“You’ll treat this as strictly confidential, I’m sure,” the millionaire said. “You must see the importance of secrecy to us, and so long as there can be no prosecution, there’s no use in making that poor woman’s life more of a burden to her than is unavoidable. There’ll be a lot of gossip here, anyway, I suppose, but we must do all we can to minimize it.”
“I agree with you perfectly, sir, and you may count on me,” Doctor Lord declared sincerely.
“Thank you. Now, tell me, please, what you make of this man’s injuries, and what you know of the circumstances?”
The doctor’s reply was a rather lengthy one.
“There must have been several blows, and they were very severe,” he concluded. “I should say that they were delivered by a man of unusual strength.”
“That’s interesting,” Griswold said, with a change of expression. “You don’t believe, then, that a man of slight build, who had spent practically all of his life in an office, could have perpetrated the assault?”
Doctor Lord shook his head emphatically. “That’s extremely unlikely,” he replied. “In fact, I venture to say that it’s quite impossible.”
“Then, it’s hard to explain,” Griswold muttered. “Apparently Cray found some reason to hang about here last night, presumably to catch Simpson, or to recover the missing gold. If he was knocked out by an unusually powerful man, the only reasonable conclusion, it seems to me, is that the fellow in question must have been an accomplice of Simpson’s.”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s the way it looks to me offhand,” he answered. “I don’t pretend to be a detective, though.”