It was evidently a long and troublesome analysis that Craig was engaged in at the laboratory, for it was some hours after dinner that night when he came into the apartment, and even then he said nothing, but buried himself in some of the technical works with which his library was stocked. He said little, but I gathered that he was in great doubt about something, perhaps, as much as anything, about how to proceed with so peculiar a case.
It was growing late, and Kennedy was still steeped in his books, when the door of the apartment, which we happened to have left unlocked, was suddenly thrown open and Seward Blair burst in on us, wildly excited.
“Veda is gone!” he cried, before either of us could ask him what was the matter.
“Gone?” repeated Kennedy. “How—where?”
“I don’t know,” Blair blurted out breathlessly. “We had been out together this afternoon, and I returned with her. Then I went out to the club after dinner for a while, and when I got back I missed her—not quarter of an hour ago. I burst into her room—and there I found this note. Read it. I don’t know what to do. No one seems to know what has become of her. I’ve called up all over and then thought perhaps you might help me, might know some friend of hers that I don’t know, with whom she might have gone out.”
Blair was plainly eager for us to help him. Kennedy took the paper from him. On it, in a trembling hand, were scrawled some words, evidently addressed to Blair himself:
“You would forgive me and pity me if you knew what I have been through.
“When I refused to yield my will to the will of the Lodge I suppose I aroused the enmity of the Lodge.
“To-night as I lay in bed, alone, I felt that my hour had come, that mental forces that were almost irresistible were being directed against me.
“I realized that I must fight not only for my sanity but for my life.