Page:Porgy.djvu/181

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PORGY
175

stood a uniformed policeman. The third, a stout, leisurely individual, was stooping over the body, in the act of making an examination.

"What do you make of it, Coroner?" asked the plain-clothes man.

"Knife between fifth and sixth ribs; must have gone straight through the heart."

"Well, he had it comin' to him," the detective observed. "They tell me he is the nigger, Crown, who killed Robbins last April. That gives us the widow to work on fer a starter, by the way; and Hennessy tells me that he used to run with that dope case we had up last August. She's livin' in the Row, too. Let's go over and have a look."

The Coroner cast an apprehensive glance at the forbidding structure across the way.

"Can't be so sure," he cautioned. "Corpse might have been washed up. Tide's on the flood."

"Well, I'm goin' to have a look at those two women, anyway," the plain-clothes man announced. "That place is alive with crooks. I'd like to get something on it that would justify closing it up as a public nuisance, and throwing the whole lot of 'em out in the street. One murder and a happy-dust riot already this summer; and here we are again."