“What a barbarity!” I heard Craig mutter, for even he, though now and then forced to visit the place when one of his cases took him there, especially when it was concerned with an autopsy, had never become hardened to it.

Often I had heard him denounce the primitive appointments, especially in the autopsy rooms.  The archaic attempts to utilize the Morgue for scientific investigation were the occasion for practices that shocked even the initiated.  For the lack of suitable depositories for the products of autopsies, these objects were plainly visible in rude profusion when a door was opened to draw out a body for inspection.  About and around the slabs whereon the human bodies lay, in bottles and in plates, this material which had no place except in the cabinets of a laboratory was inhumanly displayed in profusion, close to corpses for which a morgue is expected to provide some degree of reverential care.

“You see,” apologized the keeper, not averse to throwing the blame on someone else, for it indeed was not his but the city’s fault, “one reason why so many bodies have to remain uncared for is that I could show you cooling box after cooling box with some subject which figured during the past few months in the police records.  Why victims of murders committed long ago should be held indefinitely, and their growing numbers make it impossible to give proper places to each day’s temporary bodies, I can’t say.  Sometimes,” he added with a sly dig at Carton, “the only explanation seems to be that the District Attorney’s office has requested the preservation of the grisly relics.”

I could see that Carton was making a mental note that the practice would be ended as far as his office was concerned.

“So—­you saw the story in the newspapers about Mr. Murtha,” repeated the keeper, not displeased to see us and at the publicity it gave him.  “It was I that discovered him—­and yet many’s the times some of the boys that must have handled the body since it was picked up beside the tracks must have seen him.  It was too late to get anyone to take the body away to-night, but the arrangements have all been made, and it will be done early in the morning before anyone else sees Pat Murtha here, as he shouldn’t be.  We’ve done what we could for him ourselves—­he was a fine gentleman and many’s the boy that owes a boost up in life to him.”

Reverentially even the hardened keeper drew out one of the best of the drawer-like boxes.  On the slab before us lay the body.  Carton drew back, excitedly, shocked.

“It is Murtha!” he exclaimed.

I, too, looked at it quickly.  The name as Carton pronounced it, in such a place, had, to me at least, an unpleasant likeness to “murder.”

Kennedy had bent down and was examining the mutilated body minutely.

“How do you suppose such a thing is possible—­that he could lie about the city, even here until the night keeper came on,—­ unknown?” asked Carton, aghast.