As he replaced the bottle and went on with the thread of the conversation, I saw that in shaking the bottle he had abstracted a couple of the tablets before she realized it. “I can’t tell you just what to do without thinking the case over,” he concluded, rising to go. “Yours is a peculiar case, Miss Haversham, baffling. I’ll have to study it over, perhaps ask Dr. Maudsley If I may see you again. Meanwhile, I am sure what he is doing is the correct thing.”
Inasmuch as she had said nothing about what Dr. Maudsley was doing, I wondered whether there was not just a trace of suspicion in her glance at him from under her long dark lashes.
“I can’t see that you have done anything,” she remarked pointedly. “But then doctors are queer—queer.”
That parting shot also had in it, for me, something to ponder over. In fact I began to wonder if she might not be a great deal more clever than even Kennedy gave her credit for being, whether she might not have submitted to his tests for pure love of pulling the wool over his eyes.
Downstairs again, Kennedy paused only long enough to speak a few words with his friend Dr. Klemm.
“I suppose you have no idea what Dr. Maudsley has prescribed for her?” he asked carelessly.
“Nothing, as far as I know, except rest and simple food.”
He seemed to hesitate, then he said under his voice, “I suppose you know that she is a regular dope fiend, seasons her cigarettes with opium, and all that.”
“I guessed as much,” remarked Kennedy, “but how does she get it here?”
“She doesn’t.”