Mr. Fentolin waited until he had finished. Then he waved him away.
“Go and take a long walk, Gerald,” he advised. “Fresh air is what you need, fresh air and a little vigorous exercise. Run along now and send Miss Price to me.”
Gerald overtook Hamel upon the stairs.
“By this time,” the latter remarked, “I suppose that our friend Mr. Dunster is upon the sea.”
Gerald nodded silently. They passed along the corridor. The door of the room which Mr. Dunster had occupied was ajar. As though by common consent, they both stopped and looked in. The windows were all wide open, the bed freshly made. The nurse was busy collecting some medicine bottles and fragments of lint. She looked at them in surprise.
“Mr. Dunster has left, sir,” she told them.
“We saw him go,” Gerald replied.
“Rather a quick recovery, wasn’t it, nurse?” Hamel asked.
“It wasn’t a recovery at all, sir,” the woman declared sharply. “He’d no right to have been taken away. It’s my opinion Doctor Sarson ought to be ashamed of himself to have permitted it.”
“They couldn’t exactly make a prison of the place, could they?” Hamel pointed out. “The man, after all, was only a guest.”