Ashton-Kirk looked at him inquiringly; there was expectancy in the investigator’s eyes, but he said nothing.

“Perhaps you’ll think that I’m all kinds of a fool,” continued Pendleton, “and maybe I am.  But here are the things that I’m trying to marshall in order.  I’ll take them just as they happened.”  He held up one hand and with the other began to check off the counts upon his fingers.  “Yesterday you have a visit—­a visit of a professional nature—­from Edyth Vale.  Last night she strangely disappears for a time.  At a most unconventional hour this morning I find you at her door.  Then I learn that you are on your way to look into the details of a murder that you had just heard of—­somehow.  Now I hear that Allan Morris, Edyth’s fiance, has been, in rather an odd way, upon familiar terms with the murdered man.”

He paused as he checked this last count, still regarding his friend fixedly.

“I don’t claim,” he went on, after a moment, “that these things have anything to do with each other.  But, somehow, they’ve got together in my mind, and I can’t—­”

Here the door re-opened and Stillman entered, followed by the big German.

“Just take a chair, Mr. Berg,” said the coroner, seating himself at the desk and affixing his eyeglasses.

The German lowered his form into the chair indicated and folded his fat hands across his monstrous paunch.

“Your name in full—­is what?” asked Stillman with formality.

“Franz Berg.  I sell me delicatessen at 478 Christie Place.  I haf been there for fifteen years.”

“You were acquainted with the murdered man?”

The delicatessen dealer unfolded his hands and waved them significantly.

“I was aguainted with him—­yes.  But I was not friendly with him—­no.  He is dead, ain’t it?  Und it’s not right to say someding about the dead.  But he was no friend of mine.”

“I understand.  But tell me, Mr. Berg, how late do you keep your place open?”

“In the summertime—­seven o’clock.  But after dose theaters open, I stays me on the chob till twelve, or later somedimes.  There is one—­two—­three what you call burlesque places, right by me; and no sooner do they close up, than right away those actor peoples come to buy.  I do a goot business, so I keep open.”

“Then you were there until midnight last night?”

“More later than that yet.”

“Was there any movement of any sort about Hume’s place?  Did you see or hear anything?”

The great red face of Berg took on a solemn look.

“It is maybe not ride that I should say somedings,” complained he.  “But if the law will not excuse me, I will say it, if it makes some more trouble or not.”

“It is vitally necessary,” stated the young coroner, firmly, “that you tell me everything you know about this matter.”

“Well,” said the delicatessen dealer, reluctantly, “last night as I stood by my window looking oudside on the street, I see me that Italian feller go by und turn in at the side door; a second lader I hear him go up the steps to Hume’s place.”