There was that in his voice which made his companion straighten in his chair, the mild gray eyes sparkling with eager interest.
“Who’s been blundering now?” he demanded. “I ought to have known you would not be trailing around in the storm till near ten o’clock for the sake of your health! What is it, Mac? For the love of God, are you on another case?”
“I am not!” responded McCarty with dignity. “I’m a real estate owner, as well you know, with no connection with the police department any more, and if an exhausted man in mortal terror or agony drops dead in his tracks and they ship him to the morgue as an acute alcoholic it’s nothing to me!”
Dennis emptied the contents of his pipe into the tray and rose.
“Where do we start from?” he asked excitedly. “Thanks be, I’ve the next twenty-four hours off duty! Do we have a talk with his folks first or what?”
“First and last, we mind our own business this time!” McCarty waved toward the chair. “Sit down again and light up, Denny, and I’ll give you the dope on it, though there’s little enough according to Terry Keenan and Mike Taggart—”
“Terry Keenan and Mike—!” Dennis obeyed tensely. “That’ll be down in the old precinct, then, along the waterfront! Who was the guy and what was he running from when he dropped?”
McCarty gave an account of the evening’s occurrence, concisely yet omitting no significant detail. When he had finished, his visitor sat silent for a moment, turning the story over in his none too quick mind. Then he remarked:
“I don’t get it at all, Mac. A prosperous, middle-aged, respectable looking fellow by what you say, with never a scrap of paper on him to show who he was, only that bit of a metal tag! He must have been running from somebody! Did you look behind you?”
“I did not, and neither did he.” McCarty paused. “Mind you that, Denny! I didn’t say he was trying to get away from anybody. The way he was running and stopping and then reeling along once more showed that if he was not half-crazed with pain, ’twas only will power kept him going as far as he got. When Terry and I turned him over, the gray look of his face came from more than his slowing heart. It was horror that stared out of his eyes! He was conscious, too, though the end came in less than a minute, and muttering with his last breath.”