“I haven’t got a wife!” I yelled, but the window had closed with a bang, as if the man with the whiskers had found a germ trying to escape and had headed it off just in time.
I breathed a deep breath and wiped the old forehead.
The window flew up again.
“Hi!”
A package weighing about a ton hit me on the head and burst like a bomb.
“Did you catch it?” said the face, reappearing. “Dear me, you missed it. Never mind. You can get it at the grocer’s. Ask for Bailey’s Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for breakfast with a little milk. Not cream. Milk. Be sure to get Bailey’s.”
“Yes, but—”
The face disappeared, and the window was banged down again. I lingered a while, but nothing else happened, so, taking Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away.
And as we turned up the road we met Freddie’s Elizabeth.
“Well, baby?” she said, sighting the kid. “So daddy found you again, did he? Your little son and I made great friends on the beach this morning,” she said to me.
This was the limit. Coming on top of that interview with the whiskered lunatic, it so utterly unnerved me that she had nodded goodbye and was halfway down the road before I caught up with my breath enough to deny the charge of being the infant’s father.