CHAPTER XXI


But the longest night, the most haunted night, and Chester's night had
indeed been haunted, comes to an end at last. After he had had another
bath and a good breakfast he felt a very different man to what he had
done three of four hours ago, lying awake in the sinister, companioned
atmosphere of his bed-room at the Pension Malfait.

Telling his courteous landlord that he would not be in to luncheon,
Chester left the house, and as it was still far too early to seek out
Sylvia, he struck out, with the aid of the little pocket-map of the
environs of Paris with which he had been careful to provide himself,
towards the open country.

And as he swung quickly along, feeling once more tired and depressed, the
Englishman wondered more and more why Sylvia Bailey cared to stay in such
a place as Lacville. It struck him as neither town nor country--more like
an unfinished suburb than anything else, with almost every piece of spare
land up for sale.

He walked on and on till at last he came to the edge of a great stretch
of what looked like primeval woodland. This surely must be part of the
famous Forest of Montmorency, which his guide-book mentioned as being
the great attraction of Lacville? He wondered cynically whether Sylvia
had ever been so far, and then he plunged into the wood, along one of the