While the secretary was explaining the object of their visit, Millard drew Storm through the opened door of one of the inner offices and pointed out the swinging files of photographs which stood out from the wall.
“Unidentified dead,” he remarked pompously with the assurance of a privileged visitor. “Morgue cases and Potter’s Field, you know, mostly derelicts. Dreadful looking lot, aren’t they?”
Storm shuddered in spite of himself. The relaxed faces leering maudlinly or with jaw wide in a seeming snarl stared fixedly at him with a look of supreme sophistication, and his own eyes dropped before them. To his super-sensitized imagination they seemed to be crying mutely in a silent chorus: “We know!” Jack Horton knew, also!
“Horrible!” Storm ejaculated in answer to his companion’s comment. “Millard I believe you are an inherent ghoul! You’ve been coming here gloating over these wretched things and regaling the country club with a nice lot of cheery anecdotes, haven’t you? I’ll wager half the members have taken to drink!”
Millard laughed and turned as the Captain entered.
“Not as bad as all that!” he disclaimed, adding to the official; “I suppose you’re all working over time on that Horton case that the papers were full of this morning; chap who disappeared with the payroll of the Mid-Eastern coal people. My friend here knows him.”
“You do?” The voice which had greeted them so gently took on in the instant a keen, knife-like edge, and the paternal, rather dreamy eyes narrowed in swift focus like the lens of a camera. Storm felt himself flush beneath the gaze, and he could have annihilated the garrulous Millard.
“To be perfectly frank, sir, I don’t know.” His tone was disarmingly candid. “When Mr. Millard spoke of the case I mentioned the fact that there was a chap in my class at Elmhaven of that name. He only stayed for one term and I shouldn’t know him now if I met him, I’m afraid. That was twenty years ago.”
He smiled deprecatingly, but the steady glance of the Captain did not waver. “You haven’t seen him since?”
“No.” Then, realizing the inevitable question to follow, he volunteered: “The last I heard of our Jack Horton, and then most indirectly, was that he held some sort of minor position in a bank in Chicago. I’m inclined to doubt that this is the same fellow.”