IV + 

Here is something that happened next morning. I didn’t see it. I heard about it a little before noon and read about it in the papers that afternoon. I didn’t know then that I had any personal interest in it, but later I did⁠—so I’ll put it in here where it happened. + 

At ten o’clock that morning, into busy Market Street, staggered a man who was naked from the top of his battered head to the soles of his bloodstained feet. From his bare chest and sides and back, little ribbons of flesh hung down, dripping blood. His left arm was broken in two places. The left side of his bald head was smashed in. An hour later he died in the emergency hospital⁠—without having said a word to anyone, with the same vacant, distant look in his eyes. + 

The police easily ran back the trail of blood drops. They ended with a red smear in an alley beside a small hotel just off Market Street. In the hotel, the police found the room from which the man had jumped, fallen, or been thrown. The bed was soggy with blood. On it were torn and twisted sheets that had been knotted and used rope-wise. There was also a towel that had been used as a gag. + 

The evidence read that the naked man had been gagged, trussed up and worked on with a knife. The doctors said the ribbons of flesh had been cut loose, not torn or clawed. After the knife-user had gone away, the naked man had worked free of his bonds, and, probably crazed by pain, had either jumped or fallen out of the window. The fall had crushed his skull and broken his arm, but he had managed to walk a block and a half in that condition. + 

The hotel management said the man had been there two days. He was registered as H. F. Barrows, City. He had a black gladstone bag in which, besides clothes, shaving implements and so on, the police found a box of .38 cartridges, a black handkerchief with eyeholes cut in it, four skeleton keys, a small jimmy, and a quantity of morphine, with a needle and the rest of the kit. Elsewhere in the room they found the rest of his clothes, a .38 revolver and two quarts of liquor. They didn’t find a cent. + 

The supposition was that Barrows had been a burglar, and that he had been tied up, tortured and robbed, probably by pals, between eight and nine that morning. Nobody knew anything about him. Nobody had seen his visitor or visitors. The room next to his on the left was unoccupied. The occupant of the room on the other side had left for his work in a furniture factory before seven o’clock. + 

While this was happening I was at the office, sitting forward in my chair to spare my back, reading reports, all of which told how operatives attached to various Continental Detective Agency branches had continued to fail to turn up any indications of the past, present, or future whereabouts of Papadopoulos and Nancy Regan. There was nothing novel about these reports⁠—I had been reading similar ones for three weeks. + 

The Old Man and I went out to luncheon together, and I told him about the previous night’s adventures in Sausalito while we ate. His grandfatherly face was as attentive as always, and his smile as politely interested, but when I was half through my story he turned his mild blue eyes from my face to his salad and he stared at his salad until I had finished talking. Then, still not looking up, he said he was sorry I had been cut. I thanked him and we ate a while. + 

Finally he looked at me. The mildness and courtesy he habitually wore over his cold-bloodedness were in face and eyes and voice as he said: + 

“This first indication that Papadopoulos is still alive came immediately after Tom-Tom Carey’s arrival.” + 

It was my turn to shift my eyes. + 

I looked at the roll I was breaking while I said: “Yes.” + 

That afternoon a phone call came in from a woman out in the Mission who had seen some highly mysterious happenings and was sure they had something to do with the well-advertised bank robberies. So I went out to see her and spent most of the afternoon learning that half of her happenings were imaginary and the other half were the efforts of a jealous wife to get the low-down on her husband. + 

It was nearly six o’clock when I returned to the agency. A few minutes later Dick Foley called me on the phone. His teeth were chattering until I could hardly get the words. + 

“C-c-canyoug-g-get-t-townt-t-tooth-ar-r-rbr-r-spittle?” + 

“What?” I asked, and he said the same thing again, or worse. But by this time I had guessed that he was asking me if I could get down to the Harbor Hospital. + 

I told him I could in ten minutes, and with the help of a taxi I did. + 