After Jack Shore had been securely handcuffed, and after a hasty but bootless search for his partner in crime, Detective Simms hustled him into the launch, and desiring to get him behind the prison bars without delay, ordered the engineer to run the boat across the river at once so as to avoid any attempt at release by possible confederates.
A hasty examination of both Constance and Virginia convinced Mr. Thorpe that they were not seriously hurt, and were rendered senseless only by a shock of great mental excitement.
To remain until after their recovery would only add torture to a painful situation; he therefore made them as comfortable as the limited means at hand would allow, and then taking Dorothy with him, boarded the launch, leaving Sam and Smith to watch over and care for his wife and sister until the arrival of a physician, whom he intended to dispatch to their aid as quickly as possible. Dorothy objected to leaving her mother, but was sternly overruled and awed into submission by her father.
Ten minutes after her rescue the boat was speeding toward Madison Street landing with John Thorpe and Dorothy, Jack Shore and Detective Simms, taciturn and grave.
As the boat drew away, both Sam and Smith silently contemplated the two insensible women on the floor. For some moments neither spoke a word, profoundly absorbed in a grave contemplation of the questionable necessity of the two women undertaking so dangerous a mission.
To Sam it appeared plain they had very recently learned of Dorothy’s place of captivity; but why they had not imparted the information to some of their male friends, why they had kept her place of concealment secret, and why, also, they had undertaken her release just prior to the arrival of her father on the scene, was a mystery. It only resulted in a suspicion that they had somehow heard of John Thorpe’s premeditated attempt at rescue, and were alarmed lest Dorothy should fall into his hands.
Smith’s mind was not of an analytical nature; in fact, he did not think their presence was attributable to anything other than a mother’s natural heart-breaking longing to recover her darling as swiftly as possible, and in the enterprise Virginia had joined her.
And as he thought of the indifference and cruel desertion of John Thorpe with her child, for whom she had made such a sacrifice, a solemn, serious look of sadness gathered on his face and deepened into contempt and anger. And the compassion in his heart welled up and at length broke from between his lips, in unconscious mutterings. “Sure, he tuk her darlint from her an’ left her lyin’ there, too, so he do, on the hard flure, wid her sinses gone out from her hid complately. The heartless man!”
“The trouble between them is serious,” Sam replied, as he knelt down beside Virginia and commenced to chafe her hands.
“Sure, don’t I know it, so I do!” rejoined Smith, as he followed Sam’s example and set to chafing Constance’s hands between his own. “An’ he’s broke her heart entirely, so he ave,” he went on, “an’ her hands do be numb wid no life in thim at all.”