“Then listen! Run down to the old waterfront precinct and see is Mike Taggart or Terry around; tell them I stopped by the fire house this morning on the way out to my Homevale estates and mentioned the fellow that dropped dead down there last night, and you thought from my description maybe you knew him. You’re disgusted that I took so little interest and it’s your opinion I’m not the man I was—”
“And who says so?” demanded Dennis with loyal indignation.
“You do, you blockhead!” McCarty retorted. “Let them knock me and get all the dope you can about last night, and then bring up old times when I walked my beat there and you used to come around for a word with me and the rest of the boys. Say the neighborhood looks about the same to you but you kind of recall seeing more Chinks hanging out in the doorways, and wasn’t there a laundry or a chop suey joint on the block?”
“’Tis you should know there wasn’t!” Dennis’ tone was bewildered but a light suddenly dawned in his gray eyes and he added in a sepulchral whisper: “Mac! You don’t mean—! You’re thinking—!”
“I’m wishful to know if there was a strange Chinaman in that street this morning; one that was curious, maybe, about what happened last night. If there was, his queue might have been tucked up or swinging free, but I’ve a hunch he’d look like Ching Lee!”
CHAPTER VI
DEADLOCK
Dennis had scarcely departed on his errand when the inspector and Orbit came down the stairs together and the latter remarked to McCarty:
“You didn’t tell me Hughes had been poisoned!”
“No, sir,” McCarty agreed. “’Twas not for me to say: I told you I’d no message for you about the body but you’d hear from the inspector. There’s no chance he could have took that Calabar bean powder—I disremember its other name,—by mistake, is there? Would it be lying around the house here for any purpose?”
“Hardly!” Orbit smiled. “I have read of its use as a cure for lockjaw and an antidote for some other poison—strychnine, I believe,—but one would not find it in an ordinary, normal household!—You’ll let me know, inspector, if I can do anything to further your investigation?”