“All right,” replied Osborne. “Help yourself.”
He led Bernstine and Sime out of the cell room; the turnkey, with professional courtesy, moved away to a safe distance, and Ashton-Kirk turned to the Italian.
“You were once first violin with Karlson,” said he. “I remember you well. I always admired your art.”
An eager look came into the prisoner’s face.
“I thank you,” he said. “It is not many who will remember in me a man who once did worthy things. I am young,” with despair, “yet how I have sunken.”
“It is something of a drop,” admitted Ashton-Kirk. “From a position of first violin with Karlson to that of a street musician. How did it happen?”
Sadly the young Italian tapped his forehead with one long finger.
“The fault,” he declared, “is here. I have not the—what do you call it—sense? What happened with Karlson happened a dozen times before—in Italy, in France, in Spain. I have not the good sense!”
But justification came into his eyes, and his hands began to gesticulate eloquently.
“Karlson is a Swede,” with contempt. “The Swedes know the science of music; but they are hard; they are seldom artists; they cannot express. And when one of this nation—a man with the ice of his country in his soul—tried to instruct me how to play the warm music of my own Italy, I called him a fool!”
“I see,” said the investigator.
“I am to blame,” said Spatola, contritely. “But I could not help it. He was a fool, and fools seldom like to hear the truth.”
“The Germans, now,” said Ashton-Kirk, insinuatingly, “are somewhat different from the Swedes. Were you ever employed under a German conductor?”
“Twice,” replied the violinist, with a shrug. “Nobody can deny the art of the Germans. But they have their faults. They say they know the violin. And they do; but the Italian has taught them. The violin belongs to Italy. It was the glory of Cremona, was it not? The tender hands of the Amatis, of Josef Guarnerius, of old Antonio Stradivari, placed a soul within the wooden box; and that soul is the soul of Italy!”
“Haupt, a German, wrote a treatise on the violin,” said Ashton-Kirk. “If you would read that—”
“I have read it,” cried Spatola. “I have read it! It is like that,” and he snapped his fingers impatiently.
“But you’ve probably read a translation in the English or Italian,” insisted the investigator, smoothly. “And all translations lose something of their vitality, you know.”
“I have read it in the German,” declared the Italian; “in his own language, just as he wrote it. It is nothing.”
Pendleton looked at Ashton-Kirk admiringly; the manner in which his friend had established the fact that Spatola knew the German language seemed to him very clever. But Ashton-Kirk made no sign other than that of interest in the subject upon which they talked.
“A race that has given the world such musicians as Wagner, Beethoven and Mozart,” said he, “must possess in a tremendous degree the musical sense. The German knowledge of tone and its combinations is extraordinary; and their music in turn is as complex as their psychology and as simple as the improvisation of a child.”
Spatola seemed surprised at this apparent warmth; he looked at Ashton-Kirk questioningly.
“And, with all their scholarship, the Germans are so practical,” went on the latter. “Only the other day I came upon a booklet published in Leipzig that dealt with the difficulty a composer sometimes encounters in getting the notes on paper when a melody sweeps through his brain. The writer claimed that the world had lost thousands of inspirations because of this, and to prevent further loss, he proffered an invention—a system of—so to speak—musical shorthand.”
A sullen look of suspicion came into Spatola’s face; he regarded the speaker from under lowered brows.
“Perhaps you don’t quite understand the value of such an invention,” proceeded Ashton-Kirk. “But if you had a knowledge of stenography, and the shortcuts it—”
But the Italian interrupted him brusquely.
“I know nothing of such things,” said he, “and what is more I don’t want to know anything of them.” Then in a sharp, angry tone, he added: “What do you want of me? I am not acquainted with you. Why am I annoyed like this? Is it always to be so—first one and then another?”
At this sudden display of resentment, the turnkey approached.
“I will go back to my cell,” Spatola told him, “and please do not bring me out again. My nerves are bad. I have been worried much of late and I can’t stand it.”
The turnkey looked at Ashton-Kirk, who nodded his head. And, as Spatola was led gesticulating away, Pendleton said in a low tone of conviction:
“I tell you, Kirk, there’s your man. Besides the other things against him, he knows German.”
“But what of the phonographic signs?”
“He knows them also. His manner proved it. As soon as you mentioned shorthand he became suspicious and showed uneasiness and anger. I tell you again,” with an air, of finality, “he’s your man.”
XIII
A New Light on Allan Morris
From the City Hall the car headed for Christie Place once more; it halted some half dozen doors from Hume’s and the occupants got out.
The first floor was used by a dealer in secondhand machinery, but at one side was a long, dingy entry with a rickety, twisting flight of stairs at the end. Ashton-Kirk rang the bell here, and while they waited a man who had been seated in the open door of the machine shop got up and approached them.
He wore blue overalls and a jumper liberally discolored by plumbago and other lubricants; a short wooden pipe was held between his teeth, and a cloth cap sat upon the back of his head.
“Looking up the dago?” asked he with a grin. He jerked a dirty thumb toward the stairs.
Ashton-Kirk nodded; the man took the wooden pipe from his mouth, blew out a jet of strong-smelling smoke and said:
“I knowed he’d put a knife or something into somebody, some day. These
