I looked out of the one eye, which was working just now, at the five men lined up across the office—Soules, the three inky printers, and the man with the blurred s , who had started the slaughter by tapping me on the back of the head.
He was a rather tall man of thirty or so, with a round ruddy face that wore a few bruises now. He had been, apparently, rather well-dressed in expensive black clothing, but he was torn and ragged now. I knew who he was without asking—Hendrik Van Pelt.
“Well, man, what’s the answer?” Cofee was asking me.
By holding one side of my jaw firmly with one hand I found that I could talk without too much pain.
“This is the crowd that ran down Newhouse,” I said, “and it wasn’t an accident. I wouldn’t mind having a few more of the details myself, but I was jumped before I got around to all of them. Newhouse had a hundred-florin note in his hand when he was run down, and he was walking in the direction of police headquarters—was only half a block away from the Hall of Justice.
“Soules tells me that Newhouse said he was going up to Portsmouth Square to sit in the sun. But Soules didn’t seem to know that Newhouse was wearing a black eye—the one you told me you had investigated. If Soules didn’t see the shiner, then it’s a good bet that Soules didn’t see Newhouse’s face that day!
“Newhouse was walking from his printing shop toward police headquarters with a piece of foreign paper money in his hand—remember that!
“He had frequent spells of sickness, which, according to friend Soules, always before kept him at home for a week or ten days at a time. This time he was laid up for only two and a half days.