Though the papers had been full of accounts of the Holden kidnapping case for the last five days, he, Carlson, had read nothing but the headings, and his impression from them and from Edwards' talk was that Ina was a small girl, quite a child. And yet this was a woman, or a well-grown girl of 16 or 17 at the least. He looked up at her bandaged face.
"How long ago did you have this operation?
"I—when I was a child."
"How long ago was that?"
"About eight or nine years ago."
"Ah"
"You're takin' a hell of a long time, doc. Has she got smallpox?" The man still stood with his back to the foot of the bed, but Carlson realized that he could not temporize much longer.
"Just about a minute more and I can tell you," he said, as nonchalantly as he could say the words. How could he get rid of the kidnappers and telephone for the police? Then came an idea—a wild. forlorn hope; but he would try it.
"I will have to examine her throat," he said, with professional voice.
He walked to the table where his medical bags were and took out a circular mirror with an aperture in the center, a small electric bulb, and a black elastic band with a buckle in it. Next, he detached a connecting-plug from a cell battery in the bottom of the bag, being careful to conceal the battery from the gimletlike eyes of the two men and the woman. With the plug hidden in his hand he crushed the two contactors together.
Then he adjusted the elastic band and mirror to his forehead, connected the two wires with the small bulb on the head mirror and deliberately unscrewed the bulb from the table lamp. He drew a deep breath; then quickly inserted the crushed battery plug into the lamp socket.
Flash! The room was in complete darkness. Carlson had short-circuited the current and fulminated the fuse, probably for the whole house.
"Damn it!" he exclaimed, ostentatiously. "What am I going to do now?" Almost instantly the beam of a pocket flashlight came from the hand of the "boss."
"Take this, doc," he said, holding it toward Carlson. He took it, asked the girl to open her mouth, and looked within.
"No good at all. I must have the electric light. Where is the fuse box?"
The "boss" looked at Teresa.
"It's in the cellar with the meter," she said.
"Go down and put in a new fuse."
"I don't know how. You'll have to come with me." The man hesitated. He glared at Carlson through his mask, and at the sick girl on the bed, and then at the giant near the door.
"Tony!"
"Huh?"
"Come here!" The giant slouched nearer.
"Where's your flash-light?" He produced it.
"Good! Now stay right here till we come back. If the doctor tries to leave this room, or if he talks to the girl—you know what to do." Tony grunted. and showed a magazine pistol in his other hand. The other man and Teresa left the room. The man slammed the door and locked it on the outside.
Carlson felt almost overcome by a feeling of powerlessness and despair. He and the girl were alone with the giant Tony, who sat stolidly by a table in the center of the room, flashlight in one hand, the automatic pistol in the other. His narrow, piglike eyes gleamed through the mask and seemed never to relax their sinister gaze.
