“Don’t you consider it wise?”
“For the police to butt in?” Doctor Devoll said a bit sharply. “I can’t say that I do.”
“No?”
“Why should they interfere? What was there in either case that demands police investigation?” Doctor Devoll curtly questioned. “A girl was overcome, was addicted to a drug, or a dope of some kind, and wandered into the hospital grounds. She was found and brought in here. I revived her and she immediately insisted upon going home. That’s all there was to any one of the cases. Why, I repeat, do they require police investigation?”
“I cannot conceive, Doctor Devoll, that you have any personal objection to an investigation,” Nick remarked dryly, smiling again.
A tinge of red leaped up in the physician’s cheeks. A sharper gleam shot from his squinted eyes. He detected a covert insinuation in his visitor’s tone. He felt that he had said too much, perhaps, for he quickly retorted:
“Not the slightest objection, Mr. Blaisdell, not the slightest objection. I merely fail to see why an investigation is necessary. There are hundreds of dope fiends in every large city, but in none of them have the police a very great interest. Why their activity, then, in these cases? What do they suspect?”
“Don’t you think that four such cases warrant suspicion?” the detective blandly inquired.
“Not more than the hundreds I have mentioned.”
“But all were found in the hospital grounds,” Carter pointed out suggestively.