The cab drove away, and Kenyon's laugh went after it.
He was revenged.
X
But for the chauffeur, a burly and obliging Irishman, Nellie Pope's unwilling and unconscious customer would never have reached her rooms. They were on the top floor of a brown-stone house which had no elevator. The struggle to earn his own daily bread made the chauffeur sympathetic. So he got Peter over his shoulder, as though he were a huge sack, and carried him step by step up the narrow, ill-lit, echoing staircase. On the top landing he waited, breathing hard, while the girl opened the door with her latch-key.
"Where'll I put him?"
"Bring 'im into the bedroom," said the girl. "I'm sure I'm obliged to you for the trouble you've taken, mister. You'll 'ave a glass of beer before you go down, won't you?"
"Sure!"
He lumped Peter on to the bed with an exclamation of relief. It groaned beneath his dead weight. Mopping his brow and running his fingers through a shock of thick, dry hair, the Irishman looked down at the great body of his own customer's evening catch. "I guess I've seen a good many drunks before," he said, "but this feller's fairly paralyzed. It's a barrel he must have had, or perhaps he's shot himself with one of them needle things. Anyway, he's a fine-looking chap."
Nellie Pope, who had heard these remarks as she was pouring out a bottle of beer,—it was one of those apartments in which every sound carries from room to room and in which when you are seated in the kitchen it is possible to hear a person cleaning his teeth in the bathroom,—went in and stood at the elbow of the chauffeur. Switching on a light over the bed she peered into Peter's face. Her own lost most of its prettiness under the glare. There were hollows and sharpnesses here and there, the roots of the hair round her temples were darker than the too-bright gold of the rest of it. There was, however, something kind, and even a little sweet about her English cockney face and shrewd eyes. "Yes 'e's a fine looking chap, isn't 'e,—a bit of a giant, too, and looks like a gentleman. Poor boy, I wonder what that feller did to 'im!" She put her hand on Peter's head and drew it back quickly. "'E's got a fever, I should think. It looks as if I should 'ave to play nurse to-night. Oh, I beg pardon, mister, 'ere's your beer."