at the car in returning seemed to take a
different and more direct route; the journey appeared to be a much
shorter one, with fewer twists and turns. The same three men came back
to the house with me, and entered my office, where the burly one
turned over to me ten five-hundred-dollar bills. They left almost
immediately, and although it was close on to dawn, I went into my dark
room, and developed the negative of the thumbnail photograph I had
taken.

"The events of the night had been so extraordinary that when I did
retire, it was long before I could sleep. In the morning, I made a
couple of prints from the negative, then took the five thousand
dollars down and deposited it to my account in the bank."

"When I decided to come here, I ran over in my mind every moment of
the previous night's adventure, to catalogue my impressions. The habit
of years has made me methodical in all things, and I jotted them down
in the order in which they occurred to me, that I might not forget to
relate them to you. Memory plays one sad tricks, sometimes, when one
reaches my age. These notes may be of no assistance to you, sir, but
they are entirely at your service."

"I am eager to hear them, Doctor. I only wish all witnesses were like
you--my tasks would be lightened by half," Blaine said, heartily.

The elderly physician drew from his pocket a paper, at which he
peered, painstakingly.

"I have numbered them. Let me see--oh, yes. First, the burly man walks
with a slight limp in the right leg. Second, of the two men with him,
all I could note was that one spoke with a decided French accent and
had a hollow cough, tuberculous, I think; the other, who scarcely
uttered a word, was short and stocky, and of enormous strength. He
fairly lifted me into and out of the car when I was blindfolded at the
entrance of the place they called a sanitarium. Third, the car had a
peculiar horn; I have never heard one like it before. Its blast was
sharp and wailing, not like a siren, but more like the howl of a
wounded animal. I would know it again, anywhere. Fourth, there is a
railroad bridge very near the house to which I was taken--I distinctly
heard two trains thunder over the trestles while I was attending my
patient. Fifth, I should judge the place to be more of a retreat for
alcoholics or the insane, than for those suffering from accident, or
any form of physical injury. A patient in some remote part of the
house was undoubtedly a maniac or in t