stretched straight out across the 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.