He wrote her immediately, and perhaps not altogether wisely, under stress of distraction, sending the letter by special delivery in care of the hotel. It was returned him in due course of time, embellished with a pencilled memorandum to the effect that Mrs. Whitaker had left no address.
He communicated at once with Ember, promptly enlisting his willing services. But after several days of earnest investigation the detective confessed himself baffled.
"If you ask me," he commented at the conclusion of his report, "the answer is: she means to be let alone until she's quite ready to see you again. I don't pin any medals on myself for this demonstration of extraordinary penetration; I merely point out the obvious for your own good. Contain yourself, my dear man—and stop gnawing your knuckles like the heavy man in a Third Avenue melodrama. It won't do any good; your wife promised to communicate with you as soon as her health was restored. And not only is she a woman who keeps her promise, but it is quite comprehensible that she should have been shaken up by her extraordinary experience to an extent we can hardly appreciate who haven't the highly sensitive organization of a woman to contend with. Give her time."
"I don't believe it!" Whitaker raged. "She—she loved me there on the island. She couldn't change so quickly, bring herself to treat me so cruelly, unless some infernal influence had been brought to bear upon her."
"It's possible, but I—"
"Oh, I don't mean that foolishness about her love being a man's death-warrant. That may have something to do with it, but—but, damn it!—I conquered that once. She promised ... was in my arms ... I'd won her.... She loved me; there wasn't any make-believe about it. If there were any foundation for that poppycock, I'd be a dead man now—instead of a man damnably ill-used!... No: somebody has got hold of her, worked on her sympathies, maligned me...."
"Do you object to telling me whom you have in mind?"
"The man you suspect as well as I—the one man to whom her allegiance means everything: the man you named to me the night we met for the first time, as the one who'd profit the most by keeping her from leaving the stage!"
"Well, if it's Max, you'll know in time. It won't profit him to hide the light of his star under a bushel; he can only make money by displaying it."
"I'll know before long. As soon as he gets back in town—"