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indisputably, a photograph of the Wicked Uncle.
    Chapter VI
    It was certainly a shock. Practically everyone has a relation whom they hope never to see again. There never has been, and probably never will be a time when this would occasion any particular remark. Dorinda sat and looked at the photograph and told herself what a perfectly ordinary thing it was to have a Wicked Uncle, and to find his photo doubled up among the nursery toys of your employer’s brat. She had the feeling that if she could convince herself of the ordinariness of what had just happened she would stop feeling as if she might be going to be sick. The fact was that she had always had what she chose to call a complex about Glen Porteous. A very, very long time ago that famous charm of his had charmed her too. And then one night she woke up and heard him talking to Aunt Mary, and all the charm turned to bitter poison. She couldn’t have been more than six years old, but she never forgot lying there in the dark and hearing them in the next room. The door must have been open, because she could hear quite well, and she never forgot, because it was the first time that she had heard a grown-up person cry. Aunt Mary had cried bitterly, and Uncle Glen had laughed at her as if she was doing something very amusing. After that he went away for about two years. Aunt Mary didn’t cry any more, but she got very strict and cross.
    Dorinda came back out of the past. It was dead, and Aunt Mary was dead. But was the Wicked Uncle dead too—that was the question. It wasn’t a question to which she had any answer. His last appearance had been about seven years ago, when he had blown in and blown out again, leaving Aunt Mary noticeably more economical. She had rather taken it for granted that he was dead because he hadn’t come back, but that might only have been because he thought that there wasn’t any more to be had. As a matter of fact there was the fifty pounds a year which Dorinda had now, but he mightn’t have known about it, and the rest of what Aunt Mary had being an annuity, he couldn’t, even with the worst intentions in the world, put it in his pocket and walk off with it.
    She stared at the photograph. It was the exact twin of the one in Aunt Mary’s album. It showed a good-looking man with dark hair and very dark dancing eyes. The hair curled a little too visibly. The teeth showed in a smile which everyone who knew him had considered charming. Dorinda wondered when it had been taken. Not later than about fifteen years ago, because after that he only came to get what he could out of Aunt Mary, and he wouldn’t have gone to a local photographer and given her a copy. She thought it must have been done when they were living at Norwood. Before the Row.
    It was a long way from the time before the Row and Charles Rowbecker and Son to Marty’s toy-cupboard and the Mill House. The most frightening idea came suddenly into her head. Suppose the Wicked Uncle was Martin Oakley. She was too sensible to encourage it, but it lurked. Hastily assembling reasons to disprove it, she recalled that Nurse had given the photograph no name. If it was a picture of Martin Oakley, wouldn’t she have said, “What are you doing with your father’s picture all crumpled up like that?” She stopped feeling sick and her spirits began to rise. After all, the very worst that could happen would be that she might have to leave her job. But she wouldn’t have to—she felt quite reassured about that. Everyone has got old photograph albums full of junk. Aunt Mary had forgotten the names of a lot of the people in hers. Uncle Glen’s photograph was neither here nor there. It hadn’t the slightest importance. It was just something out of a junkery. She was wearing a dress with large patch pockets. She slipped the photograph into one of them and went down.
    It ought to have been the easiest thing in the world to walk into the boudoir, slap the photograph down in front of Mrs. Oakley, and