“Do I mind it? Am I likely to forgit it? Well, a pleasant time to you, me boy. Come along, sor. We'd better be moving. You won't mind stepping up to the hall with me, will ye, while I report?”
“Certainly not,” I said with a shiver, half at the grim suggestion of murder and half at the chill of the fog and the cutting wind that blew the cold vapor through to the skin.
“You've no overcoat,” said Corson. “We'll stop and get one. I'll have mine from the station.”
The silence of the house of mystery was no less threatening now than on the night when Henry Wilton was walking through the halls on the way to his death. But the stout-hearted policeman by my side gave me confidence, and no sign showed the presence of an enemy as I secured Henry's heavy overcoat and the large revolver he had given me, and we took our way down the stairs.
A short visit to the grimy, foul-smelling basement of the City Hall, where a few policemen looked at me wonderingly, a brisk walk with the cutting wind at our backs and the fog currents hurrying and whirling in eddies toward the bay, and I felt rather than saw that we were in the neighborhood of the scene of my adventures of a night that had come so near costing me my life. I could not be certain of my bearings, but I trusted to the unconscious guidance of Corson, with a confused idea that we were bearing away from the place. Then with relief combined with bewilderment, I saw the lantern sign give forth its promise of the varied entertainment that could be had at Borton's.
“Here we are,” said Corson.
We pushed open the door and entered. The place had the same appearance as the one to which I had been taken by Dicky Nahl.
“A fine night, Mother Borton,” said Corson cheerily, as he was the first to enter, and then added under his breath, “—for the divil's business.”
Mother Borton stared at him with a black look and muttered a curse.
“Good evening,” I hastened to say. “I took the liberty to bring a friend; he doesn't come as an officer to-night.”