Shirley gave a quick call for “Information,” and after several minutes learned that the call came from a drug store pay-station in Jersey City!
The melodious tones were unmistakably those of the speaker who had used the wire from faraway Brooklyn where the house had been burned down! It was a human impossibility for any one to have covered the distance between the two points in this brief time, except in an aeroplane!
Van Cleft wondered dumbly at his companion's excitement. Shirley caught up the telephone again.
“Some one says that Cronin is at Bellevue Hospital, injured. I'll find out.”
It was true. Captain Cronin was lying at point of death, the ward nurse said, in answer to his eager query. At first the ambulance surgeon had supposed him to be drunk, for a patrolman had pulled him out of a dark doorway, unconscious.
“Where was the doorway? This is his son speaking, so tell me all.”
“Just a minute. Oh! Here is the report slip. He was taken from the corner of Avenue A and East Eleventh Street. You'd better come down right away, for he is apt to die tonight. He's only been here ten minutes.”
“Has any one else telephoned to find out about him?”
“No. We didn't even know his name until just as you called up, when we found his papers and some warrants in a pocketbook. How did you know?”
But Shirley disconnected curtly, this time. He bowed his head in thought, and then, with his usual nervous custom, fumbled for a cigarette. Here was the Captain, whom he had left on Forty-fourth Street, near Fifth Avenue, a short time before, discovered fully three miles away.