CHAPTER I
IN THE RAIN
ASEVEN-FIFTY derby, new only that afternoon and destined already to be reblocked! Ex-roundsman Timothy McCarty, whose complete transition to civilian attire was still so recent as to be a source of satisfaction to himself and of despair to his tailor and haberdasher, shrugged his broad shoulders and trudged sturdily along in the teeming downpour. A walk he had come out for, to clear his head of all that psycho-junk he’d been reading, and a walk he would have, but he could think of a place the devil could take this rain to, where it would be better appreciated!
Rain dripped down upon a sodden wisp of tobacco which hung dejectedly from beneath his mustache, and muddy streams spurted up almost to his knees with every step. It was a mean district, a neighborhood of broken, narrow sidewalks, dilapidated tenements and squalid wooden shacks, which became more squalid as McCarty neared the river, although here great warehouses loomed against the lesser darkness of the night sky. It was barely nine o’clock but there was scarcely a light in the streets, except where irregularly spaced street lamps emitted a blurred glimmer which emphasized rather than dispelled the murky gloom, yet McCarty strode on with the unconcern of one treading a once-familiar precinct.
He was not the only pedestrian abroad in the late September storm. Under the glow of a lamp he presently descried a dark figure proceeding also in the direction of the waterfront, and insensibly he quickened his own steps. Some peculiarity in the latter’s gait had aroused that suspicion, more than mere curiosity, that had served him so well in the old days on the Force.
The man was lurching along at an unsteady pace, now breaking into a shambling trot for a few steps, now pulling up short, only to dive forward once more, reeling through the driving sheets of rain. McCarty followed closely. He had almost overtaken the man when a tall, bluecoated figure stepped suddenly from the shelter of a doorway and barred his progress.
“None of that, my lad! For what are you following that feller there—? Glory be, it’s Mac!”
“True for you, Terry!” McCarty responded, as their hands met in a mighty grip. “A fine, conscientious bull you are, I’ll say that for you, pinching the old has-been that got you on the Force, just because he’s taking a bit of a stroll on a grand night like this!”
Officer Terrence Keenan grinned sheepishly in the darkness.
“It’s a grand night, all right; for ducks!” he amended. “You’re no has-been, Mac, from what the boys tell me of the different cases you’ve taken a hand in on the quiet since you resigned from the Department, but you needn’t give me the laugh for looking you over just now! You know this neighborhood as well as me, and when I see a guy trailing a prosperous looking drunk towards the riverfront and the wharves it’s up to me—”
“‘Drunk,’ is it?” McCarty demanded in fine scorn. Then he checked himself and added with a sweeping gesture
toward the greenish glow from twin lights across the street: “I was minded to take a stroll through my own old beat and drop in at the house over there for a word or two with you and the Lieutenant at the desk, when I saw the guy ahead—but where is he? He couldn’t have got in one of the warehouses at this time of the evening and there’s nothing else between here and the corner—?”
“Aw, let him go!” Officer Keenan interrupted good-naturedly. “Honest, Mac, I ain’t got the heart to run them in these days, when the stuff is so hard to get, and all—!”
But McCarty was not listening. Forgotten alike were the bedraggled derby and the affluent private life of which it had so lately been sign and symbol; he was back on his old beat with something doing, and he grabbed his brother officer by the arm.
“What’s that there beyond the lamp-post, half in and half out of the gutter? It’s him, Terry, he’s down!—Come on!”
Terry needed no second bidding now. Together they ran, splashing through puddles and over the loose, tilting fragments of pavement to where the man lay. He had pitched forward, his face hanging over the curb’s edge, down into the swirling gutter. The back of his head showed a bald spot gleaming in the misty rays from the lamp.
“There’s some heft to him!” Terry grunted. “Now I’ll have to run him in for safe-keeping. What’s that he’s jabbering, Mac?”
Between them they had turned the prostrate man, who was breathing stertorously and muttering to himself in broken gasps. The young policeman’s flashlight revealed
a heavy, smooth-shaven face, distorted and pasty gray beneath the rivulets of muddy water that coursed down it, with small, close-set eyes darting about in a wild, distended gaze.
McCarty bent lower in an effort to distinguish the hoarse accents. His companion commented disgustedly:
“He’s worse than I thought he was! Look at the rolling eyes of him! It’ll be Bellevue, I’m thinking—”
“Hush!” McCarty commanded, as he lifted the man’s head higher on his knee. His breathing had become a series of heaving gasps now. Suddenly, with a rumbling snort, they ceased altogether, the flabby jaw sagging as the lids drooped.
“Not Bellevue, Terry; the morgue, more likely.” McCarty spoke solemnly. “He’s gone.”
“Croaked!” Terry started up. “It sure looks like it! I’ll run across to the house and tip off the lieut. and put in the ambulance call. You’ll wait here?”
