"Dead drunk,—by doping him with a fearful mixture of all the drinks he had. He had always threatened to do it, and this time he caught Peter napping. That was a foul enough thing to do anyway, but it didn't satisfy him. He got him into the street and instead of putting him into a cab and sending him home he called a passing woman——"
"Oh, no!" cried Belle.
"Yes,—and gave Peter over to her and there he's been, in her bed, in a little hole of an apartment, ill and poisoned, ever since."
"Oh, my God!" cried Belle.
"The woman rang me up early this morning and I got Ralph Harding to go and see what he could do. I've been there most of the day,—except for ten minutes with Kenyon—the best ten minutes I ever put in—ever."
He got up and stood looking at Belle with a gleam of such intense satisfaction in his eyes that she guessed what he had done.
"That's our admirable friend Kenyon," he added. "That's the man who shared rooms with Peter—whose charm of manner got us all at Oxford, and who was made one of the family by father and mother when he came to this country. I hit him for Peter, for you and for myself in that glorious ten minutes to-day. I left him lying on the floor in his rooms all over his own black blood, and if ever I meet him again, in any part of the world, at any time of my life, I'll give him another dose of the same sort—for Peter, for you and for me—That's what I came to tell you, Bee."
He bent forward and kissed her, turned round and left the room.
That was Kenyon, Graham had said.
Standing where he had left her, with this story of utter and incredible treachery in her ears, Belle added another count to Graham's indictment,—that of trying to seduce her without even the promise of marriage, when her grief at parting with him made her weak.