“No, aunt, only pitying him, for I am beginning to believe that he is suffering worse than we are.”
Chapter Sixteen.
A Dangerous Case.
“It’s all over,” said Chester to himself. “That doctor’s correct, and I must not trifle or I shall be laid by with something wrong in the head. That drugging began it, and I’m not right. I won’t give up the quest, but I must get square first, and I can’t do so here. I’ll pack up and go on the Continent for a bit. Change may make me able to think consistently. Now my brain is in a whirl.”
He tried to reason calmly, and at last, not feeling in the humour to see and explain to his sister, he wrote to her briefly, telling her that the anxiety and worry of the case to which he had been called that night had completely unhinged him, and he found that the only thing he could do to recover his tone was to get right away for a time. He was going, he said, to see a colleague that morning, who would come and take charge of the practice, and he would write again from abroad.
This done, he fastened down the envelope and left the letter upon the table, after which he went to his room, threw a few necessaries into a portmanteau, brought it down, with Aunt Grace carefully watching from the top of the staircase, and sent the servant for a cab.
Five minutes later he was on his way to his club to consult the time-tables and guide-book as to the route to take.
He was not long in deciding upon Tyrol as the starting-place for a long mountain tramp. There was a train at night, and without returning home he would dine at the club and start from there.