Of course I had no business to follow Jevons.  He had a perfect right to travel—­to travel anywhere he liked, without interference from anybody.  And in fixing on a time to travel in, nothing was more likely than with his mania upon him he would choose a time that had become valueless to him—­a time that he had no other use for, the time when Viola Thesiger was away.  The poverty of his resources was such that he couldn’t afford to waste any opportunity of seeing her.  So that I really could not have given any satisfactory answer if I had been asked why I had jumped to the preposterous conclusion that, because they were away at the same time, they were away together.  It ought to have been as inconceivable to me as it was to Reggie.  I can only say that in following him I acted on an intimation that amounted to certainty, founded on I know not what underground flashes of illumination and secret fear.

I must have trusted to more flashes in pursing his trail.  For when I reached Folkestone there wasn’t any trail at all.  My only clue was that three days ago Jevona had posted a manuscript at Ostend.  He might not be in Belgium at all.  He might be in Holland or in France or Germany by this time.

When we got to Ostend I made systematic inquiries at the Post Office and at all probable hotels.  At the eleventh hotel (a very humble one) I heard that a “Mr. Chevons” had stayed there one night, three nights ago.  No, he had nobody with him.  He had left no address.  They didn’t know where he was going on to.  I found out under another rubric that Englishmen never came to this hotel.  There was no point in making a separate search for Viola; if my intuition held good, all I had to do was to find out where Jevons was.

I went on to Bruges.  Why, I cannot tell you.  I had never heard either Viola or Jevons say they would like to see Bruges.  But Bruges was the sort of place that people did like to see.

No trace of Jevons or of Viola in Bruges.

I went on to Antwerp (it was another of the likely places), and then, in sheer desperation, to Ghent.

And in Ghent, in a certain hotel in the Place d’Armes, I ran up against Burton Withers, the man who used to be on the old Dispatch, and the very last person I could have wished to see.  I didn’t ask him if he’d seen Jevons; I didn’t mention Jevons; but before we’d parted he had told me that, by the way, he’d come across Jevons in Bruges.  He was going about with my typist, Miss Thesiger.  They were staying in the same hotel.

I tried to say as casually as I could that Miss Thesiger had wired to me that she was staying in that hotel with her people.

The little bounder then intimated that when he saw Miss Thesiger her people were less conspicuous than Jevons.

I replied that that was probably the reason why they’d asked me to join them when I’d seen Ghent.

Withers advised me to go on seeing Ghent if I wanted to be popular.  They—­Jevons and Miss Thesiger—­didn’t look at all as if they wanted to be seen, much less joined.