“Tell him this, then.” She ticked the message off on her fingers. “A half is not exactly the same as a whole. Don’t forget the ‘exactly.’”
“Is this an occasion for mathematical axioms?” I demanded. But she had already gone, with a parting injunction to be precise.
When, three days thereafter, I retailed that banality to young Mr. Dyke, it produced a startling though not instantaneous effect.
“I’ve got it!” he shouted.
“Don’t scare me off my bench! What is it you’ve got?”
“The answer. She said he was not exactly her brother.”
“Who?”
“That bully-looking big chap in the roadster who took her away.” He delivered this shameless reversal of a passionately asserted opinion without a quiver. “Now she says a half isn’t exactly the same as a whole. He wasn’t exactly her brother, she said; he’s her half brother. Toora-loora-loo,’ as we say in Patagonia.”
“For Patagonia it sounds reasonable. What next?”
“Next and immediately,” said Mr. Dyke, “I am obtaining an address from the Mordaunt Estate, and I am then taking this evening off.”