“Hush!” McCarty commanded, as he lifted the man’s head higher on his knee. His breathing had become a series of heaving gasps now. Suddenly, with a rumbling snort, they ceased altogether, the flabby jaw sagging as the lids drooped.
“Not Bellevue, Terry; the morgue, more likely.” McCarty spoke solemnly. “He’s gone.”
“Croaked!” Terry started up. “It sure looks like it! I’ll run across to the house and tip off the lieut. and put in the ambulance call. You’ll wait here?”
Without pausing for a reply he turned and splashed heavily across the street to the station house. McCarty looked down at the figure still propped against his knee. In the feeble light of the street lamp it appeared to be muffled to the neck in a loose, dark ulster of some thin material. The body was portly though not actually stout; the upturned face, washed clean of the mud from the gutter, was a grayish blur, its hideous distortion of feature relaxed, leaving it a mere flaccid mass. Some involuntary movement of the supporting knee caused the head to slump forward on the dead man’s breast and once more that small, round bald spot gleamed whitely from the scant, dark hair surrounding it.
“Mike Taggart—he’s lieutenant now, as you may know,—says it’ll be all right to bring the body over there without waiting out on such a night for the ambulance.” Terry had waded back through the reeking mire. “He’d be glad of a word with you, too, Mac, so will you give me a hand with the old boy here? It’s only a step.”
With a slight shrug and a smile that was lost upon his companion McCarty assumed his share of their limp burden. Together they bore it across the street to the station house. He blinked in the sudden glare of light, as the sodden figure was deposited on the floor, and then turned to greet the homely, spruce young giant who had come forward from behind the desk.
“So it’s Lieutenant Taggart now, that was a rookie when I left the Force!” he exclaimed with a laugh. “I’d thought to drop in on you one of these days but not as part of the escort for our friend here!”
He motioned over his shoulder toward the body and the lieutenant shook hands with obvious respect before advancing to examine it.
“Glad to see you, McCarty, though you do come in strange company!” He smiled and then turned to Officer Keenan who had knelt and was running his hands over the inanimate form in a practiced manner. “Humph! Looks like a pretty prosperous sort of a bird to be hanging around the waterfront on a night like this, don’t he? What do you find on him, Terry? I don’t believe I ever saw that face in this precinct before.”
As the policeman turned over to his superior the contents of the dead man’s pockets, McCarty stood gazing thoughtfully down upon him. He was apparently in the late forties and in life the beefy, extremely close-shaven face might have been florid; the nose was short but highly arched and the lids which had opened now revealed the small, pale eyes set in a dull stare. His raincoat, of excellent texture, had been opened to admit of Terry’s search, and disclosed a dark brown sack suit and tie of the same grade of conservative excellence as the outer garment, but the low brown shoes that covered the large, rather flat feet were as incongruously inferior as they were blatantly new. The man’s hands were outstretched limply, palms upward, with the thick though well-kept fingers curling slightly, and McCarty’s keen eyes narrowed a little as they rested on them. Then he turned.