A mere glance gave Nick these superficial features, and he quickly knelt
beside the girl, and felt her hand and wrist.
"Dead as a doornail," he murmured to Chick, who also had approached. "I
find her hand still warm, however. She can have been dead only a few
minutes."
"Heart failure, perhaps," suggested Chick.
"I don't think so."
"Why?"
"She doesn't look it. Her form is plump, her cheeks full, and she
appears to have been in perfect health."
"Yet she is dead."
"No doubt of it."
"A pretty girl, too."
"Very. See if there is any writing on that brown paper."
"No, Nick; not a line."
"Here, here, let me see it! What's this? It is punctured with tiny
holes, evidently made with a pin."
"So it is, by Jove!"
"Perhaps she made them with her hat pin, while sitting there on the
seat. See, Chick, there is the pin still in the hat."
"I see it, Nick. What now?"
Still kneeling beside the girl, Nick was holding the sheet of paper
between himself and the sky.
"No, the punctures are not uniform," said he. "I thought that they
possibly had been made with some design, and perhaps formed some word or
sentence that would give us a clew to the mystery."
"None such, eh?"
"Not a sign of it.
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