IX
ENTR'ACTE
Dawn of Sunday found Whitaker still awake. Alone in his uncheerful hotel
bedchamber, his chair tilted back against the wall, he sat smoking and thinking,
reviewing again and again every consideration growing out of his matrimonial entanglement.
He turned in at length to the dreamless slumbers of mental exhaustion.
The morning introduced him to a world of newspapers gone mad and garrulous
with accounts of the sensation of the preceding night. What they told him only
confirmed the history of his wife's career as detailed by the gratuitous Mr.
Ember. There was, however, no suggestion in any report that Drummond had not
in fact committed suicide—this, despite the total disappearance of the
hypothetical corpse. No doubts seemed to have arisen from the circumstance that
