Nellie Pope went on,—simply and naturally, like one who is glad to talk, glad to hear her own voice, indescribably, pathetically glad to be in the company of a man who asked for nothing, who was not a guest, but a friend—a fellow-creature down on his luck. "Me and Graham," she said,—"and, I say, what a good-looking boy that is, and fairly devoted to you, dearie,—well, 'im and me think that you must 'ave done something to get the goat of this young feller. 'E doped you, that's certain, and then passed you off on me. Enjoyed the joke, as it were, too, according to what I noticed. Is that likely?"
Peter didn't answer. The joke—? Back into his mind came the many things that Kenyon had said to him at Oxford: "You need humanizing, old boy. You want to be hauled off that self-made pedestal of yours. One of these days you'll come to an unholy crash—" Back into his mind also came Kenyon's taunts made to him as he stood with his back to the fireplace in the library the night after they had returned from having seen Ita Strabosck: "You're blind! Blind! I tell you, and in that room sits a man whose patients you may become."
Utterly ignorant of the feeling of revenge which had surged through Kenyon's brain after Belle had been saved by the Doctor, it was borne in on Peter, as he sat on the bed of this poor little night-bird, that Kenyon had set out on purpose—with calculated deliberation—to make him human, as he called it, before he returned to England. He had made him drunk in order to carry out the joke. He had given him something to render him insensible, well knowing that in no other way could this fiendish desire be fulfilled.
"What time is my brother coming?" he asked.
Nellie Pope was busy daubing powder on her face. "Not until about nine o'clock," she said. "'E and me talked it over this morning. The idea is that you're coming in on the train that arrives at the Grand Central at eight-forty-five. Now don't forget this. You stayed the night in your friend's apartment, but you couldn't see 'im off the next morning because you'd taken on a bit of business for 'im which meant going out of town. Your brother is going to meet you at the station. That's the story. And you're going 'ome together. 'E went back to get one of your bags. 'E will sneak it out of the 'ouse and bring it round here. Oh, I think we're pretty good stage managers, 'im and me. You see, the notion is that Ma mustn't be upset. Poor little Ma!"
"What's to-day?" asked Peter, whose whole body seemed suddenly to have been frozen.
"Sunday, dearie."
"Then I've been here two nights?"
"That's so," said the girl.
Peter was consumed with a desire to explore the apartment. He wanted to discover whether there was another bedroom. "Are you comfortable here?" he asked, a little clumsily.