Without pausing for a reply he turned and splashed heavily across the street to the station house. McCarty looked down at the figure still propped against his knee. In the feeble light of the street lamp it appeared to be muffled to the neck in a loose, dark ulster of some thin material. The body was portly though not actually stout; the upturned face, washed clean of the mud from the gutter, was a grayish blur, its hideous distortion of feature relaxed, leaving it a mere flaccid mass. Some involuntary movement of the supporting knee caused the head to slump forward on the dead man’s breast and once more that small, round bald spot gleamed whitely from the scant, dark hair surrounding it.
“Mike Taggart—he’s lieutenant now, as you may know,—says it’ll be all right to bring the body over there
without waiting out on such a night for the ambulance.” Terry had waded back through the reeking mire. “He’d be glad of a word with you, too, Mac, so will you give me a hand with the old boy here? It’s only a step.”
With a slight shrug and a smile that was lost upon his companion McCarty assumed his share of their limp burden. Together they bore it across the street to the station house. He blinked in the sudden glare of light, as the sodden figure was deposited on the floor, and then turned to greet the homely, spruce young giant who had come forward from behind the desk.
“So it’s Lieutenant Taggart now, that was a rookie when I left the Force!” he exclaimed with a laugh. “I’d thought to drop in on you one of these days but not as part of the escort for our friend here!”
He motioned over his shoulder toward the body and the lieutenant shook hands with obvious respect before advancing to examine it.
“Glad to see you, McCarty, though you do come in strange company!” He smiled and then turned to Officer Keenan who had knelt and was running his hands over the inanimate form in a practiced manner. “Humph! Looks like a pretty prosperous sort of a bird to be hanging around the waterfront on a night like this, don’t he? What do you find on him, Terry? I don’t believe I ever saw that face in this precinct before.”
As the policeman turned over to his superior the contents of the dead man’s pockets, McCarty stood gazing thoughtfully down upon him. He was apparently in the late forties and in life the beefy, extremely close-shaven face might have been florid; the nose was short but highly arched and the lids which had opened now revealed the
small, pale eyes set in a dull stare. His raincoat, of excellent texture, had been opened to admit of Terry’s search, and disclosed a dark brown sack suit and tie of the same grade of conservative excellence as the outer garment, but the low brown shoes that covered the large, rather flat feet were as incongruously inferior as they were blatantly new. The man’s hands were outstretched limply, palms upward, with the thick though well-kept fingers curling slightly, and McCarty’s keen eyes narrowed a little as they rested on them. Then he turned.
“Lieutenant, I think I saw his hat go sailing off down the gutter as we carried him across. Shall I get it while you and my friend Terry, here, go over his effects?”
“Wish you would, McCarty.” The lieutenant glanced up absently from the desk where he and Keenan were sorting out a collection of small articles. “You must take a flash at these when you come back.”
McCarty nodded and departed upon his self-elected errand, appropriating the flashlight which the policeman had laid on a chair. He proceeded to the opposite side of the street and measuring off with his eye the distance from the lamp-post to where the fallen man’s head had rested over the curb, he followed the racing gutter for several yards down past the further warehouse to where the turbid flow was separated by a pile of refuse. There, impaled on a barrel stave, he found the sodden, shapeless brown mass that had once been a soft felt hat, and retrieving it, he carefully examined the inner side of the crown with the aid of the flashlight. The gilt lettering denoting the maker on the sweatband was so soaked as to be illegible but two initials showed plainly in the tiny, gleaming ray:—‘B. P.’
With his trophy McCarty returned to the station house
to find Keenan and his superior with their heads together over a key-ring.
“There’s the hat, or what’s left of it.” He deposited the drenched article beside the body on the floor as he spoke. “Terry, here, was watching the guy pass him and he says he was hooched up for fair, so likely there’ll be nothing further come of this after his folks haul him away from the morgue, but if I’m wanted to swear that ’twas bootleg lightning and not the regular kind hit him, Inspector Druet or any of the old crowd at headquarters will know where to find me. I’ll be getting on home, for I’m soaked to the skin—”
“Take a look at these first, McCarty,” the lieutenant invited. “Hooch or no hooch, I’m going to find out what this bird was doing in my precinct! If that jewelry’s phoney it don’t go with the rest of his outfit and if it’s real, what was he doing down this way with it on? Don’t make any crack about his relying on us to protect him, for you walked your beat here yourself in the old days and the district hasn’t changed much! What do you make of it?”
McCarty turned over the articles presented for his inspection with a carelessly critical air.
“Handkerchief, kid gloves, Wareham gold-filled watch, pigskin cigar case with two broken cigars in it, sixty—seventy dollars and eighty cents in change,” McCarty enumerated rapidly. “Nothing here marked and no letters nor papers, eh? That scarf pin and those cuff buttons, fakes or not, are what they call cat’s-eyes, I’m thinking. Is that all except the key-ring?”
“It is, but if this bird purposely intended to leave everything off that would give him away to whoever he was going to meet, he slipped up! Look at here!” Lieutenant
Taggart spoke with an air of triumph as he separated the keys of all shapes and sizes on the ring to disclose a small, thin, much-worn disk of some dull metal, one side of which bore the single numeral ‘4,’ and the reverse three letters in old English script:—‘N. Q. M.’
McCarty’s stubby mustache moved slightly as his lips tightened, but he shook his head.
