They carried the inanimate figure over the rough ground, through a sliding door, into a big, ill-lit factory hall, bare of machinery. At the far end was a brick partition forming an office, and into this he was carried and flung on the floor.
“Here’s your man, Hagn,” growled the policeman. “I think he’s through.”
Hagn got up from his table and walked across to where Dick Gordon lay.
“I don’t think there’s much wrong with him,” he said. “You couldn’t kill a man through that helmet, anyway. Take it off.”
They took the leather helmet from the head of the unconscious man, and Hagn made a brief inspection.
“No, he’s all right,” he said. “Throw some water over him. Wait; you’d better search him first. Those cigars,” he said, pointing to the brown cylinders that protruded from his breast pocket, “I want.”
The first thing found was the blue envelope, and this Hagn tore open and read.
“It seems all right,” he said, and locked it away in the roll-top desk at which he was sitting when Dick had been brought in. “Now give him the water!”
Dick came to his senses with a throbbing head and a feeling of resentment against the consciousness which was being forced upon him. He sat up, rubbing his face like a man roused from a heavy sleep, screwed up his eyes in the face of the bright light, and unsteadily stumbled to his feet, looking around from one to the other of the grinning faces.
“Oh!” he said at last. “I seem to have struck it. Who hit me?”