Putting down the book, he stared thoughtfully off into space. The idea had just never entered his brain before. Was it possible, he wondered, that he might be able to woo Helen away from Grundy?
Not knowing a thing about how to go about it interfered quite a bit, he found. His flirtation, if you could call it that, began to resemble a game of hide and go seek, for he would lurk in dark corners of the house and wait for Helen to walk by alone.
Then, darting out, he'd try to manufacture love talk, or what seemed to pass for it in the book he'd been reading. One day, having succeeded in scaring Helen half out of her wits, by popping out of a linen closet and appearing at her side completely unexpectedly, he made a groping motion and managed to capture one of her hands. Bending over it, he kissed it.
That surprised Helen almost as much as his darting out of the closet and she was even more surprised when he said, his voice low, so that Grundy in the next room would not hear him, "Helen ... I...." But then his voice vanished and he was unable to go on with the speech he had prepared.
One eyebrow raised so high that it almost succeeded in touching her hair line, Helen considered him. Then she asked, "Is anything wrong? Do you feel all right?" Then she put her hand on his forehead and said, "Are you feverish?"
The speech that should have come tumbling out of his mouth raced through his mind, he thought, "Yes, I am feverish, burning with desire.... Nothing can put out the fire but you...." That is what he thought. What he said, was, "Um.... I guess I am feeling sick. I think I'll go up and lay down for a while." Then tottering off he left her there.
Lying down, even with a cool cloth on his head, he found did not suffice to quench the fire that was threatening to consume him.
Returning to his reading he found that on occasion, earthmen had murdered the men who stood in the way of their desire. Then it was that he began to trail Grundy instead of Helen. He'd stand in a doorway, while Grundy innocently read, and think of ways to kill his friend. Poison, he found in his reading, was one of the commoner ways of removing the other lover. That would have been fine and he'd have been glad to poison Grundy but for the small fact that he didn't have the vaguest idea what poison was.
And, what if he killed Grundy and even then Helen didn't fall in love with him? That was a big factor and one that succeeded in baffling him for quite a while. Perhaps, he decided finally, he'd better make sure she at least liked him before he went to the slightly extreme extent of murdering his friend.
But before he could take matters of any kind in hand, there came an interruption in the even tenor of their ways. Precisely a month after they entered Bowdler's house, the door opened and Bowdler came through the entrance, a broad smile of inquiry on his heavy face.