Here was a fine prospect conveyed by Detective Coogan's picturesque confusion of metaphors. If I persisted in claiming my own name and person I was to be clapped into jail, and charged with Heaven-knows-what crimes. If I took my friend's name, I was to invite the career of adventure of which I had just had a taste. And while this was flashing through my mind, I wondered idly who the “old man” could be. The note I had received was certainly in a lady's hand. But if the lady was Henry's employer, it was evident that he had dealt with the police as the representative of a man of power. My decision was of necessity promptly taken. “Oh, well, if that's the way you look at it, Coogan,” I said carelessly, “it's all right. I thought it was agreed that we weren't to know each other.” This was a chance shot, but it hit. “Yes, yes,” said the detective, “I remember. But, you see, this is serious business. Here's a murder on our hands, and from all I can learn it's on account of your confounded schemes. We've got to know where we stand, or there will be the Old Nick to pay. The papers will get hold of it, and then--well, you remember that shake-up we had three years ago.” “But you forget the 'old man,'” I returned. The name of that potent Unknown seemed to be my only weapon in the contest with Detective Coogan, and I thought this a time to try its force. “Not much, I don't!” said Coogan, visibly disturbed. “But if it comes to a choice, we'll have to risk a battle with him.” “Well, maybe we're wasting time over a trifle,” said I, voicing my hope. “Perhaps your dead man belongs somewhere else.” “Come along to the morgue, then,” said he. “Where was he found?” I asked as we walked out of the City Hall. “He was picked up at about three o'clock in the back room of the Hurricane Deck--the water-front saloon, you know--near the foot of Folsom Street.” Detective Coogan asked a number of questions as we walked, and in a few minutes we came to the undertaker's shop that served as the city morgue. At the best of times it could not be a place of cheer. In the hour before daybreak, with the chill air of the morning almost suppressing the yellow gaslights, the errand on which I had come made it the abode of dread. Yet I hoped--hoped in such an agony of fear that I became half-insensible to my surroundings. “Here it is,” said Coogan, opening a door. The low room was dark and chill and musty, but its details started forth from the obscurity as he turned up the lights. Detective Coogan's words seemed to come from a great distance as he said: “Here, you see, he was stabbed. The knife went to the heart. Here he was hit with something heavy and blunt; but it had enough of an edge to cut the scalp and lay the cheek open. The skull is broken. See here--” I summoned my resolution and looked. Disfigured and ghastly as it was, I recognized it. It was the face of Henry Wilton.