When Mensmore had quitted the hotel Bruce descended to the bureau to take up the threads of his neglected quest. The letter to Sydney H. Corbett was still unclaimed, and he thought he was justified in examining it. On the reverse of the envelope was the embossed stamp of an electric-lighting company, so the contents were nothing more important than a bill.
An hour later Mensmore joined him in the billiard-room, radiant and excited.
“Great news,” he said. “I squared everything with Lady Browne. Told her I was only chaffing Phil about the five hundred, because she spoiled my aim by shrieking out. Sir William has chartered a steam yacht to go for a three weeks’ cruise along the Gulf of Genoa and the Italian coast. They have put him up to ask me in the morning to join the party. Great Scott! what a night I’m having!”
They parted soon afterwards, and next morning Bruce was informed that his friend had gone out early, leaving word that he had been summoned to breakfast at the Grand Hotel, where Sir William Browne was staying.
During the afternoon Mensmore came to him like a whirlwind. “We’re off to-day,” he said. “By the way, where shall I find you in London?”
The barrister gave him his address, and Mensmore, handing him a card, said, “My permanent address is given here, the Orleans Club, St. James’s. But I will look you up first. I shall be in town early in March. And you?”
“Oh, I shall be home much sooner. Good-bye, and don’t let your good luck spoil you.”
“No fear! Wait until you know Phyllis. She would keep any fellow all right once he got his chance, as I have done. Good-bye, and—and—God bless you!”
During the next three days Bruce devoted himself sedulously to the search for Corbett. He inquired in every possible and impossible place, but the man had utterly vanished.
Nor did he come to claim his letter at the Hotel du Cercle. It remained stuck on the baize-covered board until it was covered with dust, and the clerk of the bureau had grown weary of watching people who scrutinized the receptacle for their correspondence.