Blind Policy. Fenn George Manville

something more about that place than one knows,” Chester thought to himself as he turned from side to side, “and I cannot – I will not, sit down and patiently bear such treatment. To-morrow I’ll go and demand an explanation. I have a good excuse,” he said half aloud and with a bitter laugh; “there is my promised fee, and – Pish!” he exclaimed savagely. “If I am to prove a scoundrel, I will be an honest one. I will ferret out who and what they are. I behaved like a child in not having some explanation earlier – in yielding passively as I did without reason – no, not without reason. I could not help it. Heaven help me! I will – I must see her again. It is fate!”

      He jumped up in bed, for a sudden thought now sent a chill of horror through him, as for the first time the drugging which had taken place showed itself in another light.

      “To get rid of me,” he muttered, as the great drops of sweat gathered on his face, “and – the last thing I remember – Marion – her head fallen upon the couch beside her brother, helpless now to protect her – drugged, insensible, at the mercy of that villain; and I here without stirring or raising a hand.”

      Some little time later, feeling weak and faint, he was standing in the hall reaching down his hat, and for a moment he had a feeling of compunction. Isabel – his sister – what would they think of his strange, base infatuation?

      “What they will,” he said between his teeth. “Placed in such circumstances, no man could be master of himself. I must save her, even if we never meet again;” and the door closed after him loudly, as, half mad now with excitement, Marion’s eyes seeming to lure him on, he stepped out into the darkness of the night.

      “Whither?” he muttered, as he hurried across the Square. “Heaven help me! it is my fate.”

      Chapter Nine.

      A Blacker Cloud In Front

      The nearest church clock was striking three as Chester passed into the great west-end artery, which was almost deserted, and he had been walking rapidly, under the influence of his strange excitement, for some minutes before, clear as his head was now, he found himself brought up short by a mental cloud as black and dense as that from which he had suffered when he began to recover from the influence of the drug he had taken.

      But there was this difference: the dense obscurity then was relating to the past – this was connected with the future.

      “Good heavens!” he muttered. “Whatever he gave me must be acting still; I am half delirious. I am no longer master of my actions. Why am I here? What am I going to do? – To try to save her, for she is at his mercy. But how?”