It was quite late, but it had been a confining day for Kennedy who had spent the hours while not working on Carton's case in some of the ceaseless and recondite investigations of his own to which he was always turning his restless mind.
"Suppose we walk a little way downtown with Carton?" he suggested.
I was not averse, and by the time we arrived in the white light belt of
Broadway the theatres were letting out.
Above the gaiety of the crowds one could hear the shrill cry of some belated newsboys, calling an "Extra Special"—the only superlative left to one of the more enterprising papers whose every issue was an "Extra."
Kennedy bought one, with the laughing remark, "Perhaps it's about your robbery, Carton."
It was only a second before the smile on his face changed to a look of extreme gravity. We crowded about him. In red ink across the head of the paper were the words:
"BODY OF MURTHA, MISSING, FOUND IN MORGUE"
Down in a lower corner, in a little box into which late news could be dropped, also in red ink, was the brief account:
This morning the body of an unknown man was found in The Bronx near the
Westchester Railroad tracks. He had been run over and badly mutilated.
After lying all day in the local morgue, it was transferred, still
unidentified, to the city Morgue downtown.
Early this evening one of the night attendants recognized the unidentified body as that of Murtha, "the Smiling Boss," whose escape day before yesterday from an asylum in Westchester has remained a mystery until now.