The hotel where Isabel had been staying—the manager there would know where she and her father and mother went on leaving.
He took a cab there, but the manager did not know. He thought the old people went abroad, and the young lady went into private apartments.
“But their letters—where were their letters to be addressed?”
“To their country house, sir.”
Chester hurried away again. Perhaps something might be made of that, and he went to the first post-office and telegraphed down to the person in charge of the house, paying for a reply to be sent to Raybeck Square, to which place he returned, and paced his room for two hours before he obtained the brief reply:—
“Address not known. They have not written yet.—Susan.”
“Was any poor wretch ever so tortured by fate?” he muttered; and he threw himself into a chair to try and think out some way of finding out the address to which he had sent Marion.
At last, faint, and with his brain in a whirl, he sought for temporary release from his sufferings in one of the bottles of drugs in his consulting-room.
But the ordinary dose seemed to have no effect, and he repeated it at intervals twice before he sank into a state of lethargy from which he did not awaken till morning, to find himself lying back in a corner of the couch, with the three servants gathered in consultation.
“Yes,” he cried wildly, “what is it?—what is the matter?”