“Have you been in a fight?” she asked in the sort of tone that indicates the speaker is joking. Silver said that was exactly right, though it wasn’t of his making, and Mrs. Houghton, still disbelieving but amused, fetched arnica— whatever that may be—and dabbed it on his bruises.

At home nothing more had been heard of or about Mr. Almquist. Silver called it the Case of the Disappearing Swede, which he said sounded like the title of a Sherlock Holmes story. As we walked along I told him about the suitcase and the passport.

“That means he can’t have left the country.”

“He’ll have to come back for his passport sometime,” I said, “and then I suppose everything will be explained.”

When we saw Andrew leaning out of the window waiting for us, expecting us, we both felt things would be all right now. For him and Alison and Jason everything was changing for the better. We set out our wine bottles on the table, the chocolate finger biscuits, the crystallized fruits, the bananas, and the Battenberg cake. Jason, who had been kept up to meet us, though wearing the teddy-bear pajamas ready for bed, saw the bananas and reached for one, hesitating and looking at Alison as he remembered he had to say please.

“Of course you can!” she said. “They’re for you. Our new friends brought them for you.”

That made Andrew frown. Hardly a mark, souvenir of the fight, showed on his dark skin. He might have been waiting for us and been quite welcoming when we arrived, but he hadn’t yet reached the stage of calling us friends.

“Why are you doing this?” he said.

Why were we? I’m not sure if I could have answered. “I suppose because we think you’re right and the social services are wrong,” Silver said, and then, changing the subject, “Who’s Robinson?”

For a moment they seemed not to know what he meant. Then Andrew said, “Ah, yes, Robinson. Just someone we know, someone who presumably feels as you do. That we’re in the right and they’re not. Would you say that was so, Alison?”

“He’s a dear friend who lent us this flat for as long as we want it. He owns the house but he’s hardly ever here. He’s a widower and he’s mostly in the south of France.”

“And how long will you want it?” Silver asked.

She looked distressed. “I don’t know. We’ve got some ideas—would you like to see over the flat?”