meant,” he blurted and as if to protect himself against any further indiscretion, he put the pipe back in his mouth.
    Rollison studied him.
    It was easy to fill in the gaps in Wylie’s dissertation, and obvious that he and Jane had been busily talking for much of the time that Rollison and Esmeralda had been downstairs. Put bluntly and simply, the Wylies had jumped to the conclusion that no one would present Rollison with a child, without good reason: that probably the child was his.
    The difficulty was to stop his lips from twitching.
    He could soon disabuse the Wylies; the pencilled note would be enough for anyone who was literal-minded. But at this stage, did he want to disabuse