Chapter Seventeen.
Assaulting the Castle.
Chester stood on the doorstep for some minutes, thinking, in perfect ignorance of what was taking place inside, and twice over he rang the bell, in the determination to enter and confront these men.
But reason stepped in.
“No,” he thought, “I could do nothing. For Marion’s sake I must bring subtlety to bear, not brute force. And this is leaving England, to try and forget everything,” he added, with a mocking laugh. “No; I must stay and unravel it all.”
He went home, had recourse to a drug again, and slept heavily till morning, and then, with his brain throbbing painfully from his anxious thoughts, he had left the house, determined to make another effort to obtain speech of Marion. That she was completely under the influence of her friends he felt sure, but if, he told himself, he could only obtain an interview, all might be well.
To this end and full of a fresh project, he took a four-wheeled cab and had himself driven to the end of Highcombe Street, where he bade the driver draw up and wait.
Here he threw himself back in one corner of the vehicle, opened a newspaper so as to screen his face and at the same time enable him to keep a strict watch upon the house.
Fortune favoured him. At the end of an hour he saw the carriage drawn up, and soon after the brothers and their wives came out and were driven off; then the butler stood airing himself upon the step for a time, and finally went in and closed the door.