CHAPTER II
A Cry for Help
FOR three days Thompson’s body lay enthroned on its couch at the morgue, but of the thousands of people who filed past it, not one could give a single clew to its identity. Godfrey’s emissaries went from end to end of the docks, loitered in sailors’ saloons and eating-places, provided innumerable drinks, but nowhere did they met anyone who recognized the rough, bearded face which the camera had reproduced. The officers of every ship that had arrived within a week were interviewed, but none of them knew Thompson. It would seem that he had dropped from the clouds and that no one had witnessed his descent. It was an altogether puzzling state of affairs, and made impossible any further real progress in the investigation of the crime.
The police worked in a desultory fashion along the usual lines. Various theories were built up and exploded; various clews were laboriously followed and found to lead nowhere; various suspects were arrested and afterward released; a close and utterly futile watch was kept on the movements of Jimmy the Dude. It was plainly apparent that the authorities were all at sea, and it seemed altogether likely that the affair would soon be written down with New York’s other unsolved mysteries.
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