“Go and get him,” ordered Kenton, removing his cap and mopping his forehead.
The man, not unwillingly, passed out of the circle of light. We heard his footsteps on the planking of the pier, and his hail to the ship anchored there.
Kenton turned to me, a worried look on his face.
“Would you mind going down to Patton’s place on the corner and ’phoning in, Mr. Bowers?” he asked. “I wouldn’t ask it, but the captain knows you well. Tell him I’m staying with the body. And ask him to have Doctor Potts come, if he’s there. I’d like to get to the bottom of this.”
I was only too glad to get out of the warehouse, for the eerie atmosphere was beginning to get on my nerves. When I returned, two of the somnolent loafers from Patton’s greasy lunch room, roused by my telephone message to Captain Watters of the fourth precinct, followed in my wake, muttering and rubbing their bleared eyes.
Less than ten minutes had passed since we had found the dead man in Kellogg’s old warehouse. Yet now a dozen frowsy wharf-rats fringed the doorway, brought thither by some mysterious telepathic message borne on the murky night air.
“Be here in ten minutes,” I said, nodding to Kenton.
Suddenly a man made his way through the crowd and hastened toward us. His rugged, weather-beaten face took deeper lines from the dim light overhead, its high lights gleaming in the ghastly radiance like pieces of yellowed parchment. Yet there was power in the piercing blue eye, and strength in every line of the tall, gaunt figure, now stooping suddenly over the body of the dead man.
“Terence!” he cried, his voice harsh with grief. “Terence, lad!”