“Up against a blank wall again. Which way round are you going?”
“Well, you’ve got the remarkable likeness between Evangeline Stableford and Dolores Alvarez. Dolores was certainly not the child’s mother. She had never had a child; but it’s worth your while to work out the Alvarez pedigree, for I shall be everlastingly surprised if there proves to have been no blood relationship at all between the two women. I don’t promise you that you’ll find the solution; but that’s the only channel I think of at present, and it’s worth trying. Still, there’s one other alternative. Suppose Sir John is trying to protect the honour of a man, and that the child is not his at all? Suppose Sir John himself were only a trustee, and that he did not create the trust, but only passed it on?”
“Suppose indeed, Tempest! However do you think of things as you do?”
“Think! One can’t help thinking. The alternatives jump at you. But you can take it for granted that if Sir John were protecting a man, that man was no ordinary client. Any man will go to any lengths in the interests of a woman, particularly if she be a pretty woman; but I’m hanged if I think many men would go to the bother Sir John did simply in the interests of a man. Besides, a man’s interests never get so important in this avenue that they are worth such procedure. In fact, it is hardly a very likely solution.”
“Tempest, suppose her father were a king?”
“I’ve thought of that, but then kings’ mistresses are always the wives of other men, who father their children for them. Added to which, Yardley, a king lives his life so much in the open that his bastards are known to many people, often to all the world. They can’t be hidden up. No, it isn’t a king. Do you remember the story of poor Parnell? It’s always been a mystery to me that the Irish have ever tolerated the English Liberal Party since. The Irish were more powerful under Parnell than they have ever been before or since. Yet they let the Radical Nonconformist conscience fire the ultimatum at them that they must throw Parnell over. And so they broke him and broke themselves. It was such sickening cant—that ultimatum. Yardley, she was far more likely to be the child of a man in the position of Parnell than the child of a king. You see, a king is not dependent on public support for his position. A public man is, and the whole of his private life is expected to be white as driven snow. If it isn’t, he’s got to whitewash over the shady places till the public can’t spot them. And that takes some doing. What I doubt is that Sir John would lend himself to it. You see, both the alternatives are unlikely. Which is the least unlikely?”
“Hanged if I know!”
“I’m sure I don’t, Yardley. As far as we know at present, it’s just a case of ‘you pays your money and you takes your choice.’”
“Tempest, what sort of a man was Sir John?”
“Can’t tell you. I’ve seen him in court a few times. Just knew the old boy to nod to, but that’s all. I never held a brief for him. You see, he was one of the beastly respectable sort of solicitor. A divorce case or anything nasty or criminal he’d send on at once to another firm. Nice stodgy conveyancing, chancery work or family trust deeds and things of that kind were all he would do. He was a splendid father to unregenerate cubs.”