no doubt; but, turning his head away, Keith passed him without a word.  Strange to feel that cold, uneasy feeling in presence of the law!  A grim little driving home of what it all meant!  Then, suddenly, he saw that the turning to his left was Borrow Street itself.  He walked up one side, crossed over, and returned.  He passed Number Forty-two, a small house with business names printed on the lifeless windows of the first and second floors; with dark curtained windows on the ground floor, or was there just a slink of light in one corner?  Which way had Larry turned?  Which way under that grisly burden?  Fifty paces of this squalid street-narrow, and dark, and empty, thank heaven!  Glove Lane!  Here it was!  A tiny runlet of a street.  And here—!  He had run right on to the arch, a brick bridge connecting two portions of a warehouse, and dark indeed.

“That’s right, gov’nor!  That’s the place!” He needed all his self-control to turn leisurely to the speaker. “’Ere’s where they found the body—­very spot leanin’ up ’ere.  They ain’t got ’im yet.  Lytest—­me lord!”

It was a ragged boy holding out a tattered yellowish journal.  His lynx eyes peered up from under lanky wisps of hair, and his voice had the proprietary note of one making “a corner” in his news.  Keith took the paper and gave him twopence.  He even found a sort of comfort in the young ghoul’s hanging about there; it meant that others besides himself had come morbidly to look.  By the dim lamplight he read:  “Glove Lane garrotting mystery.  Nothing has yet been discovered of the murdered man’s identity; from the cut of his clothes he is supposed to be a foreigner.”  The boy had vanished, and Keith saw the figure of a policeman coming slowly down this gutter of a street.  A second’s hesitation, and he stood firm.  Nothing obviously could have brought him here save this “mystery,” and he stayed quietly staring at the arch.  The policeman moved up abreast.  Keith saw that he was the one whom he had passed just now.  He noted the cold offensive question die out of the man’s eyes when they caught the gleam of white shirt-front under the opened fur collar.  And holding up the paper, he said: 

“Is this where the man was found?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Still a mystery, I see?”

“Well, we can’t always go by the papers.  But I don’t fancy they do know much about it, yet.”

“Dark spot.  Do fellows sleep under here?”

The policeman nodded.  “There’s not an arch in London where we don’t get ’em sometimes.”

“Nothing found on him—­I think I read?”

“Not a copper.  Pockets inside out.  There’s some funny characters about this quarter.  Greeks, Hitalians—­all sorts.”

Queer sensation this, of being glad of a policeman’s confidential tone!

“Well, good-night!”

“Good-night, sir.  Good-night!”

He looked back from Borrow Street.  The policeman was still standing there holding up his lantern, so that its light fell into the archway, as if trying to read its secret.