was clear. There was a bump as the boat reached the dock and a rattle of
chains as the deckhands made fast. The drawbridge came down. Tod pulled
the starting lever, and the machine shot forward. At that instant
several police officers and a number of men, among whom Tod recognized
Mr. Cooley and Jimmy Marsh, ran into the middle of the road and barred
the way. A policeman held up his hand to Tod to stop.

Paula gave a little scream, while Tod let loose a flow of unprintable
profanity. Mr. Cooley ran up to the car, his fat, bloated face congested
with a combination of anger and triumph.

"Stop that car," he roared, "or I'll send you up for contempt of court!"

Yielding to superior forces, Tod stopped the machine. Mr. Cooley came
up with a police officer. Pointing at Paula, the lawyer cried:

"That's the young lady. She is attempting to evade an order of the
Court." Producing a legal paper, he added: "Here is the order committing
her to my custody."

Paula again screamed and clung to her companion. The policeman, puzzled,
glanced at the Court order. A crowd began to gather. Finally the
officer, addressing Paula, said respectfully:

"Do you acknowledge that you are Paula Marsh, the person named in this
paper?"

White as a sheet, ready to swoon from terror, the girl nodded faintly:

"Yes."

"Then you must go with this man," said the officer, pointing to Mr.
Cooley.

"No, no! I won't-- I won't!" she cried, clinging to Tod's arm.

"You had better go with him," he whispered gently. "It's best to avoid a
scene. It won't be for long. Leave it to me. We'll soon get you out
again. I'll see Ricaby at once, and to-morrow we'll swear out a _habeas
corpus_. You'd better go quietly with him."

With an unobserved pressure of the hand, which he felt was returned,
Tod silently said good-by. Paula slowly descended from the automobile.
Turning to Mr. Cooley, she said, in a deliberate, dignified manner:

"Very well, Mr. Cooley, I am ready to accompany you."

CHAPTER XVII.

Among the unspeakable crimes which man, in the name of humanity, has
perpetrated against his fellow man, none has been more gruesome, more
merciless, more fiendishly cruel than the abuse of the private
sanitarium.

There is a hazy notion in the public mind that the private insane
asylum, the horrors of which were so vividly depicted by Charles Reade,
Edgar Allan Poe, and other writers, are things of the barbarous past,
and that in our own enlight