Mr. Fentolin sat in his chair, his hands still gripping the wonderful document, his eyes travelling over the ocean now flecked with sunlight.  His eyes were fixed upon the horizon.  He looked steadily eastward.

CHAPTER VI

Mr. John P. Dunster opened his eyes upon strange surroundings.  He found himself lying upon a bed deliciously soft, with lace-edged sheets and lavender-perfumed bed hangings.  Through the discreetly opened upper window came a pleasant and ozone-laden breeze.  The furniture in the room was mostly of an old-fashioned type, some of it of oak, curiously carved, and most of it surmounted with a coat of arms.  The apartment was lofty and of almost palatial proportions.  The whole atmosphere of the place breathed comfort and refinement.  The only thing of which he did not wholly approve was the face of the nurse who rose silently to her feet at his murmured question: 

“Where am I?”

She felt his forehead, altered a bandage for a moment, and took his wrist between her fingers.

“You have been ill,” she said.  “There was a railway accident.  You are to lie quite still and not say a word.  I am going to fetch the doctor now.  He wished to see you directly you spoke.”

Mr. Dunster dozed again for several moments.  When he reopened his eyes, a man was standing by his bedside, a short man with a black beard and gold-rimmed glasses.  Mr. Dunster, in this first stage of his convalescence, was perhaps difficult to please, for he did not like the look of the doctor, either.

“Please tell me where I am?” he begged.

“You have been in a railway accident,” the doctor told him, “and you were brought here afterwards.”

“In a railway accident,” Mr. Dunster repeated.  “Ah, yes, I remember!  I took a special to Harwich—­I remember now.  Where is my dressing-bag?”

“It is here by the side of your bed.”

“And my pocket-book?”

“It is on your dressing-table.”

“Have any of my things been looked at?”

“Only so far as was necessary to discover your identity,” the doctor assured him.  “Don’t talk too much.  The nurse is bringing you some beef tea.”

“When,” Mr. Dunster enquired, “shall I be able to continue my journey?”

“That depends upon many things,” the doctor replied.

Mr. Dunster drank his beef tea and felt considerably stronger.  His head still ached, but his memory was returning.

“There was a young man in the carriage with me,” he asked presently.  “Mr. Gerald something or other I think he said his name was?”

“Fentolin,” the doctor said.  “He is unhurt.  This is his relative’s house to which you have been brought.”

Mr. Dunster lay for a time with knitted brows.  Once more the name of Fentolin seemed somehow familiar to him, seemed somehow to bring with it to his memory a note of warning.  He looked around the room fretfully.  He looked into the nurse’s face, which he disliked exceedingly, and he looked at the doctor, whom he was beginning to detest.