last heard from him he was not.

Then I went down to Fleet Street, to his editor, my editor. He couldn't
give me Jevons's address because he hadn't got it. He rang up the office.
In the office they rather thought Jevons was in Belgium. They'd had a
manuscript from him posted at Ostend. They looked up the date. It was
three days ago.

I sailed that night for Ostend.

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.