“I saw the chest of him rise and fall regular with his breathing, and a whiff like that could not put him out for the count!” McCarty declared impatiently. “Didn’t I open the windows on him myself, and tell you to take away the towel that must have slipped down from off his face?”
“’Twas still damp with that stuff!” Dennis muttered with a shudder.
“And chloroform evaporates quicker than anything else I know!” exclaimed his companion. “That shows it must have been given to him the minute, almost, before we went upstairs! The sitting-room looked all right to me; did you happen to notice whether anything was upset or not where he was?”
“I did not!” Dennis averred. “I’d the shock of my life when my light flashed over his face! If he’s found dead come morning I’ll feel as if I’d murdered him myself and not a wink will I sleep nor a free breath will I draw till I know he’s all right!”
But when McCarty’s rooms were reached again and the desultory discussion was renewed it was Dennis himself in whom exhausted nature first was revealed and he sank deeply into healthy slumber. His host, however, sat hunched in his armchair till dawn, smoking innumerable cigars and staring through narrowed eyes into the turbid atmosphere of the familiar room as though he beheld strange and evil things.
Finally he stretched himself out wearily beside Dennis and dropped into an uneasy slumber, to be awakened by the sharp ringing of the telephone. When he turned from it, after receiving the frenzied message, it was to find his guest draped in his own shabby bathrobe, waiting with morbid expectancy for the news.
“Is Orbit dead—?”
“He is not! He’s got the inspector fair wild with his tale of being drugged in the night and on top of it old Benjamin Parsons reports a robbery! Both the watchmen are fired temporarily and lads from headquarters put in their place,” McCarty retorted succinctly. “It’s a nice, peaceful day you’ll be having of it at the fire house while I face the music!”
Dennis gulped with relief.
“Was anything took from Orbit’s house, did the inspector say?”