Inquiry was then pushed on to the hotel named by the cabman.  A gentleman in a fur coat had certainly arrived there the evening before, but no one had seen anything of him after his arrival.  He had taken dinner in his private sitting-room, and had then paid his bill, because, he said, he must be gone early in the morning.  About half an hour after dinner, when a waiter cleared the things away, he had gone to his room, and next morning he had left the hotel soon after dawn.  Boots, half asleep, had seen him walk away, bag in hand, wrapped in his greatcoat,—­walk away, it would seem, and dissolve into the mist of the morning, for from that point no further trace could be got of him.  No such figure as his had been seen on any of the roads leading from the hotel, either by the early milkman, or by the belated coffee-stall keeper, or night cabman.  Being asked what name the gentleman had given at the hotel, the book-keeper showed her record, with the equivocal name of “M.  Dolaro.”  The name might be Italian or Spanish,—­or English or American for that matter,—­and the initial “M” might be French or anything in the world.

In the meantime Dr Lefevre had been pondering the details of the affair, and noting the aspects of his patient’s condition; but the more he noted and pondered, the more contorted and inexplicable did the mystery become.  His understanding boggled at its very first notes.  It was almost unheard of that a young man of his patient’s strong and healthy constitution and temper should be hypnotised or mesmerised at all, much less hypnotised to the verge of dissolution; and it was unprecedented that even a weak, hysterical subject should, after being unhypnotised, remain so long in prostrate exhaustion.  Then, suppose these circumstances of the case were ordinary, there arose this question, which refused to be solved:  Since it was ridiculous to suppose that the hypnotisation was a wanton experiment, and since it had not been for the sake of robbery, what had been its object?

The interest of the case was emphasised and enlarged by an article in ‘The Daily Telegraph,’ in which was called to mind the singular story in its Paris correspondence a day or two before, of the young woman in the Hotel-Dieu, which Lefevre had forgotten.  The writer remarked on the points of similarity which the case in the Brighton train bore to that of the Paris pavement; insisted on the probable identity of the man in the fur coat with the man in the cloak; and appealed to Dr Lefevre to explain the mystery, and to the police to find the man “who has alarmed the civilised world by a new form of outrage.”