“I’ll return in time to leave with you.”
Donovan nodded, and Brady immediately departed with the attendant. Only five minutes had passed when Doctor Devoll entered the room, bringing a leather medicine case and quickly approaching the cot on which lay the inanimate girl, whose jacket and the front of her silk shirt waist had been opened by the nurse.
Doctor Devoll presented quite a striking picture, when he paused and gazed down at her in the bright light of an electric bulb. He was close upon sixty and of medium height, but very slender. His thinness was accentuated by a tight-fitting black frock coat, the skirts of which hung to his knees. His head was almost entirely bald. All that remained to show that he was a son of Esau was a fringe of close-cut, gray hair around the base of his skull, and a single silver-white tuft above his high forehead.
He was smoothly shaven, his features wasted and wan, his thin lips of a dull, grayish tint, instead of a wholesome red, as if the blood in his veins had lost its crimson hue. His nose was long, his eyes a cold blue and wonderfully penetrating. As he stood there with his slender hands behind him, his fingers interlocked, there was something really quite sinister in his aspect. He looked not unlike a bird of prey brooding over his victim.
This was immediately dispelled, however, when he looked up at the nurse and said, with a remarkably soft and ingratiating voice:
“She appears to be in the same condition, Agnes, as the others. She was found on the same seat, did I understand you to say?”
“Yes, doctor.” The nurse bowed to him across the narrow cot. “This policeman discovered her. He had her brought in, sir, instead of taking her to the station house, as before.”
Doctor Devoll turned and eyed Donovan narrowly for a moment; then suavely inquired:
“Is your beat in this locality?”
“It is, sir,” said Donovan respectfully. “I’m the night patrolman, sir.”