Blindfolded | Page 9

he interrupted me.
"You can't make that go here," he said contemptuously. "And I'll tell
you what, Wilton, I shall have to take you into custody if you don't
come down to straight business. We don't want to chip in on the old
man's play, of course, especially as we don't know what his game is."
Detective Coogan appeared to regret this admission that he was not
omniscient, and went on hastily: "You know as well as we do that we
don't want any fight with him. But I'll tell you right now that if you
force a fight, we'll make it so warm for him that he'll have to throw you
overboard to lighten ship."
Here was a fine prospect conveyed by Detective Coogan's picturesque
confusion of metaphors. If I persisted in claiming my own name and
person I was to be clapped into jail, and charged with Heaven-knows-
what crimes. If I took my friend's name, I was to invite the career of
adventure of which I had just had a taste. And while this was flashing
through my mind, I wondered idly who the "old man" could be. The
note I had received was certainly in a lady's hand. But if the lady was
Henry's employer, it was evident that he had dealt with the police as the
representative of a man of power.
My decision was of necessity promptly taken.
"Oh, well, if that's the way you look at it, Coogan," I said carelessly,
"it's all right. I thought it was agreed that we weren't to know each
other."
This was a chance shot, but it hit.

"Yes, yes," said the detective, "I remember. But, you see, this is serious
business. Here's a murder on our hands, and from all I can learn it's on
account of your confounded schemes. We've got to know where we
stand, or there will be the Old Nick to pay. The papers will get hold of
it, and then--well, you remember that shake-up we had three years
ago."
"But you forget the 'old man,'" I returned. The name of that potent
Unknown seemed to be my only weapon in the contest with Detective
Coogan, and I thought this a time to try its force.
"Not much, I don't!" said Coogan, visibly disturbed. "But if it comes to
a choice, we'll have to risk a battle with him."
"Well, maybe we're wasting time over a trifle," said I, voicing my hope.
"Perhaps your dead man belongs somewhere else."
"Come along to the morgue, then," said he.
"Where was he found?" I asked as we walked out of the City Hall.
"He was picked up at about three o'clock in the back room of the
Hurricane Deck--the water-front saloon, you know--near the foot of
Folsom Street."
Detective Coogan asked a number of questions as we walked, and in a
few minutes we came to the undertaker's shop that served as the city
morgue. At the best of times it could not be a place of cheer. In the
hour before daybreak, with the chill air of the morning almost
suppressing the yellow gaslights, the errand on which I had come made
it the abode of dread. Yet I hoped--hoped in such an agony of fear that I
became half-insensible to my surroundings.
"Here it is," said Coogan, opening a door.
The low room was dark and chill and musty, but its details started forth
from the obscurity as he turned up the lights.

Detective Coogan's words seemed to come from a great distance as he
said: "Here, you see, he was stabbed. The knife went to the heart. Here
he was hit with something heavy and blunt; but it had enough of an
edge to cut the scalp and lay the cheek open. The skull is broken. See
here--"
I summoned my resolution and looked.
Disfigured and ghastly as it was, I recognized it. It was the face of
Henry Wilton.
The next I knew I was sitting on a bench, and the detective was holding
a bottle to my lips.
"There, take another swallow," he said, not unkindly. "I didn't know
you weren't used to it."
"Oh," I gasped, "I'm all right now." And I was able to look steadily at
the gruesome surroundings and the dreadful burden on the slab.
"Is this the man?" asked the detective.
"Yes."
"His name?"
"Dudley--James Dudley." I was not quite willing to transfer the whole
of my identity to the dead, and changed the Giles to James.
"Was he a relative?"
I shook my head, though I could not have said why I denied it. Then, in
answer to the detective's question, I told the story of the scuffle in the
alley, and of the events that followed.
"Did you see any of the men? To