Besides, I have a thing or two to tell
you."
"Go ahead," I said.
"We had a cable from our Paris office just before I left. It seems
that M. Theophile d'Aurelle plays the fiddle in the orchestra of the
Cafe de Paris. He played as usual to-night, so that it is manifestly
impossible that he should also be lying in the New York morgue.
Moreover, none of his friends, so far as he knows, is in America. No
doubt he may be able to identify the photograph of the dead man, and
we've already started one on the way, but we can't hear from it for
six or eight days. But my guess was right--the fellow's name isn't
d'Aurelle."
"You say you have a photograph?"
"Yes, I had some taken of the body this afternoon. Here's one of
them. Keep it; you may have a use for it."
I took the card, and, as I gazed at the face depicted upon it, I
realised that the distorted countenance I had seen in the afternoon
had given me no idea of the man's appearance. Now the eyes were
closed and the features composed and peaceful, but even death failed
to give them any dignity. It was a weak and dissipated face, the face
of a hanger-on of cafes, as Parks had said--of a loiterer along the
boulevards, of a man without ambition, and capable of any depth of
meanness and deceit.
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