Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/179

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A LETTER FROM LONDON
167

I hope it has meaning and in some way will be of service to you. If it is meaningless, please credit me at least with fair intentions.

Very sincerely,

Huston Adley.

There followed his address in London.

The same circumstance continued to affect Ethel most both when she read through this letter in the drawing-room while Mrs. Wain waited and looked on, and when she reread it alone in the room which was to be hers; this circumstance was that fourteen days ago some one in London had known that she would receive a letter addressed to this house when she had not the remotest thought of visiting Scott Street. This incident, small in itself, endowed all the contents of the letter with an authority difficult to deny; moreover, she had learned that the contents of other letters written by Huston Adley and reporting information received by him at "sittings" had proved extraordinarily important. So she delayed little before endeavoring to follow the wishes of "Philip Carew."

She had a city telephone directory brought to her, and she investigated its lists to discover that there were seven James Quinlans in Chicago, besides two in the suburbs and a number of Quinlans with the initial J which might stand for James. She was aware that the telephone book listed but a few hundred thousand out of the millions of people in Chicago, so probably there were ten or twenty other J. Quinlans who lived in the city but were without telephones. She wondered how she could best discover which was the Quinlan who "knew" that all-important fact which "Philip Carew" and Robert "wanted him to tell. The fact