"What—how?" The tones were very sleepy indeed.
"Hev ye shrunk any yet? Are ye growin' littler in there? Oh, please feel fer the footboard with yer toe!"
He waited and heard a rustling as of someone moving in bed.
"Did ye feel the footboard?" he asked.
"Yes—kicked it good—now let me sleep." She was ill-natured with much drowsiness.
Poor Droop staggered away from the door as though he had been struck.
All had failed, then. They were circling uselessly. Those inventions would never be his. The golden dreams he had been nursing—oh, impossible! It was unbearable!
He put both hands to his head and walked across the room. He paused half-consciously before a small closet partly hidden in the wall.
With an instinctive movement, he touched a spring and the door slid back. He drew from the cupboard thus revealed two bottles and a glass and returned to seat himself at the table.
A half an hour later the Panchronicon, circling in the outer brightness and silence, contained three unconscious travellers, and one of them sat with his arms flung across the table supporting his head, and beside him an empty bottle.