e threshold; the trunk was twisted to
the wall. Over the white glaze of the tiles against which it and the
shoulder towards which it had sunk were crushed there were gouts and
stains of blood. And Driscoll, taking a hand out of his belt, pointed a
finger at them.

"Seems to me," he said, slowly, "seems to me as how he's been struck
down from behind as he came out of here. That blood's from his
nose--gushed out as he fell. What do you say, Jim?" The other policeman
coughed.

"Better get the inspector here," he said. "And the doctor and the
ambulance. Dead--ain't he?"

Driscoll bent down and put a thumb on the hand which lay on the
pavement.

"As ever they make 'em," he remarked laconically. "And stiff, too.
Well, hurry up, Jim!"

Spargo waited until the inspector arrived; waited until the
hand-ambulance came. More policemen came with it; they moved the body
for transference to the mortuary, and Spargo then saw the dead man's
face. He looked long and steadily at it while the police arranged the
limbs, wondering all the time who it was that he gazed at, how he came
to that end, what was the object of his murderer, and many other
things. There was some professionalism in Spargo's curiosity, but there
was also a natural dislike that a fellow-being should have been so
unceremoniously smitten out of the world.

There was nothing very remarkable about the dead man's face. It was
that of a man of apparently sixty to sixty-five years of age; plain,
even homely of feature, clean-shaven, except for a fringe of white
whisker, trimmed, after an old-fashioned pattern, between the ear and
the point of the jaw. The only remarkable thing about it was that it
was much lined and seamed; the wrinkles were many and deep around the
corners of the lips and the angles of the eyes; this man, you would
have said to yourself, has led a hard life and weathered storm, mental
as well as physical.

Driscoll nudged Spargo with a turn of his elbow. He gave him a wink.
"Better come down to the dead-house," he muttered confidentially.

"Why?" asked Spargo.

"They'll go through him," whispered Driscoll. "Search him, d'ye see?
Then you'll get to know all about him, and so on. Help to write that
piece in the paper, eh?"

Spargo hesitated. He had had a stiff night's work, and until his
encounter with Driscoll he had cherished warm anticipation of the meal
which would be laid out for him at his rooms, and of the bed into which
he would subsequen