“First, a word about the girl, Nellie Fielding, and what befell her,” said Carter. “It probably is precisely what befell the others, and all were victims of the same crook and his assistant. Just what game he was playing and with what object remains to be learned.”
“But——”
“Wait a bit!” Carter cut in. “You’ll get me presently. Nellie Fielding evidently told you the truth. The mysterious bag was deftly slipped into her hand. She did what the others did, when she could discover no owner for it. She kept it until well away from the crowd, then opened it to see what it contained. As you have inferred, Chick, something in the bag, probably that with which the handkerchief was saturated, immediately overcame her. A very powerful and mysterious gas may have been liberated from the bag, and it naturally would have been inhaled by the girl when she peered into it.”
“That seemed to me the most plausible theory,” said Chick.
“It has become rather more than a theory,” Carter replied. “I now am almost sure of it.”
“For other reasons?”
“Yes. To continue, it is safe to assume that the girl was constantly watched. The moment she lost herself, for she certainly lost consciousness to some extent, at least, she was taken away by two men and placed on the seat in the hospital grounds, then wholly unconscious, where Policeman Donovan found her.”
“Barclay was right, then,” said Chick. “That was the cab seen by the artist.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“But why was the girl taken into the hospital grounds?”