“Telephone? I didn’t call up anyone, I was asleep.”
Slowly it dawned on the doctor that it was a false alarm and that he must be the victim of some practical joke.
“Well, that’s a great note,” he growled, as the man shut the door.
He descended the steps, muttering harsh language at some unknown trickster. As he climbed back into his machine and made ready to start, two men seemed to rise before him, as if from nowhere.
As a matter of fact, they had been sent there by the Clutching Hand and were hiding in a nearby cellar way until their chance came.
One man stood on the running board, on either side of him, and two guns yawned menacingly at him.
“Drive ahead—that way!” muttered one man, seating himself in the runabout with his gun close to the doctor’s ribs.
The other kept his place on the running board, and on they drove in the direction of the mysterious, dark house. Half a mile, perhaps, down the road, they halted and left the car beside the walk.
Dr. Morton was too surprised to marvel at anything now and he realized that he was in the power of two desperate men. Quickly, they blindfolded him.
It seemed an interminable walk, as they led him about to confuse him, but at last he could feel that they had taken him into a house and along passageways, which they were making unnecessarily long in order to destroy all recollection that they could. Finally he knew that he was in a room in which others were present. He suppressed a shudder at the low, menacing voices.
A moment later he felt them remove the bandage from his eyes, and, blinking at the light, he could see a hard-faced fellow, pale and weak, on a blood-stained couch. Over him bent a masked man and another man stood nearby, endeavoring by improvised bandages to stop the flow of blood.
“What can you do for this fellow?” asked the masked man.
Dr. Morton, seeing nothing else to do, for he was more than outnumbered now, bent down and examined him.
As he rose, he said, “He will be dead from loss of blood by morning, no matter if he is properly bandaged.”
“Is there nothing that can save him?” whispered the Clutching Hand hoarsely.
“Blood transfusion might save him,” replied the Doctor. “But so much blood would be needed that whoever gives it would be liable to die himself.”
Clutching Hand stood silent a moment, thinking, as he gazed at the man who had been one of his chief reliances. Then, with a menacing gesture, he spoke in a low, bitter tone.
“She who shot him shall Supply the blood.”
. . . . . . . .
A few quick directions followed to his subordinates, and as he made ready to go, he muttered, “Keep the doctor here. Don’t let him stir from the room.”
Then, with the man who had aided him in the murder of Taylor Dodge, he sallied out into the blackness that precedes dawn.