The doctor finished his examination of the man on the floor, and then he answered, as he rose to his feet: “Yes, he’s dead. How did it happen?”
The delivery of the young druggist was hesitating and broken. “Well, it was this way, you see. The boss was out, and I was in charge here, and there wasn’t anything doing except at the fountain. Then this man came in; he was in a hurry, and he told me he was feeling faint—kind of suffocated, so he said—and couldn’t I give him something. Well, I’m a graduate in pharmacy, you know, and so I fixed him up a little aromatic spirits of ammonia in a glass of soda-water. You know that won’t hurt anybody. But just as he took the glass out of my hand his knees gave way and he squashed down on the floor there. The glass broke, and he hadn’t paid for the spirits of ammonia, either; and when I got round to him he was dead—at least I thought so, but I rang you up to make sure.”
“Yes,” the doctor returned, “apparently he died at once—heart failure. Probably he had fatty degeneration, and this heat has been too much for him.”
“I don’t think any man has a right to come in here and die like that without warning, heart failure or no heart failure, do you?” asked the red-headed assistant. “I don’t know what the boss will say. That’s the kind of thing that spoils trade, and it ain’t any too good here, anyway, with a drug-store 'most every block.”
“Do you know who he is?” the doctor inquired.
“I went through his pockets, but he hadn’t any watch nor any letters," the druggist answered; “but he’s got about a dollar in change in his pants.”
The doctor looked around the shop. The policeman was still in the doorway, and a group of boys and girls blocked the entrance.
“Does anybody here know this man?” asked the surgeon.
A small boy twisted himself under the policeman’s arm and slipped into the store. “I know him,” he cried, eagerly. “I see him come in. I was here all the time, and I see it all. He’s Tim McEcchran.”
“Where does he live?” the doctor asked, only to correct himself swiftly—“where did he live?”