“Lieutenant, I think I saw his hat go sailing off down the gutter as we carried him across. Shall I get it while you and my friend Terry, here, go over his effects?”
“Wish you would, McCarty.” The lieutenant glanced up absently from the desk where he and Keenan were sorting out a collection of small articles. “You must take a flash at these when you come back.”
McCarty nodded and departed upon his self-elected errand, appropriating the flashlight which the policeman had laid on a chair. He proceeded to the opposite side of the street and measuring off with his eye the distance from the lamp-post to where the fallen man’s head had rested over the curb, he followed the racing gutter for several yards down past the further warehouse to where the turbid flow was separated by a pile of refuse. There, impaled on a barrel stave, he found the sodden, shapeless brown mass that had once been a soft felt hat, and retrieving it, he carefully examined the inner side of the crown with the aid of the flashlight. The gilt lettering denoting the maker on the sweatband was so soaked as to be illegible but two initials showed plainly in the tiny, gleaming ray:—‘B. P.’
With his trophy McCarty returned to the station house to find Keenan and his superior with their heads together over a key-ring.
“There’s the hat, or what’s left of it.” He deposited the drenched article beside the body on the floor as he spoke. “Terry, here, was watching the guy pass him and he says he was hooched up for fair, so likely there’ll be nothing further come of this after his folks haul him away from the morgue, but if I’m wanted to swear that ’twas bootleg lightning and not the regular kind hit him, Inspector Druet or any of the old crowd at headquarters will know where to find me. I’ll be getting on home, for I’m soaked to the skin—”
“Take a look at these first, McCarty,” the lieutenant invited. “Hooch or no hooch, I’m going to find out what this bird was doing in my precinct! If that jewelry’s phoney it don’t go with the rest of his outfit and if it’s real, what was he doing down this way with it on? Don’t make any crack about his relying on us to protect him, for you walked your beat here yourself in the old days and the district hasn’t changed much! What do you make of it?”
McCarty turned over the articles presented for his inspection with a carelessly critical air.
“Handkerchief, kid gloves, Wareham gold-filled watch, pigskin cigar case with two broken cigars in it, sixty—seventy dollars and eighty cents in change,” McCarty enumerated rapidly. “Nothing here marked and no letters nor papers, eh? That scarf pin and those cuff buttons, fakes or not, are what they call cat’s-eyes, I’m thinking. Is that all except the key-ring?”
“It is, but if this bird purposely intended to leave everything off that would give him away to whoever he was going to meet, he slipped up! Look at here!” Lieutenant Taggart spoke with an air of triumph as he separated the keys of all shapes and sizes on the ring to disclose a small, thin, much-worn disk of some dull metal, one side of which bore the single numeral ‘4,’ and the reverse three letters in old English script:—‘N. Q. M.’
McCarty’s stubby mustache moved slightly as his lips tightened, but he shook his head.