“She sure did, sir, for all I could see. The man took her arm and helped her in, and then they rode away. That’s all there was to it.”
Chick saw that this man could tell him nothing more definite, and he left him, to believe, as he had said, that there was nothing more to it.
“All the same, by Jove, the mystery seems only the deeper,” he said to himself while walking away. “Why was Nellie Fielding, as well as three girls before her, temporarily abducted and left unconscious in the hospital grounds? Neither was subjected to any further harm, any personal outrage, and robbery surely was not the motive. What was it, then? What could be gained? Why were such chances repeatedly taken? There must have been something to gain, but I’ll be hanged if I can fathom what. Deeper mystery is right. There must be a big game or a most knavish one, somewhere under the surface.”
CHAPTER XI.
THE ANGLE OF REFLECTION.
Doctor David Devoll, whose will and word were law in the Osgood Hospital, gazed intently at the card brought in by his personal attendant. He was seated at a broad, flat desk in the middle of his private room, a sanctuary into which few would have dared to intrude after having once offended in that way.
For of all the rules and regulations of this institution, there was none more inflexible, none more rigorously enforced, than that forbidding intrusion upon the privacy of Doctor David Devoll.
And when, perchance, it was violated, which was very, very seldom, the unfortunate offender had cause to long remember that suavity and smoothness in a man may sometimes serve only to hide, like the sleek coat of a leopard, very sharp claws and merciless teeth.
Doctor Devoll rubbed the top of his bald head with his slender hands, gazing at the card and muttering the name inscribed on it.
“Blaisdell—John Blaisdell—I do not place him. Written with a pen, eh? Do you know the man, Shannon?”