“I may as well have another look. It’s a hundred to one there has been nothing doing, though, or I would have heard it. This evidently isn’t one of the nights for their devilish doings. Hang it, I’m not sure of it!”
He had stopped short, taking out his electric lamp and flashing the beam of light on the ornamental gate. A padlock had been removed and was lying on the gravel walk within. Nearly at his feet, discovered after a brief search, was a piece of black thread.
“By thunder, I was wrong,” Donovan muttered, gazing around and scowling perplexedly. “Have my ears gone back on me? Has this scurvy trick been turned again? Some one has been through this gate since I tied the thread on it. I’ll darned soon find out.”
Quietly lifting the latch, Donovan opened the gate and entered with quickened steps. He did not follow the gravel walk, which led toward an end door in a wing of the hospital some fifty yards away. Instead, he strode straight across the broad lawn, through the deeper gloom under the trees, until he came to one, the drooping branches of which formed a sort of arbor in a secluded part of the extensive estate.
There was an iron seat under it, and the policeman flashed his light in that direction. It fell upon a motionless figure in a huddled position on one end of the seat—the figure of a young woman.
“Another, by thunder, as sure as I’m a foot high,” Donovan gasped audibly. “In spite of my vigilance, too, and in the same place and condition as the others. Sure, this beats me.”
Donovan drew nearer and bent over the motionless girl. She was about nineteen, with a slender, neatly clad figure, a dark skirt and Eton jacket. Her head was bowed forward, and her hat was somewhat awry. She was of dark complexion, but the ghastly pallor of her cheeks caused the policeman to catch his breath. He bowed over her, listening, and presently could hear the faint breathing of the unconscious girl.
“By Jove, I feared for a moment she was gone,” he said to himself, straightening up. “I’ll try to raise the sergeant. He said he’d show up about midnight.”
Donovan walked away toward the gate again and blew his whistle, a shrill, sinister sound on the night air. Thrice he had to sound it, and then he heard a distant reply. Several moments later hurried footsteps fell on the pavement, and an officer in plain clothes appeared at the gate.
“That you, Jim?” he called quietly.