dead," he answered himself.
Lowell examined the likeness. "A sadder-looking man I don't believe I've ever seen. And this matter is important enough to involve the chief of police. Wendell, I believe you're right. The Healey boy said the police have not yet identified the man who whispered to Patrolman Rey before throwing himself out the window. It makes perfect sense they would submit a notice to the newspapers."
The newspaper publisher owed Fields a favor. So Fields stopped by its office downtown. He was told that a mulatto police officer had placed the notice.
"Nicholas Rey." Fields found this strange. "With all that's going on between Healey and Talbot, it seems a bit queer that any policeman would expend any energy on a dead loafer." They were eating their supper at Longfellow's. "Could they know there is some connection with the murders? Could that patrolman have some idea what it was the man whispered?"
"It's doubtful," Lowell said. "Once he does, he could well be led to us."
Holmes was unnerved by this. "Then we must find this man's identity before Patrolman Rey!"
"Well, six cheers for Richard Healey then. We now know how it came to pass that Rey came to us with that hieroglyphic," Fields said. "This leaper was brought in to show himself to the police with a horde of other beggars and thieves. The officers would have questioned them about Healey's murder. We can conclude that this poor fellow recognized Dante, grew fearful, poured into Rey's ear some verses in Italian from the very canto that inspired the murder, and ran off - a chase that ended in his fall from the window."
"What could he have been so afraid of?" Holmes wondered.
"We can be confident he was not the murderer himself, since he was dead two weeks before the Reverend Talbot's murder," Fields said.
Lowell tugged on his mustache thoughtfully. "Yes, but he could have known the murderer and feared their association. Probably knew him very well, if that was the case."
"He was frightened of his knowledge, just as we were. So how do we find out before the police who he was?" Holmes asked.
Longfellow had been mostly silent through this exchange. Now he remarked, "We possess two natural advantages over the police in finding the man's identity, my friends. We know the man recognized Dante's inspiration in the terrible details of the murder and that, in his time of crisis, Dante's verses came straightaway to his tongue. And so we can surmise that he was very likely an Italian beggar, well read in literature. And a Catholic."
A man with a harsh three-days' growth over his face and a hat pulled down over his eyes and ears was lying at the foot of Holy Cross, one of Boston's oldest Catholic churches, posed as inertly as a sacred statue. He was stretched in the most leisurely posture human bones allow on a sidewalk and eating his dinner from an earthen pot. A pedestrian passing asked a question. He did not turn his head or respond.
"Sir." Nicholas Rey knelt beside him, holding closer the newspaper likeness of the leaper. "Do you recognize this man, sir?"
Now the loafer rolled his eyes just enough to look.
Rey removed his badge from inside his coat. "Sir, my name is Nicholas Rey, I am a city police officer. It is important that I know this man's name. He has passed on. He is in no trouble. Please, do you know him or someone who might?"
The man stuck his fingers into his pot and plucked a morsel between his thumb and forefinger, then released it to his mouth. Afterward, he rolled his head in a short, untroubled negation.
Patrolman Rey started down the street, where a row of noisy grocery and butcher carts lined the route.
Only ten minutes later, a horsecar expelled passengers at a nearby platform and two other men approached the immovable loafer. One of them held up the same newspaper folded to the same illustration.
"Good fellow, can you tell us whether you know this man?" asked Oliver Wendell Holmes affably.
The recurrence was almost enough to break the reverie of the loafer, though not quite.
Lowell bent forward. "Sir?"
Holmes pushed the newspaper at him again. "Pray, tell us whether he looks at all familiar and we'll be happily on our way, dear fellow."
Nothing.
Lowell shouted, "Do you require an ear trumpet?"
This did not get them very far. The man picked out a bit of unrecognizable food from his pot and slipped it down his throat, without, apparently, bothering to swallow.
"Wouldn't you