It read simply, "I have succeeded in having Thornton declared ..."
Then there was a break. The last words were legible, and were,"...
confined in a suitable institution where he can cause no future
harm."
There was no signature, as if the sender had perfectly understood
that the receiver would understand.
"Not difficult to supply some of the context, at any rate," mused
Kennedy. "Whoever Thornton may be, some one has succeeded in
having him declared 'insane,' I should supply. If he is in an
institution near New York, we must be able to locate him. Edward,
this is a very important clue. There is nothing else."
Kennedy employed the remainder of the night in obtaining a list of
all the institutions, both public and private, within a
considerable radius of the city where the insane might be
detained.
The next morning, after an hour or so spent in the laboratory
apparently in confirming some control tests which Kennedy had laid
out to make sure that he was not going wrong in the line of
inquiry he was pursuing, we started off in a series of flying
visits to the various sanitaria about the city in search of an
inmate named Thornton.
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