“There you are, Mac! I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Inspector!” McCarty gasped, gaping at his former superior. “How in the world did you know—?”
Inspector Druet laughed.
“How did I know you’d be on the scent with the trail fresh and the wind your way? Good evening, Riordan; it’s like old times to find you following Mac’s lead again.”
“’Tis Denny that’s leading this night,” averred McCarty, with a chuckle, as Dennis turned to pay the taxi driver. “In spite of the rain and all, he was possessed to come and have a look around here when I told him about the drunk that fell dead across the street from the station-house down by the waterfront!”
“The ‘drunk,’ eh?” Inspector Druet tapped a leather case which he carried. “I have the man’s hat here which you found in the gutter, and I needn’t ask if you saw the initials inside, though you said nothing to the boys at the house. When I found out you’d been on the scene, and got a line from them on the way you’d collected all the dope on the case and then quietly faded away with a pathetic reference to rheumatism, I knew you would be on the job. Then your phone didn’t answer a little while ago and I was morally certain you had read that identification tag correctly and were on your way here, so I waited. It looks as though this was going to be bigger than it appeared at first.”
They had drawn under the comparative shelter of an overhanging cornice, and Dennis, who had turned to gaze reproachfully at McCarty when the hat was mentioned, asked with lively interest:
“Do you mean, Inspector, that the fellow didn’t just drop dead by accident? What was the initials? Who was he?”
“The initials are ‘B. P.’” The inspector spoke with added impressiveness. “I have a list of all the householders on this block; there are only a few, for you can see by the street-lamps that each place is several times the size of an ordinary city lot. The owner of Number Seven is Benjamin Parsons, and if this is his hat—?”
“But the tag on the key-ring said Number Four,” Dennis observed doubtfully as the inspector paused. “Somebody named ‘B. P.’ might live there too, sir.”