d Carey read the caption
outlined on the bulletin boards.

He felt in his coat pocket, where he carried a small revolver he had
purchased, and hurried along more rapidly. His gait was quick and firm
as an athlete's on the course. No trace of intoxication now.

He reached the St. James and asked a page to be directed to Mrs. Carey's
apartment. The boy grinned at first, but was silent at a word from Carey
and led him the way. When they reached her door, at the end of a long
series of corridors and stairs, the page wished to announce him, but
Carey pushed him aside roughly and opened the door. His fingers were
clinched upon the pistol in his pocket; his plan was to ask her one
question, and then, while she was hesitating about her answer, to kill
her.

The drawing-room was a large apartment, vulgarly furnished in a style
gone by. A marble clock was on the mantel, and a photograph of the King.
Carey pressed through into the bedroom. No one was there. Bits of lace
and muslin were scattered about the floor, and one or two garments lying
on the chairs as if hastily thrown aside. Carey thoroughly examined the
rooms and then turned back to the page.

"Where is Mrs. Carey? Do you know?"

"I do not. I heard that she was about to leave the court."

Carey turned away, and, leaving the hotel, took a carriage and drove to
the railway station. A train had just left for New York. At the
news-stand was the usual collection of her pictures on sale. Carey spoke
to the boy in charge, pointing to a photograph.

"Have you seen that woman go by here to-day?"

"Yes, sir; I see that woman go by here not twenty minutes ago. That's
the beauty, Mrs. Carey, that is. There was another woman with her, and a
man."

Her maid, probably. But who could the man be? Carey found the next train
for New York did not leave till evening. He waited in the station for
it, and arrived in that city at midnight. It was too late to get any
trace of his wife that night.

Early in the morning he began the search, but it was all of no avail.
His wife had apparently stopped at none of the hotels. A certain lady
looking like her had been seen at a small hotel on the Fifth Avenue,
but she had been with a gentleman, and their names were registered as
Mr. and Mrs. Copley Hutchinson, of Boston.

Carey wondered whether she could have left the city. Several European
steamers had sailed or were to sail that day, and he spent an hour or
two at the docks searching them