Kenton stopped at the corner of the warehouse to draw his revolver, motioning me to remain where I was.
“Stay here,” he said under his breath. “I’ll take a look. If it’s a frame-up there’s no need to get anyone else into it. Besides, you’d be more help here.”
He squared his broad shoulders and was swallowed up by the oblong of black. It did not require much urging to persuade me to stay outside. Timidly I peeped through a crack in the warped boarding. The dim ray of light which Kenton cast before him seemed only to accentuate the obscurity.
The light became stationary. I could distinguish Kenton bending over something on the dirt floor not fifteen feet inside the entrance. He looked up and spoke softly.
“Come ahead, Mr. Bowers,” he said. “No joke about this.”
There was a grim edge to his tone. With a shiver, I stepped through the doorway and crossed to where he crouched above a motionless shape huddled against the side of the long loading platform.
The body was that of a man of large stature—more than six feet in height, as nearly as I could judge from the cramped position in which he lay. There were no visible marks of violence, except for a frayed linen collar pulled awry, which dangled by a single buttonhole from the shirt about the powerful, corded neck. But as I bent closer to look at the features, I drew back with a gasp.
The face of the dead man was distorted by an expression of the utmost horror and loathing. Around the dilated pupils of his large, bluish-gray eyes, the ghastly whites showed in a pallid rim of fear. His irregular, reddish features, even in death, seemed fairly to writhe with terror. One long, sinewy arm was thrown up across the lower part of his face, as if to ward off some unseen and terrible menace.
Shuddering, I stared across the body at Kenton’s homely, impassive face.
“In heaven’s name, what happened to him?” I asked.