"That way, towards Duke-street."
"He must have gone," thought Grimaldi, "to call on Mr. Bailey, our old landlord." He hurried away to the house in Great Wild-street, and knocked long and loudly at the door. The people were asleep. He knocked again and rang violently, being in a state of great excitement; at length a servant-girl thrust her head out of an upper window, and said, both sulkily and sleepily,—
"I tell you again, he is not at home."
"What are you talking about? Who is not at home?"
"Why, Mr. Bailey: I told you so before. What do you keep on knocking for, at this time of night?"
He could not understand a word of all this, but hurriedly told his name, and requested the girl to come down directly, for he wished to speak to her. The head was directly withdrawn, the window closed, and in a minute or two afterwards the girl appeared at the street door.
"I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," she said, after pouring forth a volume of apologies. "But there was a gentleman here knocking and ringing very violently not a minute before you came. I told him Mr. Bailey was not at home; and when I heard you at the door, I thought it was him, and that he would not go away."
Grimaldi was breathless with the speed he had made, and trembling with vague apprehensions of he knew not what. He asked if she had seen the gentleman's face. The girl, surprised at his emotion, replied that she had not; she had only answered him from the window, being afraid to open the door to a stranger so long after dark, when all the family were out. The only thing she had noticed was that he had got a white waistcoat on; for she had thought at the time, seeing him dressed, that perhaps he might have called to take her master to a party.
He must have gone back to the theatre.
He left the surprised girl standing at the door, and ran to Drury Lane. Here, again, he was disappointed; he had not been seen. He ran from place to place, and from house to house, wherever he thought it possible his brother could have called, but nobody had heard of or seen him. Many of the persons to whom he appealed openly expressed their doubts to each other of his sanity of mind; which were really not without a shadow of probability, seeing that he knocked them out of their beds, and, with every appearance of agitation and wildness, demanded if they had seen his brother, whom nobody had heard of for fourteen years, and whom most of them considered dead.