Kenton’s hands had been moving swiftly over the body. Now he spread them apart in a little puzzled gesture.
“There doesn’t seem to be any wound,” he said. “See if there isn’t a switch around somewhere, Mr. Bowers. There ought to be a way of lighting up here.”
I fumbled along the wall until my fingers encountered the round porcelain knob. A single grimy bulb, pendant from a cobwebbed rafter, threw a dim circle of grewsome yellow light upon the floor of the warehouse.
The body had lain on its left side, facing the doorway. Kenton methodically turned the corpse upon its face, his searching fingers exploring the back. To me, at least, it was a relief that the staring, terrified eyes were hidden from view, rather than gazing fearfully through the arch of the doorway into the narrow, empty street beyond.
“There’s something queer about this,” said Kenton. “No wound at all, Mr. Bowers, that I can find. No blood—not even a bruise, only this mark at the throat.”
I had not seen the mark before, and even now I had to look closely to find it. It was scarcely more than a discoloration of the skin in a broad band beneath the chin. But there was no abrasion, much less a wound sufficient to cause the death of a powerful man like the one who lay before us.
With a shrug of his shoulders, Kenton rolled the body back to its original position. At once the ghastly eyes renewed their unwinking stare at the empty street.
A sound from the doorway caused us both to turn. Only Kenton himself can say what his imagination pictured there. For my part, I owned a feeling of distinct relief at sight of nothing more startling than a pair of ragged-looking men peering in at the open door.
As we looked, a third derelict of the wharves joined them, pressing inquisitively forward toward the body on the floor.