Kenton peered at me keenly in the bad light. Then his face relaxed.
“Man killed in Kellogg’s warehouse, just around the corner there,” he replied.
“Killed? How?”
“The sergeant didn’t say. I got it from him just now when I reported. Someone ’phoned in a minute ago. Come along and see, if you want. It’s right in your line, and you’re a good friend of the captain’s.”
I fell into step with him, finding some difficulty in keeping pace.
“Do you know who ’phoned?” I asked.
“No. May be a joke. May be a frame-up. May be anything.”
His deep voice rumbled through the gloom of the dingy street, deserted save for our hurrying figures. We crossed to the opposite side, passing beneath a blue arc which flamed and sputtered naked through a jagged gash in its dirty, frosted globe.
Just around the corner loomed the ramshackle bulk of Kellogg’s warehouse, a four-story, wooden structure squatting above the river piers. On the ground floor a broad entrance gaped blackly. At the left of the doorway, about three feet above street level, the end of a loading platform jutted out of the darkness.
Beyond the warehouse a narrow pier ran out toward midstream. I caught a glimpse of the riding lights of some small vessel, dimly outlined against the gray-black of the oily water.