In reply to his ring the door was opened by a second policeman. A few words brought the sergeant in charge to the door; and he shook hands with Scanlon and asked him to step in.
"Any interest in this case?" he asked, and his broad, red face displayed a great deal of that very thing. "Is your friend Ashton-Kirk along with you?"
"No," replied Bat, easily, "he's not. But from what I hear, it's the kind of a thing he'd like."
The sergeant shook his head.
"Oh, between you and me it's simple enough," said he. "The newspapers have played it up some, that's all. To my mind, the party that croaked Burton ain't out of reach by a long shot; and if they'd have left it to me I'd had him at City Hall an hour ago."
"That so!" Bat looked surprised. "I thought it was one of those things all bundled up in mystery."
He went slowly down the hall and turned in at the first door to the left, which stood partly open, and from behind which he heard voices. A burly, good-natured looking man with a derby hat in his hand was talking to a dapper, quick-eyed personage whose carefully trimmed beard and immaculately white waistcoat gave him the conventional "professional" look. Near a window was a big chair, among the pillows of which reclined a young girl with a pale, sweet face and that appearance of fragility which comes of long-continued illness; beside her stood an anxious-looking young man whose haggard countenance told of a sleepless night and a harassed mind.
Scanlon at once recognized in the big man the "well-known"—as the newspapers always put it—city detective, Osborne; and so calmly advanced and shook his hand.
"Glad to see you," spoke Osborne, affably. "Meet Dr. Shower, assistant to the coroner," indicating the white waistcoated gentleman.
"These investigations are not exactly the thing I care for," Dr. Shower told Osborne, after acknowledging the presentation, graciously. "As a matter of fact I think they are entirely within the duties of the police. We of our office shouldn't be dragged out to view dead bodies in all sorts of places; it consumes a great deal of time, and, as far as I can see, can do no possible good."