He might naturally have expected this; but it served to surprise and exasperate him, for at that moment he was in the mood to fight with his own shadow.
'Ellinor, rouse yourself—I have news for you—news at last!' he exclaimed, and knocked on the door-panels more noisily than respectfully.
But there was no response from within. He applied his ear to the keyhole; there was not a sound to be heard, and, as he had been given to understand that young girls generally slept lightly, it was impossible he could fail to waken her.
He knocked more loudly again, but failed to elicit the slightest response. Then he heard the mocking laugh of Frau Wyburg, who was listening at the foot of the staircase, and, believing that already he was being deluded, a gust of fury seized him, and applying his foot to the door, and as it was old and worm-eaten, he dashed it open with ease, and entered the darkened room.
It was empty, and no cry of alarm or consternation followed his furious irruption into it. The upheld candle showed him in a moment that its occupant was no longer there. Ellinor was gone!
Her bed had been unslept in; her hat and the jacket she had got on board the Flying Foam were lying on it.
Where was she? Where hidden away?
That double villain Wyburg had deceived him after all, was Sir Redmond's instant thought, and, impressed by the rewards offered in the Hamburger Nachtrichten and elsewhere, had 'sold' him and given her up to Mrs. Deroubigne.
Though infuriated with rage and disappointment he became sober in a moment, and turned to confront Wyburg and his wife; and, to do them justice, their astonishment, incredulity, and alarm had not the least appearance of being simulated, but were genuine.
She was concealed from him perhaps in some other apartment.