"She said she'd promised.... And that," the boy broke out, "was what drove me crazy. He's—he's—well, you know what he is."
"His father's son," said P. Sybarite gloomily.
"He was there to-night—the old man, too; and after what Marian had told me, I just couldn't trust myself to meet or speak to either of them. So I bolted back here, took a stiff drink, changed from costume to these clothes, and went out to make a besotted ass of myself. Naturally I landed in Dutch House. And there—the first thing I noticed when I went in was old Shaynon, sitting at the same table you took, later—waiting. Imagine my surprise—I'd left him at the Bizarre not thirty minutes before!"
"I'm imagining it, Peter. Get ahead."
"I hailed him, but he wouldn't recognise me—simply glared. Presently Red November came in and they went upstairs together. So I stuck around, hoping to get hold of Red and make him drunk enough to talk. Curiously enough when Shaynon left, Red came directly to my table and sat down. But by that time I'd had some champagne on top of whiskey and was beginning to know that if I pumped in anything more, it'd be November's party instead of mine. And when he tried to insist on my drinking more, I got scared—feeling what I'd had as much as I did."
"You're not the fool you try to seem," P. Sybarite conceded. "I heard November promise Shaynon, at the door, that you wouldn't remember much when you came to. The old scoundrel didn't want to be seen—hadn't expected to be recognised and, when he found you'd followed, planned to fix things so that you'd never tell on him."
"But why?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out. There's some sort of shenanigan brewing, or my first name's Peter, the same as yours—which I wish it was so.... Be quiet a bit and let me think."
For a little while P. Sybarite sat pondering with vacant eyes; and the wounded boy stared upward with a frown, as though endeavouring to puzzle the answer to this riddle out of the blankness of the ceiling.
"What time does this Hadley-Owen party break up?"