Summary: Chapter 23
Humbert retraces the tour he and Lolita took across the
country, attempting to find some clues as to Lolita’s whereabouts.
As he revisits the 342 hotels and motels they stayed at, he learns
that Lolita’s abductor had been following them for some time. The
abductor has signed into various hotel registers with a series of
sophisticated, wittily allusive fake names. Humbert deduces that
Lolita and the kidnapper have been in touch since the beginning
of their road trip.
Summary: Chapter 24
Upon returning to Beardsley, Humbert plans to accost an
art professor at Beardsley College, who once taught a class at Lolita’s
school. As he sits outside the professor’s classroom with the gun
in his pocket, Humbert realizes that his suspicions have made him
paranoid. Humbert hires a detective, who proves to be useless.
Summary: Chapter 25
Humbert imagines he sees Lolita everywhere and tries rid
himself of her possessions. He writes a missing persons ad in verse.
Humbert psychoanalyzes his own poem but does not post it.
Summary: Chapter 26
In his loneliness, Humbert begins a relationship with
Rita, a woman in her late twenties with a checkered history. Humbert
finds her ignorant but comforting, and their relationship lasts
for two years. During this time, Humbert gives up his search for
Lolita’s abductor and spends his time wandering with Rita, drinking
heavily. Nonetheless, he finds himself returning to the old hotels
to relive memories of Lolita. He cannot, however, bring himself
to go to the Enchanted Hunters hotel. Meanwhile, Rita grows increasingly unstable
and becomes convinced that Humbert will leave her.
Summary: Chapter 27
Gradually, Rita and Humbert begin to live apart, though
Humbert visits her frequently. During one visit, Humbert discovers
that two letters have been forwarded to him. The first is from John
Farlow, who remarried after Jean died of cancer. John states that
he has handed over the complicated case of the Haze estate to an
attorney named Jack Windmuller. The second letter is from Lolita.
Addressing Humbert as “Dad,” she writes that she has become Mrs.
Richard F. Schiller and is currently pregnant. She writes asking
for money but withholds her home address in case Humbert is still angry.
Summary: Chapter 28
After reading the letter, Humbert goes in search of Lolita
and her new husband. Taking the gun along with him, Humbert plans
to kill Lolita’s husband, whom he assumes is the same man who abducted Lolita
from the hospital. Though Lolita didn’t give her specific address,
Humbert manages to find the town she lives in, Coalmont. Nervous
and agitated, Humbert bathes and dresses in his finest clothes before
inquiring after the Schillers.
