"I am convinced," he said, "that our friend Quest's advice is good. We
will at any rate embark upon this particular frivolity which he suggests."

2.

Quest took the dispatch which the hotel clerk handed to him one afternoon
a fortnight later, and read it through without change of expression.
Lenora, however, who was by his side, knew at once that it contained
something startling.

"What is it?" she asked.

He passed his arm through hers and led her down the hall to where the
Professor and Laura were just waiting for the lift. He beckoned them to
follow him to a corner of the lounge.

"There's one thing I quite forgot, a fortnight ago," he said, slowly,
"when I suggested that we should none of us look at a newspaper all the
time we were in California. Have you kept to our bargain, Professor?"

"Absolutely!"

"And you, girls?"

"I've never even seen one," Lenora declared.

"Nor I," Laura echoed.

"I made a mistake," Quest confessed. "Something has happened which we
ought to have known about. You had better read this message--or, wait,
I'll read it aloud:--

"To Sanford Quest, Garfield Hotel, San Diego.

"Injured in wreck of Limited. Recovered consciousness today.
Craig reported burned in wreck but think you had better come
on."

"FRENCH, Samaritan Hospital, Allguez."

"When can we start?" Laura exclaimed excitedly.

Lenora clutched at Quest's arm.

"I knew it," she declared simply. "I felt perfectly certain, when they
left San Francisco, that something would happen. We haven't seen the end
of Craig yet."

Quest, who had been studying a time-table, glanced once more at the
dispatch.

"Look here," he said, "Allguez isn't so far out of the way if we take the
southern route to New York. Let's get a move on to-night."

Laura led the way to the lift. She was in a state of rare discomposure.

"To think that all the time we've been giddying round," she muttered,
"that poor man has been lying in hospital! Makes one feel like a brute."

"He's been unconscious all the time," Quest reminded her.

"Might have expected to find us there when he came-to, any way," Laura
insisted.

Lenora smiled faintly as she caught a glance from Quest.

"Laura's got a heart somewhere," she murmured, "only it takes an awful lot
of getting at!"...

They found French, already convalescent, comfortably installed in the
private ward of a small hospital in the picturesque New Mexican town.
Laura almost