“What Italian fellow do you refer to?”

“He lifs close by me, a few doors away.  His name is Spatola, und he plays the violin the gurb-stones beside.”

“What time was it that you saw him?”

“Maybe elefen o’clock.  I am not sure.  But it was just a little while before I got me the rush of customers from the theaters.”

“Did you notice his manner?  Was there anything unusual in his looks?”

“I had me only a glimbs of him.  He looked about the same as effer.  He was in a hurry, for it rained a liddle; und under his coat yet he carried his fiddle.”

“If it was under his coat, how do you know it was his fiddle?”

The German scratched his head in a reflective way.

“I don’t know it,” said he at last.  “But he somedimes takes his instrument inside there, und I just get the notion that it was so.  Yes?”

“When did he come out?”

The man shook his head.

“I don’d know,” he said.

“Do you mean that you saw no one come out?”

“No; I did see someone come out.  But first I see me someone else go in.”

“Ah!  And who was that?”

“I don’t know his name; but I had seen him often before.  He is a kind of svell feller.  He had a cane und plendy of style.”

“And later you saw someone come out.  Now, your use of the word ‘someone’ leads me to think that you do not know whether it was Spatola or the stranger.”

“I don’d,” said Berg.  “I was busy then.  I just heard me someone rush down the stairs, making plendy noise, und I heard that drunken Hume lift up a window, stick out his head and call some names after him.  My customers laugh und think it’s a joke; but I am ashamed such a disgracefulness to have around my business yet.”

“If Hume called after the person who left,” said Stillman, acutely, to Ashton-Kirk, “that eliminates one of the callers.  It proves that Hume was still alive after the man had gone.”

“That is undoubtedly a fact,” replied the investigator.

Stillman turned upon Berg with dignity.

“Surely you must have noticed the man if all that uproar attended his exit.  You must have detected enough to mark a difference between an exceptionally well-dressed man and an Italian street musician.”

Berg shook his big head.

“It was aboud twelve o’clock in the night-dime, und my customers besides I had to pay some attention to,” stated he.

The coroner was baffled by the man’s positiveness.

“Well,” said he, resignedly.  “What else did you see?”

Berg shook his head once more.

“Nothing else.  Putty soon I closed up and went home.”  Then a flash of recollection came into his dull face.  “As I went down the street I saw some lights in Hume’s windows.  One of them windows was open—­maybe the one he sticked his head out of to call the man names—­und I could hear him laughing like he used to do when he was trying to make a jackass of some peoples.”