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 subsequently tumble. Besides, a telephone message would send a
man from the _Watchman_ to the mortuary. This sort of thing was not in
his line now, now--

"You'll be for getting one o' them big play-cards out with something
about a mystery on it," suggested Driscoll. "You never know what lies
at the bottom o' these affairs, no more you don't."