“Whom did you see or question?”
“The night nurse and the orderly. Both appear to be trustworthy. They deny having seen the bag. The attendant could not have taken it, for he went with me to the operating room and did not return. It’s absurd, of course, to suppose Doctor Devoll took it, and there remains only the girl herself.”
“Did she have any opportunity to get possession of it without being seen?” Carter inquired.
“I asked about that, and was told that she was not seen to find it,” said Brady. “It is barely possible that she did, nevertheless, and that it contained something which she did not wish Doctor Devoll to see.”
“Very possibly,” the detective allowed.
“Otherwise, she would have admitted having found it.”
“That’s reasonable, sergeant.”
“That’s how I size it up,” Brady added. “It seems to me the only plausible explanation. What I can’t fathom, however, is why these girls are repeatedly found unconscious in the hospital grounds, and why this last one lied in order to hide her identity. Why were they all so anxious to get away and avoid publicity?”
Nicholas Carter did not express his views. He did not care to indulge in vain speculations. As a matter of fact, moreover, he was nearly as puzzled as the police sergeant by the quite extraordinary circumstances. He looked up from a figure in the Wilton carpet, at which he had been thoughtfully gazing, and asked:
“Have any charges been made at headquarters or a complaint of any kind that might even indirectly relate to any of these cases?”