“But you forget the 'old man,'” I returned. The name of that potent Unknown seemed to be my only weapon in the contest with Detective Coogan, and I thought this a time to try its force.
“Not much, I don't!” said Coogan, visibly disturbed. “But if it comes to a choice, we'll have to risk a battle with him.”
“Well, maybe we're wasting time over a trifle,” said I, voicing my hope. “Perhaps your dead man belongs somewhere else.”
“Come along to the morgue, then,” said he.
“Where was he found?” I asked as we walked out of the City Hall.
“He was picked up at about three o'clock in the back room of the Hurricane Deck—the water-front saloon, you know—near the foot of Folsom Street.”
Detective Coogan asked a number of questions as we walked, and in a few minutes we came to the undertaker's shop that served as the city morgue. At the best of times it could not be a place of cheer. In the hour before daybreak, with the chill air of the morning almost suppressing the yellow gaslights, the errand on which I had come made it the abode of dread. Yet I hoped—hoped in such an agony of fear that I became half-insensible to my surroundings.
“Here it is,” said Coogan, opening a door.
The low room was dark and chill and musty, but its details started forth from the obscurity as he turned up the lights.
Detective Coogan's words seemed to come from a great distance as he said: “Here, you see, he was stabbed. The knife went to the heart. Here he was hit with something heavy and blunt; but it had enough of an edge to cut the scalp and lay the cheek open. The skull is broken. See here—”