“Sorry to trouble you,” he said. “I suppose I've made a mistake. I—is your nephew at home?”
“No.”
“May I see a picture of him, if you have one?”
David's wild impulse was to smash Gregory to the earth, to annihilate him. His collar felt tight, and he pulled it away from his throat.
“Not unless I know why you want to see it.”
“He is tall, rather spare? And he took a young lady to the theater last night?” Gregory persisted.
“He answers that description. What of it?”
“And he is your nephew?”
“My brother's son,” David said steadily.
Somehow it began to dawn on him that there was nothing inimical in this strange visitor, that he was anxious and ill at ease. There was, indeed, something almost beseeching in Gregory's eyes, as though he stood ready to give confidence for confidence. And, more than that, a sort of not unfriendly stubbornness, as though he had come to do something he meant to do.