Across, in the larger, outside study, another panel opened and the Clutching Hand, all crouched up, transformed, appeared. Without a word he advanced to the couch on which the wounded crook lay and examined him.
"How did it happen?" he asked at length.
"Miss Dodge shot him," answered the others, "with an automatic."
"That Craig Kennedy must have given it to her!" he exclaimed with suppressed fury.
For a moment the Clutching Hand stopped to consider. Then he seized the regular telephone.
"Dr. Morton?" he asked as he got the number he called.
Late as it was the doctor, who was a well-known surgeon in that part of the country, answered, apparently from an extension of his telephone near his bed.
The call was urgent and apparently from a family which he did not feel that he could neglect.
"Yes, I'll be there—in a few moments," he yawned, hanging up the receiver and getting out of bed.
Dr. Morton was a middle-aged man, one of those medical men in whose judgment one instinctively relies. From the brief description of the "hemorrhage" which the Clutching Hand had cleverly made over the wire, he knew that a life was at stake. Quickly he dressed and went out to his garage, back of the house to get his little runabout.