“I really wouldn’t mind,” Jessie said, choking back a sharp command to stop. Michael solved the problem by throwing up and howling. Mrs. Humffrey guiltily backed off. “It’s nothing,” Jessie said, taking him. “It’s just not a very good idea to tickle an infant, especially on a full stomach.” She burped him, cleaned him up, and handed him back.
“Oh, dear,” Sarah Humffrey said. “There’s so much I have to learn.”
“Not so much,” Jessie couldn’t help saying. “It’s really only a matter of common sense, Mrs. Humffrey. I do think I’ll come back tonight.”
“I absolutely forbid you. I know how you’ve looked forward to a night in town...”
In the end Jessie was persuaded. Driving her sturdy little 1949 Dodge coupé, she told herself all the way to the railroad station that she really must stop being so possessive. It would do Mrs. Humffrey good to have to care for her baby around the clock. Women had no business turning their children over to someone else. But if they were that kind — and it seemed to Jessie that she rarely encountered any other kind — the more responsibility that was forced on them the better off they and the children were.
Still, Jessie was uneasy all day. It rather spoiled the good time she had planned. She met an old friend, Belle Berman, a supervisor of nurses at a New York hospital; and although they shopped at Saks’s, had lunch in a winy-smelling restaurant on 45th Street with French travel posters on the walls, and took in a matinée, Jessie found her thoughts going back to Nair Island and the unhappy little face on the bathinette.
They had dinner in Belle Berman’s apartment on West 11th Street. All during the meal Jessie kept glancing at her watch.
“What is the matter with you?” her friend demanded as she began to collect the dishes. “Anyone would think you’d left a dying patient.”
“I’m sorry, Belle, but I’m worried about the baby. Mrs. Humffrey does have a cold, and if she starts moaning and pampering herself... Besides, she’s so helpless about the simplest things.”
“Heavens, Jessie,” Belle Berman exclaimed. “Is there anything more indestructible than an infant? Anyway, it will do the woman good. These rich mothers! Now you stop this foolishness — no, I’ll wash the dishes, and you’re going to sit on your fanny and talk to me. By the way, how do you keep your figure? You eat like a horse!”
Belle Berman had a few friends in after dinner, and Jessie tried hard to catch up on hospital gossip and join in the good-natured character assassination of certain doctors and nurses they all knew. But as the evening wore on she grew more and more restless. Finally, she jumped up.
“Belle, I know you’re going to think I’m menopausal or something, but would you mind very much if I change our plans and I don’t stay overnight after all?”
“Jessie Sherwood.”
“Well, I can’t bear the thought of my precious lamb being mishandled by that woman,” Jessie said fiercely. “Or suppose she got really sick today? Those maids don’t know one end of a baby from the other. If I leave now and take a cab, I can catch the 11.05...”
She just made the train. The trip was stifling and miserable. Jessie lolled all the way in a sickish stupor, dozing.
It was a few minutes past midnight when she got off at the Taugus station and unlocked her car. Even here the night was a humid swelter, and the inside of the Dodge was like an oven. She rolled down the windows, but she did not wait for the car to cool off. She drove off at once, head throbbing.
She thought Charlie Peterson would never come out of the gatehouse. He finally appeared, yawning.
“What a night,” he said, slapping at the mosquitoes.
“Yes.”
“Hot in town, too, Miss Sherwood?”
“Beastly.”
“At least you could go to an air-cooled movie. What makes this job so tough is having to look at this damn water while you’re boiling to death—”
“I have such a headache,” Jessie murmured. “Would you please let me through, Mr. Peterson?”
“Sorry!” He raised the barrier, offended.
Jessie drove up the Nair Island road, sighing. Now that she was here, it all seemed rather silly. The Humffrey house up ahead was dark. If the baby were sick or wakeful the house would be blazing with lights. Mrs. Humffrey took it for granted that her employes were delighted to share her troubles and got them all out of bed the moment anything went wrong. Well, this was one night when none of them was going to be disturbed. She’d leave the car just inside the grounds and let herself in the front door quietly and tiptoe upstairs and go to bed. The sound of the car going around the driveway to the garage might wake someone up.
Jessie turned off her ignition, locked the car, and groped toward the front of the house. She located the key in her bag by touch, let herself in, shut the door carefully, felt around until she found the newel post, and climbed the stairs, grateful for the heavy carpeting.
Then, at the door of her room, after all her caution, she dropped her purse. In the silence of the dark house it sounded like a bomb going off.
Jessie was feeling around on all fours, trying to locate the purse and keep her head from falling, too, when a whiplash voice a few feet away said, “Don’t move.”
“Oh, dear,” Jessie said with an exasperated laugh. “It’s only me, Mr. Humffrey. I’m sorry.”
A light flashed on her.
“Miss Sherwood.” As her eyes accommodated to the glare she saw his robed figure utterly still, a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. “I thought you were spending the night in New York.”
Jessie plucked her purse from the floor, feeling like a fool. “I changed my mind, Mr. Humffrey. I developed a headache, and the city was so hot...”
Why did he keep the gun pointing at her that way?
“Alton! What is it?”
“Oh, dear,” Jessie said again. She wished he would lower the gun.
Light flooded the master bedroom doorway. Mrs. Humffrey peered out, clutching one of her exquisite negligees at the bosom. Her face looked pinched and old with fear.
“It’s Miss Sherwood, Sarah.” Only then did Alton Humffrey drop the gun into the pocket of his robe. “That was foolish of you, Miss Sherwood, stealing in this way, without warning. You might have been shot. Why didn’t you phone?”
“I didn’t have time. I made my mind up at the last minute.” Jessie began to feel angry. Questioning her as if she were a criminal! “I’m terribly sorry my clumsiness woke you up. Is the baby all right, Mrs. Humffrey?”
“He was last time I looked in.” Sarah Humffrey came out into the hall and switched on the lights. Her husband went back to their room without another word. “Have you been in to Michael yet?”
“No. How is your cold?”
“Oh, it’s all right. Baby was cross all day, I can’t imagine why. I didn’t leave him for a moment. And I’ve been in to him twice since I put him beddy-bye. Do you suppose he could have caught my cold?”
“I’ll have a look,” Jessie said wearily. “But I’m sure he’s all right, Mrs. Humffrey, or this noise would have made him restless. Why don’t you go back to bed?”
“I’ll look with you.”
Jessie shrugged. She opened her door, turned on her bedlamp, and tossed her hat and gloves on the bureau.
“I hope I did all the right things,” Mrs. Humffrey said. “He was so fretful at 10.30, the last time I looked at him before I went to bed, that I put a big pillow between his head and the headboard. I was afraid he’d hurt himself. Their tender little skulls...”
Jessie wished her tender little skull would stop aching. She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice. “I’ve told you, Mrs. Humffrey, that’s not a wise thing to do when they’re so tiny. The bumpers give him all the protection necessary.” She hurried toward the nursery.