“Do you know him well?” inquired the investigator.
“Been acquainted with him ever since he’s been living here—and that’s going on three years.”
“Did he have many visitors, do you know?”
The man in the cloth cap pulled at his pipe reflectively.
“I can’t just say,” he replied. “But I’ve been thinking—” he paused here and examined both young men questioningly. Then he asked: “You’re detectives, ain’t you?”
“Something of that sort,” replied Ashton-Kirk.
The man grinned at this.
“Oh, all right,” said he. “You don’t have to come out flat with it if you don’t want to. I ain’t one of the kind that you’ve got to hit with a mallet to make them catch on to a thing.” Here the wooden pipe seemed to clog; he took a straw from behind his ear and began clearing the stem carefully. At the same time he added: “As I was saying, I’ve been thinking.”
“That,” said Ashton-Kirk, giving another tug at the unanswered bell, “is very commendable.”
“And queer enough, it’s been about visitors—here,” and the man pointed with the straw toward the doorway. “Funny kind of people too, for a house like this.”
“Take a cigar,” said Ashton-Kirk. “That pipe seems out of commission.” Then, as the man put the pipe away in the pocket of his jumper and lighted the proffered cigar, he added: “What do you mean by ‘funny kind of people?’ ”
The cigar well lighted, the man in the overalls drew at it with gentle relish.
“There’s a good many kinds of funny people,” said he. “Some of them you laugh at, and others you don’t. These that I mean are the kind you don’t. Now, Mrs. Marx, the woman that keeps this place, is all right in her way, but it ain’t no swell place at that. Her lodgers are mostly fellows that canvass for different kinds of things; they wear shiny coats and their shoes are mostly run down at the heels. So when I see swell business looking guys coming here I got to wondering who they were. That’s only natural, ain’t it?”
Ashton-Kirk nodded, but before he could reply in words there came a clatter upon the rickety stairs at the far end of the entry. A thin, slipshod woman with untidy hair and a sharp face paused on the lower step and looked out at them.
“What do you want?” she demanded, shrilly.
Ashton-Kirk, followed by Pendleton, stepped inside and advanced down the entry.
“Are you Mrs. Marx?” he inquired.
“Yes,” snapped the woman. “What do you want?”
“A little information.”
“You’re a reporter!” accused the sharp-faced woman. “And let me tell you that I don’t want nothing more to say to no reporters.”
But Ashton-Kirk soothingly denied the accusation.
“I dare say you’ve been bothered to death by newspaper men,” spoke he. “But we assure you that—”
“It don’t make no difference,” stated the woman, rearing her head until her long chin pointed straight at them. “I ain’t got nothing to say to nobody. I don’t want to get into no trouble.”
“The only way you can possibly get into trouble in this matter,” said the investigator, “is to conceal what you know. An attempt to hide facts is always considered by the police as a sort of admission of complicity.”
The woman at this lifted a corner of a soiled apron and applied it to her eyes.
“Things is come to a nice pass,” she said, vainly endeavoring to squeeze a tear from eyes to which such things had long been strangers, “when a respectable woman can’t mind her own business in her own house.”
At this point, Pendleton, who looked discreetly away, caught the rustle of a crisp bill; and when Mrs. Marx spoke again, her tone had undergone a decided change.
“But of course,” she said, “if the law asks me anything, I must do the best I can. I’ve kept a rooming house for a good many years now, gentlemen, and this is the first time I have had any notoriety. It is, I assure you.”
As Ashton-Kirk had seen at a second glance, Mrs. Marx was a lady fully competent to confront any situation that might arise; so he wasted no time in soothing her injured feelings.
“We desire any information that you can give us regarding your lodger, Antonio Spatola,” said he. “Tell us all you know about him.”
“He wasn’t a bad-hearted young man,” said the landlady, “but for all that I wish I’d never seen him. If I hadn’t then I’d never had this disgrace come on me.”
Here she made another effort with the corner of her apron; but it was even more unsuccessful than the first. She gave it up and went on acidly.
“Mr. Spatola came here almost three years ago. He was engaged in one of the vaudeville theaters near here—in the orchestra—and he rented my second story front at six dollars a week. Except for the fact that he would play awfully shivery music at all hours of the night, I was glad to have him. He was quiet and polite; he paid regularly and,” smoothing back the untidy hair, “he gave a kind of tone to the house.
“But then he lost his position. Had a fight, I understand, with somebody. For a long time he had no work; he moved from the second story-front at six dollars a week into the attic at two. When he could get no place, he went on the street and played; afterwards he got the trained birds. I didn’t like this much. It didn’t do the house no good to have a street fiddler living in it; and then the birds were a regular nuisance with their noise. But he paid regular, and after a while he took to keeping the birds in a box in the loft, so I put up with it.”
“We’ll look at his room, if you please,” said the investigator.
Complainingly, the woman led the way up the infirm staircase. At the fourth floor she pushed open a door and showed them into a long loft-like room with high ceiling
