Three to get ready

Despite my complaints of lack of sleep, I am very much a night person; and anyway, I had less work to do this past eve, though several more of my children have...disappeared...the rate is unsettling. Soon I shall be all alone.

You couldst call these first three inquiries a trial run. The outcome of this third shall influence, hopefully obviously, the conclusion drawn from such a trial, as I will extrapolate from all three to reach the final thought. The conclusion will also mark how I shall proceed from here on out in my job. This is not to pressure you. I stress again that there are no consequences of wrongly answering the inquiries, besides the one that tainted answers (for example, cheating in certain cases) will hurt me.

For these more general inquiries, I encourage you - no, I insist that you all to work together and collaborate for an answer - which, should it occur, would not count as a form of cheating. No doubt there will be an inquiry eventually that could just as easily be solved by thinking as by looking up an answer in one of the various search engines available, and that would lead to a tainted answer, which would lead to undesirable consequences - for me. By attempting to solve the inquiries, you help a desperate man win back his love and his life, and perhaps much more.

Onto a no doubt pressing question in thine minds: the answer to the last inquiry was "Four", coming from Four Past Midnight, a collection of novellas in which Ardelia Lortz first appeared.

Mind; if any of you wish to begin a (most likely long, but eventually only sporadically ongoing) personal sequence of inquiries for the advancement of mine own cause and perhaps to learn something, you may contact me at:
yougetthreechances@gmail.com

But I digress; it is time to end the tutorial.

This one, for regret: The destination of the Disciple?

You get three chances.