He growled again, and the hair along the top of his back ruffled into bristling life.
“Go find, Rip.”
Like an arrow, the dog sped forward into the night, his claws rattling upon the wet pavement. He ran low to the ground, swift and sure. He leaned far in as he rounded a corner, then the night swallowed him.
Sidney Zoom walked as far as the comer where the dog had vanished, then stood, waiting. He heard footsteps, the rustle of a rubber raincoat and a dark figure bulked upon him.
A flash light stabbed its way through the darkness.
“What are you doin’ here?” grumbled a deep voice.
The hawklike eyes of Sidney Zoom stared menacingly at the flash light.
“Who are you? — and put out that damned flash!”
The beam of the flash light shot up and down the long, lean, whipcorded strength of the man, and the grumbling voice rumbled again.
“I’m the officer on the beat. It’s no time for a man to be standin’ out on a street corner, all glistenin’ with rain, an’ lookin’ into the night as though he was listenin’ for something. So give an account of yourself, unless you want to spend a night in a cell.”
Sidney Zoom turned his eyes away from the glare of the light, fished a leather wallet from an inside pocket, and let the officer see a certain card.
That card bore the signature of the chief of police.
The officer whistled.
“Sidney Zoom, eh?” he said in surprise. “I’ve heard of you an’ of your police dog. Where’s the dog?”
Sidney Zoom’s head was cocked slightly to one side, listening.
“If you’ll quit talking for a moment I think we can hear him.”
The officer stopped stock-still, listening. Faintly through the night could be heard the barking of a dog.
“It’s around the other comer,” said Zoom.
The officer grunted.
“What’s he barkin’ at?”
Sidney Zoom’s long legs started to pace along the wet pavement. A sudden shower came rattling down upon the hard surface of their shiny raincoats. Water streamed from the rims of rubber hats.
“The best way to find out,” said Sidney Zoom, “is to go and see.”
The officer was put to it to keep pace with the long legs.
“I’ve heard of some of your detective work,” he said.
He gave the impression of one who wished to engage in conversation, but the pace was such that he needed all of his wind, Sidney Zoom said nothing.
“And of your dog,” puffed the officer.
Sidney Zoom paused, motioned to the officer to halt, raised his head and whistled. Instantly there came an answering bark.
Zoom’s ears caught the direction of that bark, and he lengthened his stride. The officer ceased all efforts to keep step and came blowing along, taking a step and a half to Zoom’s one.
A street light showed a huddled shadow. The dog barked again, and Sidney Zoom pointed.
“Something on the sidewalk,” he said.
The officer started to say something, but thought better of it. Such conversation as he might have could wait until he had more breath to spare for it.
Zoom’s stride became a running walk. His lean form seemed fairly vibrant with excitement.
“Some one lying down,” he said.
The dog barked once more, a shrill, yapping bark, as though he tried to convey some meaning. And Sidney Zoom interpreted the meaning of that bark.
“Dead,” he said.
The officer grunted his incredulity.
But Zoom had been right. The man was quite dead. He lay sprawled out upon the pavement, on his face, his hands stretched out and clenched, as though he had clutched at something.
There was a dark hole in the back of the man’s head, and a welling stream of red had oozed down until it mingled with the water on the sidewalk, staining it red. The hat was some ten feet away, lying flat upon the sidewalk.
The man had on a coat, trousers, heavy shoes. But there were pyjamas underneath. The bottoms of the pyjamas showed beneath the legs of the trousers, and the collar of the pyjama coat showed through a place where the coat lapel had been twisted backward.
The officer ran his hands to the wet wrists of the corpse.
“Dead,” he said.
“That,” remarked Sidney Zoom, dryly, “is what the dog told me. He’d have come running to me, urging haste, if the figure had still had life.”
The officer looked up with glittering eyes.
“You kidding me?” he asked.
Sidney Zoom shrugged his shoulders. Experience had taught him the futility of seeking to explain canine intelligence, highly developed, to one who had had no experience with it.
The officer turned the figure over. Zoom’s hand thrust out, caught the officer’s arm.
“Wait,” he said, “you’re destroying the most valuable clew we have!”
The officer’s eyes were wide.
“I’m just turnin’ him over.”
He had paused, the corpse precariously balanced upon one shoulder and hip, the head sagging downward.
Zoom nodded.
“Precisely,” he said. “But you’ll notice that the shoulders of the coat, on the upper part, around the neck, ate quite wet. That shows that he’s been out in the rain for some little time. But the back of the coat is almost dry.
“That means he was walking, facing the rain, that he hasn’t been lying very long on his stomach here. Otherwise the back of the coat would have been quite wet. But if you turn him over before we check on these things, and the back of the coat lays on the wet pavement, we’ll have no way of determining the comparative degree to which the garments are soaked.”
The officer grunted.
“You’re right about the shoulders,” he said, feeling them with an awkward hand. “And the front of his coat is sopping wet. It looks as though he’d been walkin’ toward the wind, all right.”
Zoom ran his fingers over the garments. His eyes held that hawklike glitter of concentration which marked his arousing interest.
“Now the wind,” said Zoom, “was blowing in the same direction the head is pointing. Which means that he was either turned around, after the shot, or that he had changed the direction of his walk. You’ll notice that he has no socks on, that the shoes are incompletely laced, and the strings hastily tied about the ankles.
“Apparently the man had retired for the night, when something aroused him, sent him hurriedly out into the rain with just the very barely essential clothes on.
“He was shot in the back of the head. Probably the shot coincided with a clap of thunder, since no one seems to have heard it, and it’s a district where there are apartment houses. He probably has been dead less than quarter of an hour.
“Let’s have the flash on his face, officer.”
The beam of light played obediently upon the cold face.
They disclosed features of a man somewhat past the middle fifties. His face was covered with gray stubble. His hair was thin at the temples. The high forehead was creased with scowl wrinkles. The mouth was a firm, thin line, almost lipless. Deep calipers showed that the corners of the mouth were habitually twisted downward.
“A man,” said Sidney Zoom, “who seldom smiled.”
The officer’s hand went to the coat pocket.
“Lots of papers in this pocket. You go notify headquarters. I’ll stay here and watch.”
Zoom’s eyes focused upon the wet pavement, some three feet beyond the corpse.
“Officer, raise your flash light a bit — higher — there!”
“What is it?”
Chapter II
The Scattered Beads
The rays of the flash light were caught, reflected back by something that glowed an angry red. Zoom walked over to it, stooped, picked it up.