Explore "The Mystery of Room 75" by Fred M. White on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Wendover was back in London again, puzzled and uneasy in his mind. Even now he did not know whether he had failed or not. He himself had been dragged out of the shallow stream, where he had lain, half-suffocated for hours, by a friendly charcoal-burner, who had found him there, more dead than alive, and had taken him up to the shooting box where, for a day or two, he had been quite unable to give any account of his adventures. Then he had deemed it prudent to tell his friends that Garcia had been in his company, but he said no more, and as Garcia had not put in an appearance, and the most careful inquiries failed to elicit any information about him, it was naturally assumed that he had perished in the flames. The odds were largely in favor of his having done so.
But, then, Garcia was no ordinary man: he had looked death in the face too often to be taken by surprise, and possibly he had taken advantage of a stroke of good fortune to disappear altogether for the time being.